Yeah, we are all going to really miss it.
"Alleged hacking has UK seething; Tabloid accused of raiding phone of girl found slain" July 06, 2011|By Gregory Katz, Associated Press
LONDON - One of Britain’s voracious tabloids is facing claims that it hacked into the phone messages of a missing 13-year-old, possibly hampering a police inquiry into her disappearance.
Related: Intelligence Agencies Inspire Hacking
Yeah, but it is okay when they do it.
Also see: British Wedding Bells
News of the World made them ring.
Milly Dowler was found slain months later, and the report that her messages were tampered with has horrified Britons. Major advertisers - including Ford UK - have pulled their ads from the paper, the News of the World.
Britons are used to seeing their tabloid press harass royals, sports stars, and celebrities, constantly eavesdropping and paying even the most tangential sources for information about stars’ sex lives and drug problems.
But the latest hacking case was met with revulsion yesterday from everyone from Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain to movie stars to people who commented on Twitter.
It is “shocking that someone could do this, knowing that the police were trying to find this person and trying to find out what had happened,’’ Cameron said while on a trip to Afghanistan.
Related:
"The British prime minister’s powerful spin doctor resigned yesterday amid assertions that he sanctioned widespread illegal phone hacking against politicians, celebrities, and royalty when he was editor of a top-selling tabloid newspaper."
Say wha.... ????
He was WORKING FOR YOU?
The case has refocused the spotlight on the already tainted News of The World, part of Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire at News Corp. It also comes as Murdoch is trying to engineer the politically sensitive, multibillion-pound takeover of broadcaster BSkyB in Britain.
Dowler’s disappearance in 2002 while walking home from school in Surrey, south of London, transfixed Britain until her decomposing body was found six months later in the woods by mushroom pickers.
Related: AmeriKan Media Still Angry About Anthony Verdict
Britain had it's own Caylee case.
While police were pursuing all leads and the teen’s parents were making dramatic appeals for information, a private investigator working for the News of the World allegedly hacked into her cellphone, listened to her messages, and deleted some to make room for possible new ones....
When government intelligence agencies do it, it's okay.
It was never determined how long the teen was alive after being abducted, but the tabloid’s actions reportedly came soon after her disappearance. Police realized some messages had been deleted, giving them and Dowler’s parents false hope that she was still alive....
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Related: News of the World tabloid phone-hacking scandal widens
"As fury grows, Murdoch folds troubled tabloid' Mogul seeking to avert losses after hacking" July 08, 2011|By Brian Stelter and Sarah Lyall, New York Times
LONDON - Media titan Rupert Murdoch, in a bid to protect his News Corp. empire, sought to stanch damage from a deepening phone hacking scandal yesterday by sacrificing News of the World, his mass-circulation British weekly newspaper.
The saga generated more outrage after suggestions that investigators for the paper may have broken into the voicemail not only of a 13-year-old murder victim but also of relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The scandal had been taking a toll on News Corp. and driving down its stock price. Some advertisers were fleeing the News of the World, and doubts emerged about Murdoch’s proposed $12 billion takeover of the pay-television company British Sky Broadcasting, in which he already owns a large stake. Many legislators have now criticized the deal.
The Times of London, itself a News Corp. newspaper, reported that five News of the World journalists and the newspaper executives suspected of involvement in the scandal were expected to be arrested within days.
The move to close the News of the World after its editions Sunday was seen by media analysts as a potentially shrewd decision: jettisoning a troubled newspaper in order to preserve the more lucrative broadcasting deal and possibly expand the company’s other British tabloid, The Sun, to publish seven days a week.
Oh, so it is WORKING OUT for old Rup anyway, huh? Kinda did him a favor even?
The announcement came from Murdoch’s son and likely heir apparent, James, in a broad and apologetic statement delivered so unexpectedly that the News of the World was still advertising a subscription deal on its website afterward.
“Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued,’’ he said, adding that “those who acted wrongly will have to face the consequences.’’
Unless they are western war criminals.
The announcement raised immediate speculation that The Sun might begin publishing on Sundays. Company executives had discussed earlier this year whether to merge some of the two papers’ operations as a way to save money....
Oh, so he was probably going to shut it down anyway, huh?
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"Arrests in UK hacking case; Former aide to PM is detained; Murdoch flies to London" by Jill Lawless and Robert Barr, Associated Press / July 9, 2011
LONDON - Prime Minister David Cameron’s former communications chief and a former royal reporter were arrested yesterday in a phone hacking and police corruption scandal that has already toppled a major tabloid and rattled the cozy relationship between British politicians and the powerful Murdoch media empire.
The 168-year-old muckraking tabloid News of the World was shut down Thursday after being engulfed by allegations its journalists paid police for information and hacked into the phone messages of celebrities, young murder victims and even the grieving families of dead soldiers. Its last publication day is tomorrow.
Who even reads newspapers anymore besides yours truly? Newspapers suck now.
The hacking revelations horrified the nation and advertisers, who pulled their ads en masse. News International, the British arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., jettisoned the paper in hopes of saving its $19 billion deal to take over satellite broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting. But the British government yesterday signaled the deal would be delayed due to the crisis.
In what could be an emergency damage-control move, Rupert Murdoch was flying in to London, according to the Financial Times. News International declined comment on the report.
Many expressed astonishment that 43-year-old Rebekah Brooks, who was editor of News of the World when some of the hacking allegedly occurred, was keeping her job as chief executive of News International while the paper’s 200 staff were laid off.
The Murdoch group has shown “an almost maniacal desire to protect Ms. Brooks at all costs,’’ said industry analyst Claire Enders.
Brooks told the paper’s soon-to-be-laid-off staff yesterday that she was staying on, adding that the paper was “working hard to put our own house in order and do the right thing.’’
Brooks appeared to hint at revelations to come, telling the journalists that “in a year’s time it’ll become apparent why we did this,’’ according to a leaked audiotape of the meeting obtained by Sky news. “Eventually it will come out why things went wrong,’’ she said, noting that that would also be a very bad moment for the company.
Saying “this is not exactly the best time in my life,’’ Brooks pledged to “get vindication’’ for the paper and its staff.
“If you think this is a bundle of laughs trying to get his company’s reputation back, it isn’t,’’ she said, adding that she believed she would be “much more useful leading the company through’’ the firestorm.
However, News International announced after the meeting that Brooks had been removed from the paper’s internal inquiry into the wrongdoing.
Instead, the paper’s standards committee will report to Joel Klein, a former New York City schools chancellor who now heads News Corp.’s education division.
The police investigation into the phone hacking drew uncomfortably close to the prime minister yesterday with the arrest of Andy Coulson, Cameron’s once-powerful communications chief and a former editor of News of the World.
Coulson, 43, was taken into custody yesterday morning on suspicion of corruption and “conspiring to intercept communications.’’
Of course, government intelligence agencies do it all the time.
*************************
Police also arrested Clive Goodman, the former News of the World journalist who served a jail term in 2007 for hacking into the phones of royal aides. This time the arrest was on suspicion of making illegal payoffs to police for scoops....
Detectives searched Coulson’s house in London and Goodman’s home south of the city in Surrey yesterday, as well as the newsroom of a second tabloid, the Daily Star Sunday. That paper is owned by Richard Desmond’s Northern & Shell media conglomerate, and Goodman has done work for the paper since his release from jail.
Late yesterday, police announced that a third suspect, a 63-year-old man from Surrey, had been arrested for alleged payments to police and they were searching his home. His name was not released.
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"Secret Service to review Fox’s hacking" July 05, 2011|Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Secret Service said yesterday it will investigate the hacking of Fox’s political Twitter account over updates saying President Obama had been assassinated.
Maybe they should check News of the World first.
And are we being PREPARED for a FUTURE FALSE FLAG, folks?
Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie said the law enforcement agency whose job it is to protect the president will conduct an investigation of the false postings and that “we will conduct the appropriate follow-up.’’
Hackers broke into the FoxNewsPolitics account early yesterday, leaving six tweets reporting Obama had been shot to death in Iowa and that the shooter was unknown....
We are just receiving word he was a homegrown terrorist, blah, blah, blah.
An online magazine at Stony Brook University in New York, Think, reported that initial posts around midnight indicated the Fox News Twitter account had been hacked by a group called the Script Kiddies.
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Stories you won't be seeing in the News of the World:
"The newlyweds are two of the world’s hottest celebrities right now....
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Related: British Supernovas
"NOW THAT'S A CROWN -- Britain's Prince William and his wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, watched the Calgary Stampede Parade in Calgary, Alberta, yesterday. The prince and his bride wrapped up a royal tour of Canada that began June 30 and arrived late yesterday afternoon in Los Angeles, where they attended a technology summit (Boston Globe July 9 2011)."
I hope the boy is treating her right because she does have the look of love in her eye.
"Panel examines UK role in CIA prisoner transfers; Inquiry could call on spy chiefs to testify in public" July 07, 2011|By David Stringer, Associated Press
LONDON - A British inquiry will investigate CIA prisoner transfer practices as part of a probe into claims that terrorism suspects were tortured after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, officials confirmed yesterday.
The three-member panel, commissioned by Prime Minister David Cameron to carry out a sweeping review of the country’s role in the war on terror, will scrutinize alleged British complicity in the secret US rendition program.
I'm not expecting much. I never do from government whitewashes.
Officials confirmed that the inquiry could see the heads of Britain’s main spy agencies questioned in public for the first time.
The panel will not seek evidence from the United States or foreign allies, disappointing campaigners who hoped the study would be the most thorough yet of alleged murky practices by Western military and intelligence officials.
What is murky about torture techniques? They HAVE BEEN REPORTED!
“Without a comprehensive examination of rendition, the drip-drip of allegations will continue. Far better to deal with it all now, draw a line, and move on,’’ said Conservative Party lawmaker Andrew Tyrie, head of a parliamentary group that has led calls for greater scrutiny of the use of so-called extraordinary rendition - which involved the beyond-the-law transfer of terrorism suspects from country to country by the CIA....
Oh, THAT is the POINT of the WHITEWASH!
Human rights advocates allege that the CIA used the program to outsource torture of detainees to countries where it is permitted.
When they didn't want to do it themselves.
In a 2007 probe conducted on behalf of the Council of Europe, Swiss politician Dick Marty accused 14 European governments of permitting the CIA to run detention centers or carry out rendition flights between 2002 and 2005.
And yet somehow that report just faded down the old memory hole.
Last year, Cameron ordered Peter Gibson, a former appeals court judge, to lead a study into alleged British complicity in torture and mistreatment of terrorist suspects held overseas.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said the inquiry was necessary to “clear the stain from our reputation as a country.’’
I don't think the stain can ever be removed.
Britain has previously acknowledged that Diego Garcia, a British atoll in the Indian Ocean that hosts a US military base, was twice used by the United States as a refueling stop during the 2002 secret transfers of two terrorism suspects.
It has also said that two suspected Pakistani militants detained by British troops in Iraq in 2004 were handed over to the United States and later covertly transferred to Afghanistan....
Eliza Manningham-Buller, a former head of domestic spy agency MI5 who retired in 2007, has said previously that she believes the United States deliberately misled its allies over its handling of detainees.
In a document outlining its plans, the inquiry said spy agency chiefs and other key witnesses would be questioned in public unless doing so would compromise national security.
British spy chiefs are rarely seen in public, and unlike their US counterparts give evidence to legislative scrutiny committees in private.
“The heads and former heads of the security and intelligence agencies will be invited to give evidence on these issues, as far as possible, in public,’’ the inquiry said.
Junior spies will be questioned in private, but ministers and other public officials will be expected to testify in public - unless dealing with sensitive matters of national security.
“The potential for embarrassment to these witnesses will not justify secrecy,’’ the inquiry said.
Cameron has said the inquiry will not begin until police complete an investigation opened in 2009 into allegations that an intelligence officer with the country’s MI6 international spy agency was complicit in the mistreatment of detainees overseas.
Some rights groups have complained that the final decision on whether evidence studied by the inquiry can be made public will be taken by senior government officials - and not by the panel itself.
Clive Stafford Smith, director of rights group Reprieve, said the decision would effectively “give America a veto on much of what should be public.’’
The inquiry confirmed that - despite calls from some campaigners - it would not examine instances where detainees captured by British military forces were moved to other locations inside the same country.
Britain’s defense ministry is already studying those cases, it said.
Last year, Britain paid out settlements to a number of former Guantanamo Bay detainees who alleged UK complicity in their harsh treatment overseas, though the government did not admit any liability.
All over that damn inside job lie of 9/11.
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Had enough terrorism yet?
"UK arrests suspected Basque terrorist in foiled 1997 attack on Spanish king" July 08, 2011|Associated Press
MADRID - Police in Britain arrested a suspected Basque separatist yesterday who is wanted in connection with a 1997 plot to assassinate the king of Spain....
ETA, the Basque separatist group, declared what it called a permanent cease-fire in January and has said it is open to letting international observers verify the truce. Spain insists it must lay down arms....
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Also see: Statue of Reagan unveiled outside US Embassy in London
UK coroner closes book on 131-year-old murder case
And that closes the book on the News of the World.
