British police on Friday arrested a former editor of The News of the World who is also a former senior aide to Prime Minister David Cameron,and rearrested the newspapers former royal editor. The arrests deepened the crisis around Rupert Murdochs media empire in Britain over allegations of phone hacking and corruption. Struggling to contain the biggest scandal since he took office more than a year ago,Cameron announced two separate inquiries into the revelations,saying no stone will be left unturned. He also said that he would have accepted the resignation of Rebekah Brooks,the chief executive of News International who is at the centre of the phone hacking scandal,when she offered it earlier this week. Brooks,who presided over The News of the World when the hacking took place,spoke to staff members of the paper Friday afternoon,telling them she was angry at having been betrayed, according to Twitter accounts of the meeting,and said she had no plans to resign. She said that Thursdays decision by the Murdoch family to shut the paper down was based on the conviction that it faced another two years of trouble,and that the brand had become toxic to advertisers. Scotland Yard said in a statement that Andy Coulson,Camerons former director of communications,had been interviewed at a police station in south London and was currently in custody. Police also said that Clive Goodman had been arrested on Friday; he was once one of Coulsons top reporters,and served a four-month jail term in 2007 in connection with earlier inquiries into phone hacking. Neither the arrests nor Camerons vow to rein in the press seemed to contain the fast-spreading scandal. The Guardian reported on Friday that the police were investigating reports that an executive with News International,the British arm of Murdochs News Corporation,had tried to delete millions of e-mails from a News of the World archive in an apparent attempt to obstruct Scotland Yards inquiry into the affair. News International had maintained as late as December in a trial in Scotland that the archive did not exist,The Guardian reported,saying that it had been lost when it was shipped to Mumbai. An executive later apologised to the court,saying News International could account for e-mails going back to 2005 and had not lost any. If the new allegations are borne out,The Guardian said,they could bear on Murdochs proposed $ 12 billion purchase of British Sky Broadcasting,which requires for government approval that the company pass a fit and proper person test. On Friday the chairman of Ofcom,Britains media regulatory agency,sent a letter to John Whittingdale,MP,the chairman of the Commons Culture,Media and Sport Committee,saying the agency was writing to the relevant authorities to highlight our duties in relation to Fit and Proper,and that it was very conscious of the level of concern about these matters in Parliament and in the country more widely. Earlier on Friday,Cameron told a news conference that the Press Complaints Commission,a self-regulatory body set up by Britains press,had been completely absent from the phone hacking scandal,showing it to ineffective and lacking in rigour, and needed replacing by a new body that would be independent of the press. He spoke with rare candour about the darker practices that have been common in the British press,and particularly at tabloids like The News of the World,whose power to destroy reputations was widely feared among politicians,celebrities and others in the public eye. The prime minister said he would ask the panel of inquiry that he plans to appoint to make a sweeping review of the culture,the practices and the ethics of the countrys newspapers. He said the inquiry could begin this summer,and lead to a new system of regulation that should be independent of the press so that the public will know that newspapers will never again be solely responsible for policing themselves. Cameron described the relationship between politicians and newspapers like The News of the World as too close,too cozy, and said that politicians should stop trying to curry favour with the press and should stand ready to speak out when they saw abuses. The prime minister said his decision to hire Coulson was mine and mine alone and I take full responsibility for it. But in response to a question,he declined to apologise for his actions. He was also asked about Brooks,who has said she knew nothing about the phone hacking. Despite repeated calls for her resignation,she has retained the confidence of the Murdoch family. Labour leader Ed Miliband has called for her resignation and has urged Cameron to do the same. The prime minister said it was not his job to make such determinations,but there had been reports that Brooks had offered to resign. In this situation I would have taken it, he said. The shutting down of The News of the World seemed calculated to help protect the BSkyB deal. Members of the British public had until Friday to make their views on the deal known to the culture secretary,Jeremy Hunt. The BBC said that some 256,000 individuals had lodged objections,many of them in recent days,and that it may take the government months to sift through them.
