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Ex-aide to British PM leaves UK police station

A former senior aide to the U.K.'s prime minister was arrested in connection with a phone-hacking scandal that prompted Rupert Murdoch to close Britain's biggest-selling Sunday newspaper.
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/ Source: msnbc.com staff and news service reports

British police say they have arrested a 63-year-old man as part of a widening investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World tabloid.

The paper has been engulfed by allegations its journalists paid police for information and hacked into the phone messages of celebrities, young murder victims and the grieving families of dead soldiers.

Police said the man was arrested at an address in Surrey, south of London, on suspicion of corruption. Police said the house was being searched.

The arrest was the third Friday amid the firestorm of controversy around the Murdoch media empire. Earlier, former News of the World editor and prime ministerial spokesman Andy Coulson was arrested, along with Clive Goodman, former royal editor at the tabloid. Both have since been released on bail.

Coulson, 43, refused to answer questions as he exited the station to a throng of reporters and photographers. He was detained earlier Friday.

Coulson would not say if he has been charged, telling reporters there is an "awful lot" he'd like to say but he has been advised he should keep quiet.

Meanwhile, police were trying to determine whether a senior executive at the News International may have deleted millions of emails from an internal archive, in an attempt to hinder Scotland Yard's inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal, .

The senior executive was not named. News International is the British newspaper publisher that is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Police on Friday were searching the offices of the Daily Star tabloid, a police source said.

Investigations into hacking have so far centered on the News of the World newspaper. The Star is owned by businessman Richard Desmond and is not connected to News Corp, the owner of News of the World.

Earlier developmentsIn a separate development, had said a man had been taken into custody "in connection with allegations of corruption and phone hacking."

"At 10:30 a.m. (5:30 a.m. ET) officers from the MPS' Operation Weeting together with officers from Op Elveden ... arrested a man on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications ... and on suspicion of corruption allegations," it said. British police practice is to not name suspects until they are charged with a crime.

Operation Weeting is a new investigation into phone hacking; Operation Elveden is "the investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police," the statement said.

Police did not name the arrested individual.

The Press Association news agency later reported that Clive Goodman, the former News of the World royal editor who served a jail term in 2007 for hacking into the phones of royal aides, was re-arrested Friday on suspicion of making illegal payoffs to police for information.

Image: Former editor of the News of the World Andy Coulson
LONDON, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 07: (FILE PHOTO) Director of Government Communtications Andy Coulson arrives at the back entrance to Downing Street on September 7, 2010 in London, England. Newspapers are reporting that Coulson, a former editor at the News of the World will be arrested tomorrow by police over suspicions that he was involved or was aware of phone hacking during his tenure. Following further serious allegations that phone hacking was widespread at the News of the World newspaper during the editorship of Rebekah Brooks (nee Wade), Chief Executive James Murdoch has announced the newspaper will close on Sunday July 10, 2011. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images Europe

London police confirmed that a 53-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of corruption. Detectives were searching his house south of London. Goodman is 53.

In addition, police were reported to have raided the offices of the Daily Star, a rival tabloid that is part of Express Newspapers, an organization headed by controversial pornography publisher Richard Desmond.

Scotland Yard officials said Friday that they were searching a business in central London. In British convention, they did not name the business, but offered the information when asked about the Daily Star.

In a startling response to the scandal engulfing Murdoch's media empire, News International .

As allegations multiplied that its journalists hacked the voicemail of thousands of people, from to the , the tabloid hemorrhaged advertising, alienated millions of readers and .

The scandal also has become an embarrassment for Cameron.

The prime minister chose Coulson as his communications director, even though one of Coulson's reporters and a private investigator had been convicted of hacking into the phones of royal aides.

Coulson insisted he knew nothing about it, but as new allegations surfaced, Coulson resigned from Cameron's team in January.

Speaking to journalists Friday, Cameron announced a judicial inquiry into phone hacking by the New of the World and payments allegedly made by journalists to police officers.

He said there would be a second inquiry into press ethics.

Cameron described some of the phone-hacking allegations as "simply disgusting" and "despicable."

"I cannot think what was going through the minds of the people who did this," he said.

"Action will be take to get to bottom of the specific revelations and allegations," Cameron added. "Action will be taken to learn the wider lessons for the future of the press in our country."

Cameron said that the reported offer of resignation by News International chief executive officer Rebekah Brooks should have been accepted. Brooks and Cameron, whose country houses are close, are friends and have been reported to have gone horse-riding together.

Opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband attacked Cameron over the revelations, saying he had made an "appalling error of judgment" in hiring Coulson, .

He added that Cameron should apologize for "bringing him in to the center of the government machine," and detail any conversations he had with Coulson "before and after his appointment about phone hacking."

Sensational journalism
The announcement on Thursday that the News of the World was to close was one of the most dramatic in the 80-year-old Murdoch's controversial career and is widely seen as an effort to prevent the crisis spreading beyond the tabloid to more lucrative parts of his empire.

Murdoch's son James, who chairs News International, said the News of the World, which his father bought in 1969, had been "sullied by behavior that was wrong."

"Indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our company," he said in a statement.

The announcement came as a complete shock to the 200 staff at the paper, which from its earliest days in the Victorian era sought to titillate blue-collar Britons with sensational stories about sex and crime.

"No one had any inkling at all that this was going to happen," said Jules Stenson, its features editor.

Growing popular and political anger over the phone hacking saga had spurred concerns that there could be snags in securing government approval for News Corp's $14-billion bid for BSkyB, of which it already owns 39 percent.

Cameron's government has given an informal blessing to the takeover, despite criticism on the left that it gave Murdoch too much media power.

News Corp's U.S. shares fell more than 5 percent on Wednesday, and edged 0.23 percent lower on Thursday in a rising overall market.

"I don't see how this deal can go ahead. It's politically totally unacceptable now," said Alex Degroote, media analyst at Panmure Gordon.

Others said any attempt to block the BSkyB deal at this late stage would likely spark a legal challenge from News Corp., one the company would likely win.

It is not yet clear if the scandal will damage James Murdoch, the presumed successor to his 80-year-old father, and other News Corp. executives.

'Pure hatred'Speculation is rife that the company will turn The Sun, its best-selling tabloid daily, into a seven-day operation to tap the Sunday market. Despite difficult times for newspapers, the News of the World sold 2.6 million copies a week.

Journalists said an emotional News of the World editor Colin Myler had read out the announcement at the east London newsroom where Murdoch changed the face of British journalism in the 1980s by breaking the power of the printing unions.

But news that as News International's chief executive brought fury from staff. James Murdoch told Sky News he was satisfied Brooks knew nothing of the crimes allegedly committed when she was News of the World editor.

Asked how staff felt toward Brooks, one reporter said there was a sense of "seething anger" and "pure hatred" directed toward her: "We think they're closing down a whole newspaper just to protect one woman's job."

Investigations into phone hacking at the tabloid have been bubbling for several years. Until recently only celebrities and other public figures were believed to have been victims.

But the scandal exploded earlier this week after revelations that an investigator working for the paper may have listened to — and deleted — the voicemail messages of a missing 13-year-old schoolgirl, later found murdered.

The scandal deepened on Thursday with claims News of the World hacked the phones of relatives of British soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Several major brands pulled advertising from the title.

Police have also been criticized over allegations officers took money from the News of the World for information.