british newspapers

Rebekah Brooks Resigns

We knew it was only a matter of time:

Rebekah Brooks, the loyal lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch, resigned Friday as chief executive of his embattled British newspapers, becoming the biggest casualty so far in the phone hacking scandal at a Sunday tabloid.

Murdoch had vigorously defended Brooks in the face of demands from politicians that she step down, and had previously refused to accept her resignation.

Brooks was editor of News of the World between 2000 and 2003, the time of the most explosive allegations to hit Murdoch's News Corp. media empire, and she has been in charge of News International's four British newspapers since 2007.

Of course this does not absolve her of any wrongdoing, but the fact that the Murdoch's accepted her resignation doesn't bode well for the media empire, especially with the announcement yesterday from the FBI that they have launched an investigation into the possible hacking of 9/11 victims here in the U.S.

UK troops plan Iraqi pullout by mid-2008 - general

LONDON (Reuters) - The talk of British troops pulling out of Iraq rumbles on.

Britain plans to pull out nearly all its soldiers from Iraq by the summer of 2008, with the first withdrawals within weeks, a top military commander said in an interview published on Tuesday.

Lieutenant General Nick Houghton, Britain's most senior officer in Iraq, outlined a phased two-year withdrawal plan in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

"There is a fine line between staying too long and leaving too soon," he was quoted as saying. "A military transition over two years has a reasonable chance of avoiding the pitfalls of overstaying our welcome but gives us the best opportunity of consolidating the Iraqi security forces."
Britain has given no firm timetable for the withdrawal of its 8,000 troops in Iraq, based in and around the southern port of Basra.

Houghton said the timeline would work only if Iraqi politicians elected in the December general election formed a national unity government and sectarian tensions did not worsen.

"It is reversible to an extent as there will be residual coalition forces present who can maintain a very low profile," he said. "There may be a need to go back in somewhere."

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