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London - MPs will
hold an emergency debate on Wednesday over a phone-hacking scandal at a
top-selling newspaper that has prompted calls for the resignation of a
well-connected Rupert Murdoch executive and provoked a public outcry that could
damage the paper's sales.
Revelations that the News of the World may have accessed the
voicemail messages of crime victims - including an abducted 13-year-old girl later
found murdered - have caused outrage in Britain and brought to a head a
long-running saga previously thought to have targeted celebrities and other
high-profile figures.
Three hours of parliamentary time has been cleared for the
debate on Wednesday where some politicians have said they could call for a
national boycott of the News of the World.
Automaker Ford has already said it would pull advertising
from the News of the World (NoW) until it saw how it deals with the matter.
Other companies said they were reviewing the situation.
News International, which publishes Murdoch's stable of
British newspaper titles including The Times and The Sun, said new information
had recently been provided to police.
"Full and continuing cooperation has been provided to
the police since the current investigation started in January 2011," it
said in a statement.
"Well understood arrangements are in place to ensure
that any material of importance to which they are entitled is provided to them.
"We cannot comment any further due to the ongoing
investigations."
The BBC said the material passed to police related to a
trail of emails appearing to show that payments were made to police in the past
for information and that were authorised by former NoW editor, Andy Coulson,
later David Cameron's head of communications.
Coulson resigned as News of the World editor in 2007 and has
insisted he knew nothing about the phone hacking.
It is not the first time a News Corp paper has been linked to police payments. In 2003, Rebekah Brooks, then editor of The Sun, told a parliamentary committee that her paper paid police for information. News International later said this was not company practice.
Questions for PM
Broadcasters and newspapers rushed to publish new details of
a saga that has forced the resignation of Coulson and has now come to the door
of Brooks, now head of News Corp's British newspaper arm. She is a frequent
guest at the country home of Prime Minister David Cameron.
The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that News of the World journalists may have attempted to access voice messages left on phones as relatives waited for information about their loved ones in the aftermath of the London bombings in 2005, when British Islamists carried out suicide bombings on the transport network, killing 52 people.
The Independent newspaper said Brooks commissioned a search,
on a personal matter, by one of the private investigators used by the News of
the World to trace the family of the murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler.
The Guardian said police investigating the phone-hacking
claims were turning their attention to high-profile cases involving the murder
or abduction of children since 2001.
The parents of two murdered schoolgirls in another
high-profile case dating back to Brooks' editorship of the News of the World
have been visited by police investigating the phone-hacking affair.
Cameron is likely to face intense questioning over the issue
at the weekly prime minister's questions session in parliament on Wednesday,
particularly his friendship with Brooks and her successor Coulson.
Cameron said on Tuesday he was "appalled" by the
allegations that in 2002 the murdered schoolgirl's voicemail messages had been
listened to and deleted by a News of the World investigator, misleading police
and her family.
Cameron's government is weighing approval of News Corp's
takeover bid for BSkyB. The hacking revelations are unlikely to derail that
deal since approvals are focussed on whether the takeover will give Murdoch too
much power over the British media. The government has said it does not believe
it will.
Murdoch transformed the press landscape in the 1980s during
Margaret Thatcher's years as prime minister, bringing in new technology and
confronting printers' and journalists' trade unions. He commands audiences with
global leaders and, through his media, is seen as one of the world's most
powerful men.
Brooks, who has worked for Murdoch for nearly half her life,
was previously seen as untouchable because of her close relationship with the
News Corp chairman and chief executive.
But popular pressure could prove her undoing if readers, who
had largely shrugged off news that investigators accessed the phone messages of
royals, footballers and celebrities to break stories, start to desert the
Sunday paper.
Facebook and Twitter campaigns have sprung up in the wake of
the latest allegation encouraging readers and advertisers to boycott the News
of the World.
Sales of News Corp's Sun newspaper never recovered in the
city of Liverpool after it offended football fans in the wake of a stadium
disaster more than 20 years ago in which 96 people died.
