Rupert Murdoch was expected to fly into London this weekend to deal with an escalating phone-hacking crisis engulfing his British newspapers business. The expected arrival of the News Corp chief executive coincided with calls on Prime Minister David Cameron to speed up an inquiry into the scandal, which could jeopardize Murdoch's plans to take over a British broadcaster and has raised questions about the relationship between the media and politicians. News Corp declined to comment on 80-year-old Murdoch's agenda three days after he closed the News of the World, the 168-year-old best-selling tabloid newspaper at the heart of the allegations, in what has been widely interpreted as a damage-limitation exercise. Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News Corps' British newspaper arm indicated more revelations may emerge, a recording showed. “Eventually it will come out why things went wrong and who is responsible. That will be another very difficult moment in this company's history,” she told the newspaper's staff on Friday, according to a recording carried by Sky News. Murdoch has brushed off calls for Brooks to resign due to her editorship of News of the World during some of the alleged hacking incidents. Brooks denies knowledge of the practice. British police on Friday arrested Andy Coulson, the former spokesman for Cameron who had resigned as News of the World editor in 2007 after one of his reporters and a private investigator were convicted of hacking into the phones of aides to the royal family. Coulson has also said he knew nothing about the phone hacking. Cameron announced a full public inquiry into the hacking allegations at a hastily-convened news conference on Friday in which he was forced to defend his judgement in hiring Coulson and admitted politicians had been in thrawl to media for years.— Reuters The opposition Labor Party said on Saturday Cameron needed to appoint a judge quickly to get the inquiry going to avoid evidence disappearing, pointing to reports of destroyed emails. “The clock runs out at the end of today,” Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman told the BBC. “We ought to take precautionary measures.” A spokesman for Cameron said he was moving as quickly as possible. “We have already approached the Lord Chief Justice who will propose the judge,” the spokesman said, adding that any destruction of evidence would be a criminal matter. The Guardian newspaper reported on its website that police were investigating evidence an executive at News International may have deleted millions of emails from an internal archive in an apparent attempt to obstruct investigations.
