The News International Boss (owns Fox News)

Staff at the News of the World have reacted with shock to news that it will be closed after this Sunday's edition.

The 168-year-old tabloid is accused of hacking into phones of crime victims, celebrities and politicians. Police have identified 4,000 possible targets. The Guardian reports that Andy Coulson, formerly David Cameron's director of communications and a former NoW editor, will be arrested later.

It says Mr Coulson will be arrested on suspicion that he knew about, or had direct involvement in, the hacking of mobile phones during his time as editor, between 2003 and 2007. He has insisted he knew nothing about the practice.

Staff said they were stunned after News International chairman James Murdoch announced on Thursday the NoW would shut, after days of increasingly damaging allegations. The paper's editor Colin Myler said the news was "the saddest day of my professional career". Mr Wooding, who joined the NoW 18 months ago, said the paper was "fantastic" and "decent, hard-working, distinguished journalists were all carrying the can for the sins of a previous regime".

But Labour MP Chris Bryant, who believes his phone was hacked, said the decision to close was "a really cynical move". He told the BBC: "What the Murdochs have been doing in the last few weeks is chucking people over the side in a desperate attempt to keep the ship afloat.

"But it's really unfair that [it is] the staff at the newspaper who are losing their jobs rather than the people at the top...if Rebekah Brooks had a single shred of decency in her, if only because Milly Dowler's phone was hacked on her watch, she should resign."

In a statement made to staff, Mr Murdoch said the good things the paper did "have been sullied by behaviour that was wrong - indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our company". "The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself."

The suspicion is that dumping the paper is an attempt to save Rupert MurDoch's buying of BskyB. That the Sun (sister paper) is to start a Sunday edition......!!

The police have been covering up their supplying of NoW with information for cash, and indeed trying to cover the depth of the amount they knew about the phone hacking.

Politicians it seems have been bullied by Rupert Murdoch, by threatening to 'diss' such politicians. eg...
.............."you scratch my back and I won't use my papers to print bad stories about you before the election."