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  1. #1
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    Ex-Murdoch aide Rebekah Brooks arrested in London

    Ex-Murdoch aide Rebekah Brooks arrested in London

    By JILL LAWLESS
    The Associated Press


    July 10 2011 photo of Rupert Murdoch and his News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks (right) who has resigned, the company confirmed Friday July 15 2011, as they battle a series of crises including accusations of phone hacking and police corruption. Only days earlier Murdoch had expressed his strong support for Brooks. (AP Photo/ Ian Nicholson/PA)

    LONDON (AP) — Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch's former British CEO, was arrested Sunday by British police investigating phone hacking and police bribery by the defunct tabloid News of the World.

    Police said a 43-year-old woman was arrested at a London police station at noon Sunday by appointment. She is being questioned on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications — phone hacking — and on suspicion of corruption — bribing police for information.

    London police do not identify suspects until they are charged. Sky News and the BBC said the suspect was Brooks, the former News of the World editor who stepped down Friday as head of Murdoch's British newspapers.

    Police have already arrested nine other people connected to Murdoch's British media empire over allegations that the News of the World hacked into the phone voice mails of hundreds of celebrities, politicians, rival journalists and even murder victims. No one has yet been charged.

    The latest arrested comes just two days before Brooks is due to answer questions from a parliamentary committee investigating the hacking. Rupert Murdoch and his son James are also due to give evidence.

    The arrest throws Brooks' appearance before parliament's Culture, Media and Sport committee into question.

    Brooks was the newspaper's editor between 2000 and 2003, when some of the hacking took place, but has always said she did not know hacking was going on, a claim greeted with skepticism by many who worked there.

    At an appearance before lawmakers in 2003, she admitted that News International had paid police for information. That admission of possible illegal activity went largely unchallenged and, at the time, little noticed.

    The arrest also piles more pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron, a friend and neighbor of Brooks, who has met with her many times and invited her to stay at his official country retreat.

    Cameron is already under fire for hiring Andy Coulson, who resigned as News of the World editor after two employees were jailed for corruption in 2007, as his communications chief. Coulson resigned from Downing Street in January after police reopened their hacking investigation. He was arersted last week and questioned before being released on bail.

    Brooks' arrest is another blow for Murdoch, who is struggling to tame a scandal that has already destroyed one major British tabloid, cost the jobs of two of his senior executives and sunk his dream of taking full control of a lucrative satellite broadcaster, British Sky Broadcasting.

    On Sunday, Murdoch took out a second newspaper ad promising that News Corp. will make amends for the phone hacking scandal.

    The ad in several U.K. Sunday newspapers, titled "Putting right what's gone wrong," said News Corp. would assist the British police investigations into phone hacking and police bribery. It vowed there would be "be no place to hide" for wrongdoers.

    "It may take some time for us to rebuild trust and confidence, but we are determined to live up to the expectations of our readers, colleagues and partners," the ad said.

    That follows a full-page Murdoch ad in Saturday's U.K. papers declaring, "We are sorry."

    Last week Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old News of the World after it was accused of eavesdropping on the phones of celebrities, politicians, other journalists and even murder victims. Sunday was the first day in Britain that the popular, gossipy, muckraking weekly was not on the newsstands.

    Murdoch also abandoned his BSkyB takeover bid, and two of his senior executives resigned — Brooks and Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton.

    But Murdoch's critics say that is not enough. Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said Sunday that Murdoch has "too much power" in Britain and his share of British media ownership should be reduced.

    Now that News of the World is shut down, Murdoch owns three national British newspapers — The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times — and a 39-percent share of BSkyB.

    "I think that we've got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20 percent of the newspaper market, the Sky platform and Sky News," Miliband told The Observer newspaper.

    "I think it's unhealthy because that amount of power in one person's hands has clearly led to abuses of power within his organization. If you want to minimize the abuses of power then that kind of concentration of power is frankly quite dangerous," he said.

    Deputy prime Minister Nick Clegg agreed there should be greater plurality in the media.

    "A healthy press is a diverse one, where you've got lots of different organizations competing, and that's exactly what we need," Clegg told the BBC.

    Clegg's Liberal Democrat party has asked Britain's broadcast regulator to consider whether News Corp. is a "fit and proper" owner of BSkyB.

    Cameron's Conservative-led government and the London police also are facing increasing questions about their close relationship with Murdoch's media empire.

    Cameron has held 26 meetings with Murdoch executives since he was elected in May 2010 and invited several to his country retreat. Senior police officers also had close ties to Murdoch executives, even hiring as a consultant a former News of the World editor who has since been arrested for alleged hacking.

    Police are under pressure to explain why their original hacking investigation several years ago failed to find enough evidence to prosecute anyone other than News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Detectives reopened the investigation earlier this year and now say they have the names of 3,700 potential victims.

    Records show that senior officers — including Paul Stephenson, the current chief of London's Metropolitan Police — have had numerous meals and meetings with News International executives in the past few years. The force also hired Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive editor arrested last week in phone hacking, as a part-time PR consultant for a year until September 2010.

    Stephenson also stayed for free earlier this year at a health resort that employed Wallis to do its public relations. The police force said the stay had been arranged through the facility's managing director, a family friend, so that Stephenson could undergo therapy as he recovered from surgery. It said the police chief had not known that Wallis worked there.

    But politicians are growing concerned by the web of ties being revealed between senior police officers and News Corp. figures. Home Secretary Theresa May plans to make a statement in the House of Commons on Monday outlining her "concerns."

    Murdoch is eager to stop the crisis from further spreading to the United States, where many of his most lucrative assets — including the Fox TV network, 20th Century Fox film studio, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post — are based. Already the FBI has opened an inquiry into whether 9/11 victims or their families were also hacking targets of News Corp. journalists.

    Source: http://www.ajc.com/business/ex-murdoch- ... 19968.html
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  2. #2
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    A newspaper is opened to show the advertisement apology for News International and photographed at a news vendor in central London, Saturday, July 16, 2011. News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch signed the company advert entitled "We are sorry", which is published in British national newspapers Saturday.

    The News International publication News of the World is accused of hacking into the mobile phones of various crime victims, celebrities and politicians.(AP Photo/Sang Tan)

    ==========================================

    IRONIC: Under The Homeland Security Act, the United States government does this thousands a time a day all across the country and gets away with it Scott-Free.

    It is looking like there are victims within the United States that will take Rupert to court also. What he did, and who he did it to to warrant removal of being protected from prosecution for these crimes is anybody's guess.
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  3. #3
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    related

    The swift decline of UK media titan Rebekah Brooks

    By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press

    LONDON (AP) — Rebekah Brooks dined with Britain's prime minister over Christmas and got a public show of support from her boss Rupert Murdoch before the cameras this month as allegations of phone hacking on her watch mounted.

    Now the 43-year-old U.K. media executive is a criminal suspect, her world of power and connections shattered by scandal.

    Brooks, who quit as head of Murdoch's British newspapers Friday, was arrested Sunday in a widening investigation into years of alleged phone hacking of hundreds of celebrities, politicians and even murder victims, as well as bribing police for information, at the now-shuttered tabloid News of the World.

    The arrest sealed Brooks' swift transformation from one of Britain's most powerful female executives to a figure of scorn and even parody.

    On Sunday, an Irish discount airline seized on perceptions of Brooks as an outlaw, placing an ad in The Observer newspaper that showed a photograph of the longtime Murdoch confidant, said to be so close to him that she was seen as family.

    "Hacked Off with High Fares... I'm outta here with Ryanair!" the caption crowed.

    The implications of Brooks' arrest stretch far beyond her own circumstances, with questions about the extent to which the scandal rocking Britain's media establishment will dismantle the chain of command in Murdoch's business empire and erode the stature of Prime Minister David Cameron and other politicians who had once-cozy ties to the 80-year-old press baron.

    Another of Murdoch's chief executives, Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton, also had to resign Friday after more than 50 years with Murdoch. James Murdoch, head of European and Asian operations for his father's company, News Corp., is under increasing scrutiny. He and the senior Murdoch, along with Brooks, face questioning Tuesday by British lawmakers investigating the scandal.

    Brooks has been at the center of the storm since the scandal broke.

    Recognizable by a long shock of curly red hair, the 43-year-old Brooks was a loyal lieutenant of Murdoch and served as editor of the News of the World for part of the time when the tabloid's journalists allegedly hacked into telephone messages.

    Reports of illegal eavesdropping had percolated for years, but revelations that journalist had hacked into the voice mail of a 13-year-old murder victim, Milly Dowler, in 2002 caused a public uproar.

    The scandal was deemed toxic for the tabloid, and Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old newspaper. Brooks was vilified for initially clinging to her job while 200 other journalists lost theirs.

    Brooks' career with the News of the World began in 1989, after briefly working for Murdoch's group as a secretary. She started as a features writer, then became features editor, associate editor and ultimately deputy editor. She left the tabloid in 1998 to become deputy editor of Murdoch's other London tabloid, The Sun, where she stayed for two years.

    When Brooks returned to the News of the World as editor in 2000, she was only 31 years old — a feat for Britain's press establishment.

    She peppered the tabloid with celebrity scandals, and drew praise for using the newspaper as a platform to help get sex offender legislation, known as "Sarah's Law," passed in Britain. Brooks' controversial campaign to publicly identify pedophiles drew criticism from some police, who said it disrupted investigations and could lead to cases of mistaken identity, but she defended it on the grounds that the public had the right to know.

    In another stint at The Sun, another Murdoch tabloid, Brooks became its first female editor in 2003. She thumbed her nose at critics who expected her to end tabloid's daily topless model pictures on page 3, attaching a headline that said "Rebekah from Wapping" to the photo of a nude model of the same name on her first day on the job.

    Six years and a host of scoops later, Brooks was named chief executive of News International, joining the elite circle of Murdoch confidants.

    No longer drafting the headlines from her perch in the executive suite, Brooks has still made plenty of them — from her lunches and social calls with top politicians to one unusual brush with the law.

    In 2005, Brooks was arrested for allegedly attacking her husband, soap-opera star Ross Kemp. No charges were filed.

    Brooks's second marriage, to former racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, came in 2009. The couple have been known to rub shoulders with some of Britain's most prominent politicians and appear at society events from Windsor Castle to Wimbledon.

    Brooks cultivated a close friendship not just with Cameron of the Conservative Party, but with the wives of ex-Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and Tony Blair of Labour.

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... d16328da25
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  4. #4
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    Why this sudden 'integrity and truth in media reporting' is now breaking the dike is beyond me.

    This should have been done BEFORE WE INVADED IRAQ!

    Think of all the lives that could have been saved. Not to mention the United States would not now be COMPLETELY BANKRUPT!
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