Europe, Phone-hacking Scandal | featured news

British prosecutors said they're considering criminal charges against 11 people in connection with a long-running police investigation into illegal newsgathering tactics at News Corp.'s British newspapers.

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.

James Murdoch has resigned from the boards of the companies that publish its British newspapers including the now-defunct News of the World tabloid at the center of the phone hacking sandal, regulatory filings show.

A high-profile parliamentary panel investigating phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid released embarrassing new evidence Tuesday that the practice of intercepting voice mail had been widely discussed at the newspaper, contradicting assertions by its owners and editors.

The British judge leading the government-backed probe into illegal eavesdropping by journalists will start ordering people to testify and hand over documents "as soon as possible," he said Thursday, as the inquiry launched.

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron leaves 10 Downing Street in London July 20, 2011. Cameron is to make a statement on phone hacking to parliament on Tuesday.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown charged Tuesday that Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers hired “known criminals” to obtain information about him, and a senior police official said he was sure his own phone was hacked, as a mounting scandal threatened to further damage Murdoch’s media empire.