News of the World to close amid hacking scandal

This Sunday's edition of The News of the World will be its last, News International chairman James Murdoch has said, after days of increasingly damaging allegations against the paper.

The weekly tabloid is accused of hacking into the mobile phones of crime victims, celebrities and politicians.

On Thursday, the Met Police said it was seeking to contact 4,000 possible targets named in seized documents.

The UK's biggest selling paper has been in circulation for 168 years.

The News of the World, which sells about 2.8million copies a week, is famed for its celebrity scoops and sex scandals, earning it the nickname, the News of the Screws.

Downing Street has said it had no role or involvement in the closure decision.

Mr Murdoch said no advertisements would run in this weekend's paper - instead any advertising space would be donated to charities and good causes, and proceeds from sales would also go to good causes.

News International has refused to comment on rumours that the Sun could now become a seven-day-a-week operation.

"What happens to the Sun is a matter for the future," a spokeswoman for News International said. The Sun, another News International tabloid, is currently published from Monday to Saturday.

The spokeswoman also refused to say whether the 200 or so employees at the paper would be made redundant, saying: "They will be invited to apply for other jobs in the company."

The News of the World's political editor, David Wooding, who joined 18 months ago, said it was a fantastic paper.

"They cleared out all the bad people. They bought in a great new editor, Colin Myler, and his deputy, Victoria Newton, who had not been sullied by any of the things that had gone on in the past.

"And there's nobody there, there's hardly anybody there who was there in the old regime.

"The people are very clean, great, talented professional journalists and we pull out a great paper every week. And we're all paying the price for what happened six years ago by a previous regime."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14070733

I though the closure of the 168 year old UK's most selling paper deserves its own thread.

This looks really nasty, seems that this is just the beginning.