Media mogul Rupert Murdoch dramatically ordered the closure of the News of the World tabloid yesterday as a spiralling scandal over illegal phone hacking threatened to taint the rest of his business empire.
The axing of the 168-year-old tabloid, which will print its last edition on Sunday, comes after it faced claims that it hacked the phones of a murdered girl, dead soldiers' families, celebrities, politicians and royals.
"Having consulted senior colleagues, I have decided that we must take further decisive action with respect to the paper," said Murdoch's son James, chairman of News International, the British newspaper wing of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
"This Sunday will be the last issue of the News of the World," he added.
The final edition would be free of advertising and any proceeds from the paper would go "to causes and charities that wish to expose their good works to our millions of readers," he said in a statement.
James Murdoch admitted that the paper, known for its racy diet of sex and scandal but also for its undercover investigations, had lied to parliament and to the public in its earlier statements on the long-running scandal.
Prime Minister David Cameron -- who had himself faced pressure for his ties to Murdoch's empire -- said the closure of the paper should not distract from an ongoing police investigation into the hacking.
The closure of the paper sparked immediate speculation that Rupert Murdoch was offering it as a sacrificial victim to save his bid for control of pay-TV giant BSkyB, which is the subject of a government decision.
There has also have been reports in recent weeks that Murdoch was planning to replace the News of the World in any case with a Sunday version of The Sun, his daily tabloid, which is Britain's biggest selling newspaper.
The death blow for the News of the World came yesterday when veterans' charity the Royal British Legion dropped its campaign partnership with the paper over claims in the Daily Telegraph that an investigator hired by the tabloid may have accessed the voicemails of relatives of dead soldiers.
Source : The Daily Star
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