Fresh investigation into Dowler hacking

Lord Justice Leveson signalled that new statements would be taken from two police forces, Surrey and the Metropolitan police, about the question of the hacking and deletion of the murdered girl's voicemail messages. The Guardian reports that this followed confirmation from counsel for the Met that it was now considered 'unlikely' that the private detective Glenn Mulcaire, who had been commissioned to hack Milly's phone by the Sunday tabloid, had also been responsible for deleting her voicemail messages. The LA Times reports that Neil Garnham, an attorney representing Scotland Yard, told the panel that the Surrey police force, which investigated the abduction and murder of Dowler in March 2002, disclosed that her phone messages were hacked between 21 and 24 March of that year. Those dates came after her disappearance but before Mulcaire was commissioned by News of the World to help its reporters on the story, the report notes. Full report in The Guardian Full LA Times report

Correspondence released yesterday (Tuesday) shows that James Murdoch was warned in writing of the seriousness of a threat to sue his News of the World newspaper over phone hacking in 2008. 'Unfortunately it is as bad as we feared,' the editor of the tabloid e-mailed proprietor Murdoch about the case, according to a copy of the correspondence published by Parliament. CNN reports that the e-mail from Colin Myler appears to undercut Murdoch's repeated testimony that he did not know details about phone-hacking by his employees. Murdoch conceded in a letter to lawmakers that he replied to the e-mail, but he does not admit having read it, the report notes. Full CNN report

The final number of victims of the News of the World's phone-hacking operation is expected to be in the region of 800 people, Scotland Yard has said. The Guardian reports that this is a fraction of the 5 800 names the police had previously identified from Mulcaire's notebooks. According to the report, the head of the Metropolitan police investigation into phone hacking said she was confident all those who had their phones hacked or were likely to have been victims of the illegal practice had now been contacted. Scotland Yard said the number identified as of last Tuesday was 803 individuals including crime victims, celebrities, senior politicians and sports people, the report notes. Full report in The Guardian

Meanwhile, former Labour Cabinet Minister Tessa Jowell has accepted a £200 000 settlement from Murdoch's News International over the hacking of her phone. The Guardian reports that Jowell's lawyers, Bindmans, confirmed on Monday that the News International subsidiary News Group, which used to publish the News of the World, had agreed to £200 000 in damages for breach of privacy and harassment. Of this, notes the report, £100 000 will be paid to a charity of her choice, with which she has worked closely and which will benefit young people in her south London constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood. The report notes that another condition agreed with News International is that she will be given all of the documents relating to the phone-hacking accusations, Bindmans said. Jowell is also thought to have insisted she would disclose full details of the settlement, the report states. Full report in The Guardian