‘News of the World’ to shut down

News of the World, the British tabloid newspaper that has been published since 1843, will publish its last issue on July 10. The paper, owned since 1969 by Rupert Murdoch, recently became embroiled in a major scandal when it was revealed that its reporters were illegally tapping people’s phones in order to get stories, and possibly tampering with or deleting evidence in the case of a missing woman who turned out to have been murdered. Facing increased calls for investigations into the paper and how widely the phone-tapping practices were known in the Newscorp company, Murdoch’s son James announced today that they must “take further decisive action with respect to the paper” by shutting it down. The revenue for the final issues “will go to good causes.”

The Guardian