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Murdoch confidante Brooks lays bare ties to UK elite
Greek parties scramble to avert new vote
LAST DITCH EFFORT: New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras (C) leaves after meeting with socialist party leader Evangelos Venizelos (L) in Athens on Friday. — AFP |
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OCCUPY MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA? Russian opposition supporters protest Vladimir Putin’s presidency in a boulevard in central Moscow on Friday. — AFP
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Murdoch confidante Brooks lays bare ties to UK elite
London, May 11 Appearing before the Leveson Inquiry on media ethics, 43-year-old Brooks' widely watched deposition provided details of her and News International's relationship with top politicians and the influence they wield. The details included text messages, emails and formal and informal meetings with prime ministers, including Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. When Brooks, a close aide of media baron Rupert Murdoch, resigned from News International at the height of the phone-hacking row last summer, she said she received text messages of support from Cameron, Blair, chancellor George Osborne, Home secretary Theresa May and Foreign secretary William Hague. Cameron sent her a text, asking her to "keep your head up". In her written evidence, Brooks, who is currently on bail, detailed the number of meetings she had with prime ministers from 2005 to 2010. She also gave an account of the decision-making process within News International when The Sun decided to support the Conservative party before the 2010 election. The tabloid has a history of openly supporting a political party before elections (it supported Labour before the 1997 election, which Labour won). She said in her written evidence: "I got to know some politicians very well. I think I met first Tony Blair in 1995. The meetings at that time were all about getting to know him and his beliefs since it was fairly clear that New Labour would be elected. Over the succeeding years we met often, particularly during my time as Editor of The Sun". Brooks resigned as chief executive of News International, the British arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, in July amid public outrage over claims of widespread hacking by staff at its News of the World newspaper. The government-appointed Leveson Inquiry, set up in response to the accusations of phone hacking by the News of the World, is examining the relationship between Britain's media and politics. Brooks was editor of News of the World in 2002 when the newspaper hacked the voice mail of a missing schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, who was later found dead.
— PTI
UK PM texted ‘lots of love’ to Brooks
London: Known for using the Internet and new media, British Prime Minister David Cameron somehow believed that ‘LOL’ meant ‘lots of love’ when sending texts to News of the World ex-editor Rebekah Brooks, until she enlightened him that it actually meant ‘laugh out loud’. Brooks, who said she had family relations with Cameron through her husband, said the prime ministerial texts would often be signed off as 'DC'. She said: “Occasionally he would sign them off ‘LOL’, lots of love, until I told him it meant ‘laugh out loud’.”
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Greek parties scramble to avert new vote Athens, May 11 The majority of Greeks want to stay in the euro zone but voted last Sunday for parties that reject the severe terms of a bailout negotiated with foreign lenders last year. European leaders say Greece will be ejected from the common currency if it turns its back on the package of tax hikes and wage cuts. Socialist PASOK leader Evangelos
Venizelos, whose party once towered over Greek politics but placed a distant third in Sunday's election, is the last politician to have a chance to form a government. He met conservative rival Antonis Samaras, whose New Democracy party came first in the election, but who has already failed to form a coalition. If Venizelos fails as well, all parties will have one last chance to try before a new election must be held in the coming three to four weeks. After the meeting, Samaras told lawmakers from his party he was trying to avert a new election but was not afraid of one. "We are fighting to form a government and there are still hopes for this," he said. A new vote could be catastrophic for Samaras, whose party benefited on Sunday from a rule that gives 50 bonus seats to the group that placed first. In a re-run he stands to lose those seats to Alexis Tsipras's hard left SYRIZA wiping out more than a third of the pro-bailout contingent in the 300-seat parliament and making it inconceivable that the next government would back the austerity package.
PASOK and New Democracy jointly negotiated the 130 billion euro ($168.5 billion)
EU/IMF bailout in a reluctant coalition last year and now are the only parties in parliament that support it. They say the bailout saved Greece from bankruptcy, but most of the public believes its tough conditions make it impossible for Greece to resume economic growth and emerge from five years of recession that has profoundly worsened the quality of life.
— Reuters
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200 activists ‘occupy’ a plaza in Moscow
Moscow, May 11 Activists today were distributing white ribbons, the protest symbol, and settling in at a plaza on a central boulevard. Street protests in Moscow erupted on Sunday the day before Putin's inauguration. More than 400 persons were arrested after the sanctioned rally turned into clashes between the protesters and police. Activists have been staging flash-mobs throughout town since Monday, spending nights on the street. Two most prominent opposition leaders were detained Wednesday for disobeying police orders. The protests have been likened to Occupy Wall Street. Yesterday was the first night when no detentions were reported.
— AP
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The leaders of Greece's once-dominant political parties made a last push today to avert a new election, which a poll showed would give victory to a radical leftist and doom an EU bailout.
