Police, News Corp | featured news

Rupert Murdoch protégé Rebekah Brooks was charged Tuesday with conspiracy over alleged illegal payments to a Ministry of Defence employee, London's Metropolitan Police said Tuesday.

James Murdoch has severed all ties with News Corp's British newspaper business, which is at the centre of multiple investigations over phone and computer hacking and bribery, according to regulatory filings.

James Murdoch has written to the influential UK parliamentary committee investigating a phone hacking scandal to apologize and restate his own innocence ahead of a potentially damaging report that could determine his future in Britain.

The officer leading a police investigation into Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers said on Monday that reporters and editors at The Sun tabloid had over the years paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for information not only to police officers but also to a “network of corrupted officials” in the military and the government.

British police on Saturday arrested five senior members of staff at News Corporation's flagship newspaper The Sun, the company said, as part of investigations into alleged payments to police by journalists for information.

Police investigating Britain's phone-hacking scandal made another arrest Friday, keeping up the pressure on Rupert Murdoch's media empire. Officers from Scotland Yard arrested a 47-year-old woman early Friday morning in Essex, a county just east of London. Police said she was the 17th person to be arrested as part of Operation Weeting, the official investigation into phone hacking.

The phone hacking scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch's News Corp threatened to spread to other titles on Friday, as sources said a journalist at the Sun newspaper had been arrested over allegations of police bribery.