Murdoch closes paper in hacking scandal

In an astonishing response to a scandal engulfing his media empire, Rupert Murdoch shut down the News of the World, Britain's biggest-selling Sunday newspaper, Thursday.

As allegations multiplied that its journalists hacked the voice mails of thousands of people, from child murder victims to the families of Britain's war dead, the tabloid hemorrhaged advertising, alienated millions of readers and posed a growing threat to Murdoch's hopes of buying broadcaster BSkyB.

Yet no one, least of all the paper's news staff of 200, was prepared for the drama of a single sentence that will surely go down as one of the most startling turns in Murdoch's long and controversial career.

"News International today announces that this Sunday, 10 July 2011, will be the last issue of the News of the World," read the preamble to a statement from Murdoch's son James, chairman of the British newspaper arm of News Corp.

Murdoch still faces pressure to remove Rebekah Brooks, his close confidante and top British newspaper executive, who was editor of the paper a decade ago.

The scandal has tarnished Prime Minister David Cameron, who picked as his communications director another former News of the World editor who resigned over the hacking affair. -- Reuters