In a breathtaking response to a scandal engulfing his media empire, Rupert Murdoch moved on Thursday to close down the News of the World, Britain's biggest selling Sunday newspaper. As allegations multiplied that its journalists hacked the voicemails of thousands of people, from child murder victims to the families of Britain's war dead, the tabloid had hemorrhaged advertising, alienated millions of readers and posed a growing threat to Murdoch's hopes of buying broadcaster BSkyB . Yet no one, least of all the 168-year-old paper's 200 staff, was prepared for the drama of a single sentence that will surely go down as one of the most startling turns in the 80-year-old Australian-born press baron's long and controversial career. “News International today announces that this Sunday, 10 July 2011, will be the last issue of the News of the World,” read the preamble to a statement from Murdoch's son James, who chairs the British newspaper arm of News Corp . But some analysts said Murdoch would still face pressure to remove his close confidante and top British newspaper executive Rebekah Brooks. Her editorship of the News of the World a decade ago is at the heart of some of the gravest accusations.
