The first trial from the phone-hacking scandal that sank Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World opened yesterday with his key aide Rebekah Brooks and British Prime Minister David Cameron’s former media chief Andy Coulson in the dock.
They are among eight defendants facing a jury for the first time over the scandal two years ago that rocked the British newspaper industry and sent shockwaves through the British establishment.
Brooks, 45, arrived at the Old Bailey court in London to a storm of photographers’ flashes, accompanied by her racehorse trainer husband Charlie, who is also on trial.
Dressed in a camel-colored coat, Brooks looked relaxed and smiled as she walked into the court building, while her husband wore a smart blue suit.
Coulson, also 45, arrived with his legal team.
The charges range from illegally hacking mobile phone voicemails to bribing public officials for stories.
Brooks, a former chief executive at Murdoch’s News International (NI) operation, Charlie Brooks and NI’s former chief of security, Mark Hanna, are also charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by hiding potential evidence.
The evidence set to be presented about the furor that forced Murdoch to shut down the Sunday tabloid in 2011 could cause further discomfort for Britain’s establishment and reveal the links between newspapers, politicians and police.
Cameron faces embarrassment given his friendship with Brooks and his decision to hire Coulson as his director of communications after he quit as editor of the News of the World over the scandal.
The voicemail hacking is believed to have been carried out on more than 600 victims, including celebrities such as Paul McCartney.
The trial was originally scheduled to last four months, but due to its complexity it could now run for six months. The trial formally opened yesterday, but the prosecution’s opening statement is expected to come later in the week as yesterday was taken up with jury selection.
Brooks, 45, who rose from a secretary to edit the News of the World and its daily sister paper, the Sun, and became one of Murdoch’s closest confidantes, denies phone hacking, conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office and perverting the course of justice.
Her husband, Hanna and personal assistant Cheryl Carter also deny perverting the course of justice.
Also on trial are former News of the World managing editor Stuart Kuttner and head of news Ian Edmondson, who both deny phone hacking. The final defendant is former royal editor Clive Goodman, who is charged along with Coulson of bribing officials and also pleads not guilty.
A second trial involving several journalists from the Sun accused of bribing officials is provisionally due to start in February.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema