A leading U.K. police official, John Yates, resigned Monday, becoming the latest high-profile casualty of the phone-hacking scandal that has shaken Britons' faith in police, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the press in general and political leaders.
Yates, also the Metropolitan Police's top counterterrorism officer, announced his resignation in a statement the day after his boss, Commissioner Paul Stephenson announced he was quitting over the scandal at the now defunct News of the World.
London Mayor Boris Johnson said the two resignations were regrettable but the right course.
"There is absolutely nothing proven against the probity or the professionalism of either man," he told reporters. "But in both cases we have to recognize that the nexus of questions about the relationship between the Met and the News of the World was likely to be distracting to both officers in the run-up to the (2012) Olympic Games."
In 2009, Yates decided not to re-open investigations into alleged phone hacking by journalists at the now defunct News of the World newspaper, saying there was no reason to do so.
A new probe launched in January found police had 11,000 pages of evidence which had not been thoroughly examined by detectives.
Stephenson quit as head of the Metropolitan Police Sunday over his links to Neil Wallis, a former deputy editor at the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper. The London police force had hired Wallis as a public relations consultant.
Two of Murdoch's UK newspapers, The Sun and The Times, were themselves the victims of hackers on Monday. The hacking group LulzSec commandeered the front page of the Sun's website, at first redirecting it to a fictitious story about how Murdoch had been found dead in his garden and later to .
: "TheSun.co.uk now redirects to our twitter feed. Hello, everyone that wanted to visit The Sun! How is your day? Good? Good!"
An allied hacker group, Anonymous, claimed credit for a denial-of-service attack that brought down the website of The Times.
Cameron rejects criticism
As pressure mounts on U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron over his decision to hire the News of the World's former editor Andy Coulson as a public relations adviser, the Conservative leader on Monday cut short a trade mission to Africa.
Cameron has said he thought at the time he hired Coulson, who quit because of the phone-hacking scandal, that the journalist deserved a second chance. Coulson was arrested in connection with the phone-hacking inquiry on July 8.
Speaking at a press conference in South Africa, Cameron said the police investigation "must go wherever the evidence leads."
"They should investigate without fear or favor," he said, adding that the government had taken "very decisive action" in setting up a judicial inquiry.
London's police chief steps down
Stephenson quit as London's police commissioner on Sunday in the face of allegations that police officers had accepted money from the News of the World newspaper, which Murdoch closed because of the scandal, and that police had not done enough to investigate hacking charges that surfaced as far back as 2005.
There were also revelations that he had stayed at a luxury spa where police consultant Neil Wallis, a former News of the World deputy editor, was a public relations adviser. Wallis was arrested last week in connection with phone hacking.
"I had no knowledge of the extent of this disgraceful practice (of phone hacking)," Stephenson said in a televised statement.
Stephenson denied his resignation was because of the spa visit, concentrating instead on the hiring of Wallis as a police consultant, The Guardian newspaper reported. In doing so, he drew comparison with Cameron's decision to hire News of the World's Coulson as a public relations adviser.
"Unlike Mr. Coulson, Mr. Wallis had not resigned from the News of the World or, to the best of my knowledge, been in any way associated with the original phone hacking investigation," he said according to The Guardian.
The opposition Labour Party, which has capitalized on Cameron's ties to the scandal, seized on the former police chief's reference to the Coulson appointment in his resignation speech.
"It is striking that Sir Paul Stephenson has taken responsibility and answered questions about the appointment of the deputy editor of the News of the World," Labour home affairs spokeswoman Yvette Cooper said in a statement.
"The prime minister still refuses to recognize his misjudgment and answer questions on the appointment of the editor of the News of the World at the time of the initial phone hacking investigation," she added.
Political test Many see the scandal as Cameron's biggest test to date, with some senior colleagues willing to step up if he becomes a liability.
Asked whether Cameron might be forced out over the scandal, Nick Clegg, leader of coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, replied: "Of course not. Let's keep some perspective.''
Helen Cleary, head of political research for pollster Ipsos Mori, said that so far the scandal had limited implications for electoral politics, given both major parties' links to Murdoch.
Some commentators said Cameron's personal troubles were not over, especially if his own supporters questioned his judgment.
''I can't believe I am even writing this, but it is no longer an impossibility to imagine this scandal bringing down the prime minister, or even the government," wrote Iain Dale, a prominent Conservative commentator, wrote on his blog on Monday.
Yet, he said, that remained far-fetched, as did Toby Young, a commentator blogging at the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph.
"I don't rule out the prime minister being toppled by this scandal," Young wrote, citing the risk of a ''palace coup," Young wrote. "I just don't think any of the details that have emerged so far, or his handling of the crisis, put him in serious jeopardy."
Arrest was 'a surprise'
On Sunday, detectives arrested Rebekah Brooks — who quit as head of News Corp's British newspaper arm Friday — on suspicion of intercepting communications and corruption.
Brooks, who also once edited the News of the World, was released on bail at midnight on Sunday, about 12 hours after she went to a London police station to answer questions, her spokesman said. Brooks has denied any wrongdoing.
Brooks' spokesman David Wilson said in a statement Monday that she was not told in advance she was going to be arrested and so it "came as a surprise."
Wilson said Brooks was still "very keen" to appear before a committee of lawmakers as planned Tuesday, but that she was going to take legal advice and what she was able to say might be limited by the prospect of a criminal prosecution.
Rupert Murdoch and his son James, a News Corp. executive, also are due to be questioned by parliament on Tuesday.
News Corp. independent directors are fully behind Rupert Murdoch and his management team and are not drawing up plans to promote Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey to the position of CEO, a board member told Reuters on Monday.
The board member and another person familiar with the company's plans also denied a Bloomberg report that suggested the board is considering replacing Murdoch depending on his performance before the parliament. The report said the News Corp board met on Monday to discuss replacing Murdoch but both people denied this to Reuters.
"There was no meeting of independent directors. This board totally supports the top management. We're united behind him," the board member said.
that he "would be amazed if the police were not knocking on" James Murdoch's door soon.
Murdoch is expected to be asked by lawmakers at the committee hearing Tuesday about why he agreed to pay large amounts of money to alleged hacking victims before the scandal broke, the paper reported.
"In the end the big problem for the organization is the cover-up. Why pay £800,000 to [soccer players' representative] Gordon Taylor and £1million to [publicist] Max Clifford if you are not trying to hush something up?" Bryan told the Telegraph.
The News of the World, which published its final edition a week ago, is alleged to have hacked up to 4,000 phones including that of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler, sparking the furor that forced Murdoch to close the paper and drop his bid to buyout the 61 percent of pay-for TV station BSkyB that he doesn't already own.
'Almost a crisis of governance'
Tim Bale, politics professor at the University of Sussex, said: "It has become almost a crisis of governance in the United Kingdom. (Stephenson's) resignation takes us beyond a few bad apples ... There is a sense of things sliding out of control."
"The actual text of (Stephenson's) statement pointing to parallels between himself and the prime minister is quite breathtaking. It won't make Mr. Cameron do the same thing, but it reminds people once again of the Coulson problem," he added.
Murdoch, who some media commentators say at first misjudged the strength of public anger, published apologies in several British newspapers at the weekend.
He lost another executive on Friday when Les Hinton, also a former head of his UK newspaper business, resigned as chief executive of Dow Jones which publishes The Wall Street Journal.