Phone-hacking | featured news

The phone hacking investigation of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers in Britain has broadened to include allegations that information was obtained from stolen cellphones, a senior police officer told a judicial inquiry Monday.

British prosecutors said they're considering criminal charges against 11 people in connection with a long-running police investigation into illegal newsgathering tactics at News Corp.'s British newspapers.

James Murdoch has severed all ties with News Corp's British newspaper business, which is at the centre of multiple investigations over phone and computer hacking and bribery, according to regulatory filings.

Rupert Murdoch's News International has settled nearly all cases in the first wave of phone hacking lawsuits brought against his company.

A phone hacking scandal may have cost Rupert Murdoch his biggest-selling newspaper in 2011, but the billionaire media mogul managed to end the year with a modest addition to his empire -- an account on Twitter.

Phone-hacking was widespread at Piers Morgan's Daily Mirror, a former columnist at the tabloid said on Wednesday, as an official inquiry unearthed further evidence of the illegal practice in the British press.

Horror stories of car chases, intense paranoia, spitting paparazzi, and most of all an ineffective regulatory system peppered today’s inquiry into News Corp’s News Of The World phone hacking scandal by a British government-backed inquiry into UK press ethics and practices. Notably appearing in London Thursday were actress Sienna Miller and Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

James Murdoch has resigned from the boards of the companies that publish its British newspapers including the now-defunct News of the World tabloid at the center of the phone hacking sandal, regulatory filings show.

The FBI has made an arrest in the celebrity phone and e-mail hacking case the agency is calling “Operation Hackerazzi,” according to a press alert. The agency has not confirmed which members of the entertainment industry were targeted. More details will be announced at a press conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

A lawyer for many of Britain's phone hacking victims said Friday that legal action would be launched in the United States against Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.