Phone-hacking scandal – Friday 29 July 2011 on the day....
The phone-hacking scandal that stunned the country and rocked Rupert Murdoch's media empire deepened Friday with claims that the mother of another murdered girl was targeted as an inquiry into the affair opened.
Lord Justice Brian Leveson, the judge appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron to lead the probe, said Thursday the inquiry would start by looking at media ethics and press regulation and vowed that he will order witnesses to testify.
The first public hearings would be held in September, he announced.
But just hours after Leveson spoke, the mother of a murdered girl on whose behalf the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World tabloid had campaigned relentlessly said she may have been targeted by a private investigator working for the now-defunct paper.
Phone hacking scandal is 'all about Rupert Murdoch
in the year to the end of June, as the company announced a £750m share buy-back to appease investors unhappy after the failure of News Corporation's bid to takeover the satellite broadcaster.News of the World had provided her with a mobile phone for the past 11 years, former editor Rebekah Brooks said.
Brooks worked with Sara Payne to campaign for tougher child protection laws during her 2000-2003 editorship of News of the World.
Brooks earlier this month quit as head of News International, Murdoch's British newspaper publishing arm, and was arrested by Scotland Yard on suspicion of phone-hacking.
Brooks said in a statement that the latest allegations were "abhorrent" and "particularly upsetting" because Payne was a "dear friend".
A News International spokesman said: "News International takes this matter very seriously and is deeply concerned, like everyone.
Nick Davies on phone hacking, Murdoch and News of the World
The scandal erupted earlier this month after it emerged that News of the World, which has since been shut down, had hacked into the voicemails of Milly Dowler, a missing 13-year-old girl who was later found murdered.
It has since caused the resignations of two top British police officers, involved Cameron after he hired another former editor of the paper as his press chief, and threatened the stability of Murdoch's global media empire.
The satellite group's board meeting ended with support for Rupert Murdoch's youngest son to continue as chairman, after the collapse of the family firm's bid for the 61% of the satellite business it did not already own.Murdoch to answer phone-hacking questions
"The role of the chairman was discussed at some length today and ultimately James Murdochreceived the unanimous support of the board," the source said after a board meeting.
British MP Tom Watson, who quizzed the Murdochs at a recent media committee hearing, said he will ask the group to "immediately invite" James back to answer allegations made by former News of the World editor Colin Myler that he gave false evidence.
Rupert Murdoch's US-based News Corporation was forced to drop its bid for the 61 percent of shares it does not own in BSkyB earlier this month because of the hacking scandal.
At the first hearing of the hacking inquiry on Thursday, Leveson said the first stage would focus on the "relationship between the press and the public, and the related issue of press regulation."
Sitting at a cramped table alongside the six other panel members at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London, the bespectacled judge said he was entitled to compel witnesses to give evidence on phone-hacking.
Piers Morgan Hacking Admission - NOTW Phone Hacking NEW
The scandal has refused to go away since the jailing in 2007 of the News of the World's former royal editor Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator in whose notes Sara Payne's details were found.
Police eventually reopened the inquiry in January 2011 and discovered that up to 4,000 people may have had their phones hacked. Ten people have been arrested so far.
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