the rest at link above(CNN) -- Rupert Murdoch is facing a two-front war. On the eastern front, he has denied knowledge before a House of Commons committee of phone hacking or payments by News Corp. to Scotland Yard while bemoaning the employees who failed him. He will probably escape criminal prosecution in the United Kingdom, unless some senior employee yet turns on him.
But even if he survives, huddled in his bunker, the wreckage around him resembles postwar Berlin: A prime minister is in jeopardy, Scotland Yard has been discredited, and the British press faces an inquiry commission that may impose new restrictions on press conduct that would be clearly unconstitutional in the United States
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But what about the western front? The FBI is investigating accusations that News Corp. employees hacked the phones of September 11 terror attack survivors. No one can predict what this investigation will produce, other than more denials from Murdoch. If, however, it happened once in the U.S., it probably happened repeatedly, because once the technology is used, it is too tempting not to use it again
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much more at Guardian link aboveJames Murdoch has been accused of misleading the parliamentary select committee this week in relation to phone hacking, igniting yet another fire for the embattled News International boss to extinguish.
In a highly damaging broadside, two former News of the World senior executives claimed the evidence Murdoch gave to the committee on Tuesday in relation to an out-of-court settlement to Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, was "mistaken".
The statement came as something of a bombshell to the culture, sport and media select committee, which immediately announced it would be asking Murdoch to explain the contradiction.
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With respect to the Milly Dowler case - despite the pain and anguish done to Milly's family, I've heard no one mention (much) how this may have interfered with the police investigation. Levi Bellfield went on to kill two other women after Milly. Did the phone hacking impact the investigation and enable Bellfield to go on to further murders??
Murdoch has lost any deal he had for the Olympics in London next year and I look forward to a large uptake in the sale of Humble Pie.
much more at CNN link above---
"For those us of who care about the Christian scriptures, what are we to make of this mix of billionaire media tycoonery, allegations of phone hacking and bribery, and the Holy Word of God?” Braun wrote. “What are we to make of the fact that every time we buy a Zondervan product we contribute to Murdoch’s mogul-dom, which includes a personal fortune that Forbes pegged at $6.3 billion last year."
Braun makes no bones about his dislike for News Corp. "Perhaps I overstate the link between News of the World and Zondervan,” he wrote. “It’s just that I believe there should be absolutely no link at all. Bald greed has no place in Bible publishing."
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(much more at Guardian link above)Sara Payne, whose eight-year-old daughter Sarah was abducted and murdered in July 2000, has been told by Scotland Yard that they have found evidence to suggest she was targeted by the News of the World's investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who specialised in hacking voicemail.
Police had earlier told her correctly that her name was not among those recorded in Mulcaire's notes, but on Tuesday officers from Operation Weeting told her they had found her personal details among the investigator's notes. These had previously been thought to refer to a different target.
Friends of Sara Payne have told the Guardian that she is "absolutely devastated and deeply disappointed" at the disclosure.
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the rest of the Marianne Faithfull interview hereAVC: Was The News Of The World one of those papers?
MF: Yeah. It was News Of The World, it was all News Of The World, and a few other papers. I must say, when I read my New York Times this morning, and I read that News Of The World is going out of business, I got a bit of quiet satisfaction. Like, “Thank God, finally,” and for that reason. They were absolutely unscrupulous, tapping phones, and they did that with us.