The Star Online: World Updates
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- British tabloid targeted police investigators - NYT
- Brown a hacking target as Murdoch delays BSkyB bid
- Egypt protesters reject PM offer of cabinet reshuffle
| British tabloid targeted police investigators - NYT Posted: 11 Jul 2011 07:50 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five senior British police investigators discovered that their mobile phones were targeted soon after Scotland Yard opened an initial criminal inquiry of phone hacking by The News of the World in 2006, The New York Times reported on Monday. The disclosure raises questions about whether the police officers had concerns about aggressively investigating the tabloid for fear that their own secrets would be divulged by the paper, the Times reported.
Damaging allegations about two of the senior officers' private lives were revealed by other news outlets, the report said. Employees of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp's now-shuttered News of the World tabloid have been accused of hacking into personal voicemail and paying bribes to British police and other officials for information that became news scoops. "We are not providing a running commentary regarding the investigation," said a Metropolitan Police spokesman in London. Asked if the Met is aware of the allegations, he said: "I am aware of the story." The lead police investigator in the initial phone-hacking case, Andy Hayman, resigned from the Metropolitan Police in December 2007. Members of Parliament are trying determine why investigators decided to strictly limit the initial phone-hacking inquiry in 2006, The New York Times said. Hayman, assistant commissioner John Yates and several other senior police officials will face questions at a hearing of the Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday, the newspaper reported. The committee is looking into whether the fact that the police officials' phones had been hacked had any impact on the scope of their initial investigation, the Times reported, citing two members of the panel. The committee is also concerned about whether the investigators had a conflict of interest because they themselves were victims of the people they were investigating, the newspaper said. (Reporting by JoAnne Allen in Washington and Karolina Tagaris in London; editing by Christopher Wilson) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. | ||
| Brown a hacking target as Murdoch delays BSkyB bid Posted: 11 Jul 2011 07:19 PM PDT LONDON (Reuters) - Allegations that former British prime minister Gordon Brown was a target of illegal data gathering by Rupert Murdoch's newspapers have piled pressure on the media baron as he tries to prevent investors pulling out of his News Corp empire.
Murdoch and the British government tried to draw the financial and political sting from a newspaper phone-hacking scandal by referring his $14-billion bid for the profitable pay-tv operator BSkyB to a lengthy commission inquiry. Nevertheless, News Corp shares closed down about 7.58 percent at $15.48 in U.S. trading on Monday, for a fall of almost 15 percent in four days. U.S. News Corp shareholders suing over the purchase of a business run by Murdoch's daughter filed a revised complaint, saying the British phone hacking scandal reflected how the company's board failed to do its job. But several major shareholders told Reuters they continue to have confidence in the company and one major investor in the company said the share selloff was overdone. Donald Yacktman, chief investment officer of Yacktman Asset Management Co of Austin, Texas, the ninth-largest shareholder in News Corp, said the hacking furore "does slightly reduce the predictability of the cash flows, but the impact on the cash flows is minimal at best". By referring News Corp's bid for the 61 percent of BSkyB it does not already own to the competition regulator, the British government hoped to shield it from a tide of outrage over allegations that reporters for Murdoch's News of the World accessed the voicemails of murder and bomb victims and others. But the stream of allegations continued. Tuesday's Guardian newspaper quoted a letter from the Abbey National bank to another Murdoch paper, the Sunday Times, which said there was evidence that "someone from the Sunday Times or acting on its behalf has masqueraded as Mr Brown for the purpose of obtaining information from Abbey National by deception". News International "noted" the allegation and requested more information. The Guardian also said Murdoch's mass-selling Sun had obtained details from Brown's infant son's medical records. The Sun revealed in 2006 that Brown's son Fraser had cystic fibrosis. Murdoch's Times quoted a source at News International saying the story had been obtained from a "legitimate source". Police confirmed to Brown, who was finance minister and prime minister between 1997 and 2010, that his name had been on a list of targets compiled by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the voicemail hacking allegations against the News of the World. "The family has been shocked by the level of criminality and the unethical means by which personal details have been obtained," Brown's spokeswoman said in a statement. Murdoch, who had already taken a shock decision last week to shut the News of the World, Britain's biggest-selling Sunday paper, and has flown to Britain, had tried to seize the initiative again by withdrawing News Corp's offer to spin off BSkyB's Sky News channel. The withdrawal of the offer, made to get the deal approved, opened the way for the government to refer the matter to the Competition Commission, whose investigation is likely to take a year or more. "It's a smart tactical move," said Ian Whittaker, media analyst at Liberum Capital, noting that it also freed the government from a politically unacceptable but apparently unavoidable decision to approve the deal in the current climate. "It gets the government off the hook. But there's still a very strong chance that in the end it will not go through in the short term or medium term. There are enough players out there that are opposed," he told Reuters. CAMERON UNDER FIRE Murdoch's News Corp wields influence from Hollywood to Hong Kong and owns the U.S. cable network Fox and the Wall Street Journal as well as the Sun, Britain's biggest selling paper. Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has come under fire for his closeness to Murdoch's media empire; he is a friend of Rebekah Brooks, the News International chief executive who was editor at the News of the World during much of the alleged hacking; and he chose another former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, as his communications chief. Coulson, who quit in January over the scandal, was arrested last week for questioning in connection with phone-hacking and allegations that his reporters illegally paid police for information. Cameron has defended his choice of Coulson and noted that Brown's Labour party also courted Murdoch when it was in power. But on Monday he fired a warning shot at Murdoch, saying that News Corp needed to focus on "clearing up this mess" before thinking about the next corporate move. The referral of the bid may ease the political pressure on Cameron as it meets a main demand of the opposition Labour Party, which had been threatening to drive a wedge into the coalition by forcing a vote in parliament on Wednesday. Labour leader Ed Miliband said the government had moved reluctantly. "They are doing it not because they want to, but because they have been forced to," he said, urging Murdoch to "drop the bid for BSkyB". Cameron's deputy Nick Clegg, from his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, also urged Murdoch to reconsider the bid for the 61 percent of BSkyB that it does not already own. Other allegations emerged on Monday that News of the World had bought contact details for the British royal family from a policeman and tried to buy private phone records of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Police declined comment. "Do the decent thing, and reconsider, think again about your bid for BSkyB," Clegg told BBC News, addressing Murdoch, after meeting relatives of one of the victims of phone-hacking, a murdered schoolgirl. Eight people, almost all journalists, have been arrested so far in a police inquiry into the allegations, which include one that a company executive may have destroyed evidence. News Corp's British newspaper arm denies any obstruction of justice. A referral to the Competition Commission means the deal could be blocked on grounds of media plurality. But that would be better for Murdoch than if he and his team were found to be not "fit and proper" to run the broadcaster by the broadcasting regulator OfCom -- which has also been asked for a ruling -- as that could see him lose his existing 39 percent of the company. (Additional reporting by Paul Sandle, Keith Weir, Tim Castle, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Sinead Cruise, Chris Vellacott and Michael Holden; writing by Philippa Fletcher and Kevin Liffey; editing by Michael Roddy) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. | ||
| Egypt protesters reject PM offer of cabinet reshuffle Posted: 11 Jul 2011 06:48 PM PDT CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said on Monday he would reshuffle his cabinet within a week, but crowds protesting at slow reforms and foot-dragging in prosecuting the ex-president said they were not satisfied.
Protesters rejected Sharaf's statement on state television, in which he also said he had asked Interior Minister Mansour el-Essawy to speed up measures to restore security and order in Egypt, and threatened to continue their demonstration. Four days of protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square have brought traffic in the heart of the capital to a standstill. Separate protests by hundreds of people were also under way in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and the city of Suez. Many Egyptians say remnants of the ex-president Hosni Mubarak's regime in the police and judiciary are trying to delay trials of those accused of crimes before the Jan. 25 uprising. Sharaf said he had decided to "conduct a cabinet reshuffle within a week to achieve the objectives of the revolution." Some cabinet members, mainly technocrats, were appointed in the last days of Mubarak's rule. Sharaf said he had also decided to reshuffle provincial governors to meets public aspirations. Protesters who listened to Sharaf's speech on loudspeakers at Tahrir Square immediately rejected his gesture. "We came to Tahrir (Square) and will not leave it because Mubarak and his regime have not been tried yet," said Nader el-Sayed, a former football player who is among more than 2,000 people camping in the square. Protesters in Alexandria put up a banner saying: "We reject Sharaf's statement" and said they were considering escalating their protests. Monday's protests extended demonstrations for swifter reforms that began on Friday. Some protesters have camped out in Tahrir, erecting tents and canopies on traffic islands in the square. HEART OF PROTESTS The square was the heart of the movement that brought down Mubarak on Feb. 11. Five months on, many Egyptians are frustrated that Mubarak's trial has yet to start, though other Egyptians are tired of the protests that disrupt their lives. A banner at one entrance to Tahrir read: "Revolution first and if needed we are ready to sacrifice with our souls whatever is precious for the revolution to continue and not be stolen." Mubarak's trial is set for Aug. 3, but protesters say the army has been reluctant to put the former president in the dock. Former interior minister Habib al-Adli has been jailed for 12 years for corruption, but his trial over the killing of protesters continues. Protesters say the Interior Ministry has yet to be purged of officials who backed tough police tactics. Sharaf also urged the ruling Supreme Judicial Council to hold trials of former officials under Mubarak and policemen accused of killing protesters in public. Police used live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas during the 18-day uprising. More than 840 people were killed. The Public Prosecution office, apparently trying to satisfy protesters, posted a list of the legal measures it had taken against senior officials of the Interior Ministry accused of killing protesters, including trial dates. But that did not placate the protesters. "I will continue to protest until the demands of the revolution are met. It is not fair that those who killed the protesters are still sitting in their offices ... and have not been tried and sentenced yet," said John Noshy, a 23-year-old student and one of the protesters in Tahrir on Monday. Some Egyptians, frustrated by months of turmoil, have criticised protesters for again bringing the centre of the city to a standstill and for shutting off a vast administrative building that stands on the edge of the square. "The protesters during Egypt's uprising were accused of similar accusations," Noshy said. "But when the revolution succeeded in removing Mubarak in 18 days, everyone said it was a great thing and that the protesters were good people." There was no sign of a police or army presence in the Tahrir Square area. (Additional reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, Abdel Rahman Youssef in Alexandria, writing by Yasmine Saleh and Sami Aboudi; editing by Tim Pearce) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
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