We are having technical problems with our previous live blog, so we have started this one in its place.

Rebekah Brooks has begun her evidence to MPs on the culture, media and sport committee now.

Here is a reading list for this hearing.

• Nick Davies's list of the questions that Rebekah Brooks has to answer.

• The Observer's list of the questions that Brooks has to answer.

• The Guardian's Janine Gibson on where Brooks went wrong.

• A profile of Brooks in the Daily Mail.

Brooks began with an apology to the victims of phone hacking.

Read coverage of the hearing featuring Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch, Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates here.

In brief, here was Andrew Sparrow's view of the Murdochs:

Rupert Murdoch

"Most humble day of my career" was the soundbite he gave us, but humility wasn't really what anyone will remember. It will be the short, gruff answers, delivered as if he was not entirely clear what had been going on. Was it because he's 80 and he can't hear very well any more, or was it because he didn't really want to engage? Probably a mixture of the two. But he did seem unflappable when the "foam hacker" struck. Tough bugger.

James Murdoch

Evasive, but in a way that was smooth and articulate. He kept telling the MPs how good their questions were and launching into long answers that weren't always particularly illuminating.

And here were his key points from the Murdoch hearing:

That was meant to last an hour. It lasted three. Here are the main points.

• Rupert Murdoch has had a plate of shaving foam thrust in his face by a protester. The attacker has been arrested. Labour's Chris Bryant said that attack was "despicable" and a contempt of parliament.

• Rupert Murdoch said that giving evidence to the committee was "the most humble day of my career".

• The Murdochs confirmed that News International carried on paying some of Glenn Mulcaire's legal fees after his conviction for phone hacking in 2007. One MP suggested that this could be interpreted as News International funding a cover-up (because Mulcaire has been fighting demands that he should disclose full details of his phone-hacking activities). James Murdoch said that he was "surprised and shocked" when he heard about these payments. Rupert Murdoch said that he would stop future payments, as long as there were no contractual reasons why he should not do so.

• Murdoch said that he did not feel that he was personally responsible for what went wrong at the company.

• The Murdochs said they had "no plans" to set up a Sunday title. They conceded that they had discussed this, but they said it was not priority.

• James Murdoch said that he agreed to the £700,000 payment to Gordon Taylor because he thought it was a hangover from the original court case.

• Rupert Murdoch said he did not find out about the Taylor payment - which has been perceived as hush money - until it was publicised in the Guardian.

• Rupert Murdoch said that he thought that the phone-hacking matter had been settled after 2007. "The police ended their investigations and I was told that News International conducted an internal review," he said. (Interestingly, Murdoch is blaming the police for not investigating the matter more thoroughly in 2006. But last week Peter Clarke, the officer in charge of that investigation, said he could not carry it out properly because News International did not co-operate.)

• Rupert Murdoch played down his influence on his British newspaper editors. He did not even phone the editor of the News of the World every week, he says. Of all his papers, he pays most attention to the Wall Street Journal, he said.

• Rupert Murdoch said in his opening statement: "I hope our contribution to Britain will one day ... be recognised."

• Rupert Murdoch said Downing Street asked to him to use the back door when he visited David Cameron at No 10 after the general election.

• Rupert Murdoch said that he hoped to repair his relationship with Gordon Brown.



Full coverage of all the day's previous events here

Brooks says that until evidence emerged during the course of civil litigation, she did not realise the extent of phone hacking.

Part of the problem is that News International do not have all the paperwork. The police have it, she says.

Tom Watson is asking questions now. He says the scope of his questions will be limited because he does not want to prejudice any legal proceedings.

Q: Why did you sack Tom Crone?

Brooks says Crone mainly worked for the News of the World. That has closed.

Q: But there are still News of the World legal cases to deal with?

Brooks says Crone was the day-to-day legal manager. But the paper closed.

Q: As a journalist how extensively did you deal with private detectives?

Brooks says the information commissioner looked into this. He found that Take a Break magazine used private detectives more than the Sun. The Observer was one of the top four papers using detectives.

Paul Farrelly interrupts. He says he used to work for the Observer. It was not in the top four.

Brooks says it may have been in the top six.

The BBC are just breaking the news that the Conservative party has announced that Neil Wallis, the former News of the World deputy editor, provided informal advice to the party before the general election.

If you hit refresh, you can follow the hearing live with our video stream at the top of the page.

Back to the committee, Watson is asking about Glenn Mulcaire.

Brooks says she did not know Mulcaire worked for the NoW when she was editor. She did not hear his name until 2006.



Q: Did you ever receive information for the paper from him?

Brooks says, now that she knows what she knows, she realises that he was involved with the paper from the late 1990s. At his trial the judge said he did legitimate work for the paper.

Q: Did you have any contact with Jonathan Rees?

Brooks says she knows a lot about Jonathan Rees now. He rejoined the NoW in 2005 or 2006.



Q: Is it odd that, having been jailed for a serious offence, he was rehired?

Brooks says this is extraordinary.



Q: Who hired him?

Brooks says she does not know.



Q: Who signed his contract?

She does not know.

Q: Why haven't you investigated this?

Brooks says the internal investigation has focused on phone hacking. Brooks worked for other people, including Panorama.

She does not know what he did for the NoW.

Q: Isn't it incredible that, as chief executive, you did not know?

It may be incredible. But it is the truth.

Watson is still asking questions.

Q: Do you have any regrets?

Of course, says Brooks. What happened to Milly Dowler's family was "abhorrent".

Louse Mensch, the Tory MP, is asking questions now.

Q: Piers Morgan in his book, the Insider, writes about using phone hacking. He says this was behind the Mirror's scoop of the year. (For more on this, read Guido Fawkes.) Isn't it the case that everyone was using hacking?

Brooks says after Operation Motorman all papers had to accept that they had gone to far in using private detectives.

Q: Were payments to the police widespread across Fleet Street?

Brooks says in her evidence to the culture committee in 2003, she was going to explain what she meant about paying the police. But the session was terminated.

She has clarified her point herself.

She has never paid a police officer herself. She has never knowingly sanctioned a payment to a police officer.

In her experience, the information to papers from the police comes "free of charge".

Q: If you thought these practices were endemic in the industry, why did you not think they were going on at the NoW?

Brooks says, after the What Price Privacy? report, there was a culture change in Fleet Street.

Outside the hearing, following evidence from Sir Paul Stephenson, the outgoing Metropolitan police commissioner to the home affairs committee earlier, the Met has released more details about the number of people in its press office who have worked for News International. Here's its statement.



In the Directorate of Public Affairs (DPA) there are 45 press officers as well as a number of non-press office roles. There are a total of 68 staff roles. Of this total number ten people have previously worked or taken work experience at News International newspapers. Of these ten half had also worked at other non News International owned national or London newspapers. In addition four other members of DPA have previously worked or taken work experience from non News International owned national or London newspapers. Only four people have worked for national or London newspapers within the last five years. The majority of all the work undertaken at the papers was on a freelance casual shift basis and did not overlap with their current employment.

Back in the committee, Jim Sheridan is asking questions.



Q: What did Brooks mean when she told journalists at the NoW that in a year's time they would understand why the company needed to close the paper?

Brooks says she has no "visibility" in relation to the documents in the possession of the police. After a year or more people will get to the bottom of what happened.



Q: During the Tommy Sheridan perjury case the court was told that News International emails had got lost?

Brooks says the emails were not lost.

Q: Why haven't the retrieved emails been given to Sheridan's defence team?

Brooks says there was a problem with suppliers in India.

Damian Collins, the Conservative MP, is asking the questions now.

Q: In 2003, when you gave evidence to the committee, you cited the Milly Dowler case as an example of a story where the police worked well with the NoW.

Brooks says in 2003 she did not know what she knows now. In the light of that, her comments may sound ridiculous. But she thought the press had "tried to respect the privacy of the families". Fleet Street had come together to respect the privacy of the families.

The new allegations, "if true", contradict what she said then.

Q: When did you hear about the Milly Dowler allegations?

When the Guardian published its story, she says.

Her instant reaction "was one of shock and disgust".

When she heard the story, she send the Dowler family an "unreserved apology".

She also wrote to Surrey police to say that if they had any information to support these allegations, they should share them with the police and News International's own internal investigation.

She recently received a reply. She was told the police could not give her information because it was part of a criminal investigation.

Paul Farrelly is asking questions now.



Q: Are there any legal ways of converting mobile numbers into addresses? When you used an investigator to do this, did you have a public interest defence?

Brooks says that when she used private detectives, it was in relation to Sarah's Law. That was a public interest matter.



Q: Was the phone number you tried to obtain related to a suspect paedophile?

Brooks says she cannot remember the details. But she was using private detectives at the time to trace paedophiles. The Observer (where Farrelly worked before 2001) also used private detectives.



Q: After the arrest of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, two myths were peddled by News International; that Goodman was a rogue reporter, and the Mulcaire was not really active. The Milly Dowler story demolished that.

Brooks says Farrelly is saying these are myths now. But they that was not what people thought at the time.

Outside the hearing, the Tories have now issued a statement about the "informal advice" that Neil Wallis provided to the party before the general election. This is from a party spokesman.



There have been some questions about whether the Conservative Party employed Neil Wallis. We have double-checked our records and are able to confirm that neither Neil Wallis nor his company has ever been contracted by the Conservative Party, nor has the Conservative Party made payments to either of them. It has been drawn to our attention that he may have provided Andy Coulson with some informal advice on a voluntary basis before the election. We are currently finding out the exact nature of any advice. We can confirm that apart from Andy Coulson, neither David Cameron nor any senior member of the campaign team were aware of this until this week.

And this is what Labour's Ivan Lewis is saying about the revelation.

This revelation raises further serious concerns about David Cameron's judgement in appointing Andy Coulson. He must now come clean about Neil Wallis' role and activities in supporting Andy Coulson, both in his capacity as director of communications for the Tory Party, and then the Prime Minister.

Paul Farrelly is asking about Jon Chapman, the legal adviser who recently left the company. Did Chapman asks Harbottle & Lewis to sit on the evidence suggesting wrong-doing.

Brooks says Harbottle & Lewis are a respected legal firm. Chapman was a respected lawyer. He would not have done that.

Q: Chapman seems to be the fall guy? Did he act alone?

Brooks says Chapman would say, if asked, that when they looked at the file, they would have felt that the Harbottle & Lewis letter saying there was no evidence of wrongdoing was correct.



Q: Did you ask other editors in 2009 not to give the phone hacking story much play?

Brooks says she would have discussed industry matters with people like Paul Dacre. But she does not recall specifically phoning him up to discuss this.

(That seems to be a reference to this story.)

Q: Did you ever tell Boris Johnson that this would not be over until Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian editor, was on his knees?

"Absolutely not," says Brooks.

I'm finishing now. My colleague Ben Quinn will be taking over for the rest of the hearing.

Good evening. This is Ben Quinn taking over the blog from Andy.

You can follow me on twitter at BenQuinn75

"I don't think you will find any editor on Fleet St that didn't feel that some headlines they had published had mistakes and I am no differnt to that," says Brooks in response to a question about whether she had any regrets about headlines that were published under her reign.

Brooks would talk to Rupert Murdoch, on average, every other day, says Brooks in response to a question about how often she would have talked to her boss.

She said that her office "is" (was?) next to that of James Murdoch.

Paul Farrelly of Labour is now questioning Brooks by the way.

"I can only hope that, from the evidence you have heard from us today , that we have really stepped up our investigation," says Brooks, in response to a question about whether she had read a previous report by the committee that criticised News International.

"Rupert and James Murdoch have been here today and were very open and honest with you. I was very willing to come despite the fact that there were some legal issues around what I could say."

Q. How often would she meet various Prime Ministers?

"Gosh," starts Brooks, who goes on to suggested that she is not sure if it was the case that she had met Cameron 26 times.

She added that she had never been to Downing Street while Cameron was in the job but regularly went there when Brown and Blair were in office.

She says that she went to see Brown "maybe 6 times a year" when he was chancellor and PM. The same applied to Blair, she maintained.

"Strangely" she adds, it was under Labour prime ministers that she was a more regular visitor to Downing Street.

Q. Did Newspapers like the Sun and the News of the World start becoming part of the establishment - rather than being anti-establishment?

She says that there were "very difficult conversations about issues such as military spending".

Q. Was she ever asked not to run a story?

As long as a story was true and accurate, then "no", says Brooks.

Was there a wider strategy on the part of News Corps in relation to the bid to take over BskyB? Was she encouraged to get closer to prime ministers?

Brooks denies this. She says she has read about her "extensive horse riding" with the prime minister on a regular basis. She says she has never been riding with him.

In the current climate, she says there is "a lot out there" that is not true.

The truth is that David Cameron is a neighbour and that her relationship with him is wholly appropriate, she adds.

Q. Did you approve the subsidising of Andy Coulson's salary after he left the News of the World?

She denies this, saying that reports of this were incorrect.

The last questions were from Adrian Sanders by the way. Paul Farrelly is back on again.

Q. There has been a lot of concern about the closeness of police and politicians with the press. What is your view on that?

I see that the News of the World has been singled out for that closeness, she says.

If you are going to address it, it is wholly unfair in the context of discussing the relationship between the police, press and politicians, to single out the News of the World.

Brooks is asked if she has anything to add.

She wants to make a request to the committee that, when she is free from the legal constraints that she says she is under today, they will invite her back to answer "in a more fulsome way".

The answer from committee chairman John Whittingdale is yes. Her appearance in front of the committee is over now.

Quite a lot to digest there. Here is a summary of developments today:

• David Cameron's chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, stopped Scotland Yard briefing the prime minister on the phone-hacking scandal in September 2010, a senior police officer told MPs today.

John Yates, the Met assistant commissioner who was in charge of the controversial review of evidence into phone hacking in 2009 and who quit on Monday, told the Home Affairs Select Committee that Cameron's chief of staff told him it was not appropriate for him to brief the prime minister on the hacking investigation, adding: "And I'd be grateful if it wasn't raised".

• The government was further embroiled in the fall-out from the phone hacking scandal after the BBC reported that Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive who was arrested last month, was an informal advisor to Andy Coulson while the former News of the World editor worked for David Cameron.

The Conservative Party said Wallis, who was arrested as part of the police investigation into phone hacking, "may have provided Andy Coulson with some informal advice on a voluntary basis before the election."

• Rupert Murdoch told MPs on the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee that he never considered resigning over the phone hacking scandal.

Appearing alongside his son and deputy, James, the media mogul called the parliamentary inquisition "the most humble day of my career" but refused to take personal blame for the crisis.

His son told the committee that News International made payments to phone hackers Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire after they were convicted of the crime.

Goodman, former royal editor at the News of the World, and private investigator Mulcaire, were both jailed in 2007 over royal phone taps.

• Rebekah Brooks, the former News International chief executive who resigned from the post last week, told MPs after the Murdochs' appearance that she had never knowingly sanctioned payments to police.

In her evidence to the culture committee in 2003, she had said: "We have paid police for information".

During an appearance in which she attempted to portray the use of private investigators as a Fleet Street-wide practice, she said that her hiring of them as editor of the News of the World was "purely legitimate" and was for the pursuit of the addresses of convicted paedophiles.

• News Corporation shares rallied today amid reports it may bring forward plans to split Rupert Murdoch's chairman and chief executive role in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.

The Press Association reported that some News Corp board members want to promote chief operating officer Chase Carey to the chief executive role to succeed Mr Murdoch, leaving the 80-year-old as chairman.

Hertfordshire Police have sent my colleague Paul Lewis the results of the post mortem on the body of Sean Hoare, the News of the World whistle-blower:

There is no evidence of third party involvement and the death is non suspicious. Further toxicology results are now awaited and there is an on-going examination of health problems identified at the post mortem

The legal firm Harbottle & Lewis has said that News International will not allow it to breach client confidentiality so it can "respond to any inaccurate statements or contentions".

James Murdoch had told MPs earlier that a letter the firm wrote made News International believe phone hacking was a "matter of the past".

Harbottle & Lewis was hired by the media company to defend a claim by News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman for unfair dismissal against his former employer.

Giving evidence to the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee today, Rupert Murdoch, said the law firm trawled through a large number of emails from the accounts of six figures at the newspaper including Goodman - who was jailed over phone hacking in 2007 - and the tabloid's former editor Andy Coulson.

It then wrote to News International to tell the company that nothing had come to light that contradicted the theory that the hacking had been restricted to a rogue reporter working with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Harbottle & Lewis said in a statement issued this evening:

News International representatives referred to our advice in their statements today before the Parliamentary Select Committee, both as a result of questioning and on their own account. We asked News International to release us from our professional duties of confidentiality in order that we could respond to any inaccurate statements or contentions and to explain events in 2007. News International declined that request, and so we are still unable to respond in any detail as to our advice or the scope of our instructions in 2007, which is a matter of great regret.

My colleague Paul Lewis says that Hertfordshire Police have now clarified the meaning of their statement about the Sean Hoare postmortem.

They said the results of the autopsy were "inconclusive", but detectives could not rule out suicide until they received the results of the toxicology tests, which could take weeks.

A police source said: "There was no suicide note found at the scene. We cannot categorically say one way or another whether this was suicide, as we have not got the toxicology results back yet."

However, Paul says he is led to understand that the reference in the statement to "health problems" is an indication that police do not presently believe suicide to be a likely cause of death. That said, the picture remains confused.

Owen Bowcott, the Guardian's Legal Affairs correspondent was monitoring an appearance earlier before the Home Affairs select committee by Lord Macdonald, who was called in by lawyers acting for News Corps to scrutinise News of the World emails, and has filed a very strong story. Here's a preview:

"Blindingly obvious" evidence of corrupt payments to police officers were found by the former director of public prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, when he inspected News of the World emails, the Home Affairs select committee was told yesterday. Explaining how he had been called in by solicitors acting for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation board, Lord Macdonald said that when he inspected the messages it took him between "three to five minutes" to decide that the material had to be passed to the detectives. "The material I saw was so blindingly obvious that trying to argue that it should not be given to the police would have been a hard task. It was evidence of serious criminal offences. He first showed it to the News Corp board in June this year. "There was no dissent," he recalled. "They were stunned. They were shocked. I said it was my unequivocal advice that it should be handed to the police. They accepted that." That board meeting, the former DPP said, was chaired by Rupert Murdoch. Lord Macdonald shortly afterwards gave the material to Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick at the Metropolitan Police. The nine or ten emails passed over led to the launch of Operation Elveden, the police investigation into corrupt payments to officers for information.

I'll start bringing you some more reaction now to the appearances by the Murdochs and Brooks today. In the meantime, here is an earlier tweet from Ed Miliband, the Labour Leader:

Dramatic Day.Now David Cameron has a duty to uphold dignity of the PMs Office by answering fully the Qs he faces about this scandal #hacking

The Guardian's Dominic Rushe has filed on a development in the US that indicates growing tensions at News Corps:

The independent directors of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp have appointed their own legal team as the company faces shareholder law suits and an investigation by the US authorities. News Corp's nine illustrious independent directors include Rod Eddington, the former chief executive of British Airways, John Thornton, former president of Goldman Sachs and Jose Maria Aznar, the former prime minister of Spain. Another board member, billionaire investor Tom Perkins, has told The Wall Street Journal the directors have appointed law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, to advise them on the handling of the escalating phone-hacking crisis. Perkins said: "The board honestly thinks Rupert is a genius and we need him and the company needs him. Our worry is the shareholders at this point," he said. "The British police will take care of the hacking victims." "The next step is not to let the company go down the drain on this thing because we're focused on events in London that are a small percentage of our business overall," he said. But the move clearly signals growing tension at News Corp, which already faces one law suit from shareholders who have seen the value of their investment plummet following the revelation of the scandal which has had a profound impact on the Murdochs' reputation and the company's share price, wiping close to $6 billion off its value in the last 10 days. Leading shareholder adviser Manifest has called for Rupert Murdoch to step down following his performance at the parliament inquiry into phone hacking. The move came as shares in News Corp rose on rumours that Chase Carey, chief operating officer, was set to succeed Murdoch as chief executive of the company. Rupert Murdoch is News Corp's chairman as well as CEO and it's largest shareholder. Murdoch would remain chairman under the plan, which was first reported by Bloomberg. But Murdoch ruled out any plans to step down at the hearing saying he was "the best person to clear this up."

Some more reaction and analysis now. The human rights lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson QC, has told the BBC that Tom Watson was the only MP among those who questioned the Murdochs who had carried out his homework.

However, he believed that Paul Farrelly was the only MP who "landed a killer punch" when he asked the father and son if News International had been continuing to pay the legal bills of Glenn Mulcaire in any way.

The revelation of an enduring link between the private investigator and the company was "sensational" said Robertson, and one that showed up the company's apology to the family of Milly Dowler, the murdered teenager whose phone was hacked by Mulcaire, as "utterly insincere.

Lance Price, the former New Labour spindoctor, said the appearance signified how Rupert Murdoch's "grip" on MPs had been broken.

"For some MPs this was like getting an ageing war criminal in front of their tribunal. It did not matter as long as they got him there in the end," he added.

Peter Collett, an expert in body language, has been deciphering the Murdochs' appearance in front of MPs. He writes:

Rupert Murdoch retained much the same posture throughout the proceedings, leaning forward with one hand folded neatly over the other. The intent here was clear – to show that he was fully involved, even if there were extended periods when he lowered his eyes and appeared to be fast asleep. When questions were directed at him, Murdoch Sr frequently responded with an unnervingly long pause, followed by a curt "yes", "no" or "absolutely". These are the reactions of a dominant individual – someone who's not prepared to be unduly hurried or to provide lengthy explanations, unless of course it's on his own terms. Equally revealing were his emphatic gestures. Whenever Rupert Murdoch wanted to get his point across he would tap or in some cases slap the surface of the table in front of him – a sure sign that he's used to giving commands. By contrast, James Murdoch came across as a model of courtesy. Instead of fixing his eyes on the person asking the question, he made a point of switching his gaze back and forth among the committee members, making sure that they all felt included. For long periods of time James was definitely in the driver's seat, and this showed in his relaxed muscle tonus and his easy manner of speaking. He was consistently polite, although there were moments when his irritation became apparent. At least five members of the committee managed to rub him up the wrong way – evidenced by the fact that, while looking at each of them, he surreptitiously and briefly pushed out his tongue. This is an infantile gesture of rejection, which owes its origins to the baby's habit of protruding the tongue in order to expel the mother's breast from its mouth. James Murdoch wasn't aware that he was rejecting the committee members in this way, and nor were they.

Paul Lewis and Shiv Malik have filed a profile of Jonathan May-Bowles, aka standup comic and UK Uncut activist Jonnie Marbles, the man who was arrested after attacking Rupert Murdoch with a plate of foam:

He was quickly identified by friends in the UK Uncut network of activists. Although the activist group quickly distanced themselves from the protester, he is known to have been a key figure in their campaign. "This was a lone-wolf, solitary action," said a key organiser in UK Uncut, a tax-avoidance campaigner group. "None of us knew anything about this. This has got nothing to do with UK Uncut." However, May-Bowles is known to be among the small, close-knit group that founded UK Uncut last year. Remarkably, the activist, who also uses the name "Jonnie Marbles", appears to have live-tweeted his assault on Murdoch. "I'm actually in this committee," he tweeted at 15.01pm, around 30 minutes into the hearing of the department of culture, media and sport committee. At 16.51pm, seconds before the attack, he tweeted: "It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat."

The Sunlight Foundation, a US NGO that advocates for transparency, has posted an interesting piece on the influence of News Corps in US politics:

It's also commonly believed that he has close ties to what we consider conservative politicians here in the U.S. as well, but campaign finance records suggest he has ties to both sides of the aisle. According to the Sunlight Foundation's Influence Explorer, News Corp's political givings are actually split pretty evenly between Democrats (51 percent) and Republicans (49 percent). The biggest all-time recipient of contributions from News Corp is President Obama (left). It should be noted that the totals for News Corp's contributions also include money from employees of the organization and their family members. Obama being listed as the company's top recipient might surprise some people because of its highly publicized involvement with his political rivals, like Sarah Palin who was the vice presidential candidate in 2008 and reportedly still under contract with Murdoch-owned Fox News as a paid commentator.

The foundation also publishes a list of the top political recipients of aid from Rupert Murdoch.

A BBC Newsnight interview from earlier this year with Jonathan May-Bowles, Rupert Murdoch's assailant from today, is getting a lot of play on twitter.

He talks in the interview about coming together with others to found Ukuncut. The activists' grouping has today been distancing itself from his action.

Sky News has meanwhile been reporting that May-Bowles has been suspended from the Labour Party.

Labour has issued a statement about the party's links with Jonathan May-Bowles.

A spokesperson said: "He was a member although his subscriptions were in arrears. It was despicable behaviour and he has been immediately suspended."

Here is a clever Guardian interactive on how twitter tracked MPs' questioning of the Murdochs today.

Unsurprisingly, there is an explosion of tweets surrounding the pie-throwing incident.

Louise Mensch, one of the Murdochs' parliamentary questioners today, tweets:

Idiot with the pie got precisely opposite result to one he expected, since Mr. Murdoch (and Mrs. Murdoch) came out of that w/ great credit.

David Cameron has just landed at Heathrow. Nick Watt, the Guardian's chief political correspondent, has just told me that the Prime Minister used the six-hour flight from Lagos to prepare a statement to be released tomorrow. He was informed of events in London by officials in Downing Street.

Here is a video of Dan Sabbagh analysing the Murdochs' eventful appearance at the Commons culture, media and sport select committee.

The Daily Beast finds itself unable, like more than a few other media organisations, to resist using 'Crouching Tiger' references to describe Wendi Deng's physical intervention today when her husband was threatened with a foam-wielding assailant.

It appears in a headline over a profile of Rupert Murdoch's Chinese-born wife, in which Melinda Liu writes:



If Wendi stole the show, it was a performance for which she could have been rehearsing all her life. Wendi might appear willowy and demure, but she's also tall—at least 5-foot-10—and extremely tough. She was born in the nondescript city of Xuzhou in coastal Jiangsu province in China in December 1968. That was a time of tumult and ugliness during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when radical Red Guards persecuted intellectuals and "capitalist roaders" in bloody "criticism sessions" that sometimes ended in death. In fact, Wendi's Chinese name—Wen Di ("Cultural Enlightenment")—was not the name she was born with. At first, befitting the political environment at the time, her parents named her Wen Ge, meaning "Cultural Revolution," and it's a testament to the turmoil and struggle that swirled through Chinese society during her childhood.

Caroline Davies has meanwhile been profiling Deng for the Guardian, and writes that she has emerged as Rupert Murdoch's greatest protector.

The lightning reflexes of Wendi Deng as she sprang from her chair to swing at her husband's attacker and try to smack him in the face with his own foam pie owes as much to her athletic prowess as to her protective instincts toward Murdoch senior. The 42-year-old had sat immediately behind her husband as members of the culture, media and sport committee grilled him, occasionally pouring his water and leaning in to whisper encouragements. Until, that was, her Charlie's Angel moment. The Murdoch father and son were nearing the end of more than two hours of questioning when there was a sudden commotion. A woman's voice could be heard shouting "no, no, no" as the shaving-cream assailant, wearing black combat trousers, walked up to Rupert Murdoch, took aim and struck. Deng lunged while startled police officers were barely off the back foot. According to eyewitnesses she first swung a slap at him, then picked up the pie and tossed it back. "Why didn't you see what was happening?" James Murdoch could be heard asking police, as Deng turned her attentions to her husband, sitting apparently stunned. She started to clear the foam from his face, and embraced him.

CNN has just hosted a feisty exchange between its new pin-up boy, Piers Morgan, and the Conservative MP who was baiting him today during the Commons select-committee hearings, writes Ed Pilkington for the Guardian:



Morgan accused Louise Mensch of cowardice and "breathtaking gall" over the allegations she raised under parliamentary privilege. In the course of the hearings, Mensch referred to Morgan's memoir, The Insider, saying that in the book he talked about using a "little trick of entering a standard four-digit code allows anyone to call that number and hear your messages". He boasted that the trick had enabled him to win scoop of the year for a story about the former England soccer coach Sven-Goran Eriksson, she alleged. "So that is a former editor of the Daily Mirror being very open about his personal use of phone hacking." Outside parliament, in front of CNN's cameras, Mensch refused to repeat the accusations. "As Mr Morgan will know, inside parliament I am protected by absolute parliamentary privilege to repeat something, outside parliament doesn't give me that cloak of privilege. Mr Morgan is a very rich man and I'm sure that ferocious investigative journalists at CNN and across the news media throughout the US will take note of what I said in committee and look into it." Morgan, it's fair to say, wasn't impressed by that argument. "I call on you to repeat it. Repeat what you said about me. Then go and buy a copy of my book The Insider and see where that claim is in that book. It isn't there." Morgan's anger was palpable. So was his desire to sell copies of his book.

Here is a summary of events from today:

• Rupert Murdoch has revealed the full extent of his ignorance of the phone-hacking scandal at his UK newspaper empire that led to the closure of the News of the World.

In a hesitant performance in front of MPs, the News Corporation chairman and chief executive said it was "the most humble day of my life".

He appeared to have little knowledge of key events and figures who played a prominent part in events that have consumed his company.

However, when pressed by an MP, Murdoch said his company would cease contributing to the legal costs of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator formerly paid by the News of the World to hack into people's mobile phone voicemail messages, subject to contractual obligations.

• "Blindingly obvious" evidence of corrupt payments to police officers was found by the former director of public prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, when he inspected News of the World emails, the home affairs select committee was told.

Explaining how he had been called in by solicitors acting for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation board, Lord Macdonald said that when he inspected the messages it took him between "three to five minutes" to decide that the material had to be passed to police.

"The material I saw was so blindingly obvious that trying to argue that it should not be given to the police would have been a hard task. It was evidence of serious criminal offences."

• David Cameron's chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, stopped Scotland Yard briefing the prime minister on the phone-hacking scandal in September 2010, a senior police officer told MPs.

John Yates, the Met assistant commissioner who was in charge of the controversial review of evidence into phone hacking in 2009 and who quit on Monday, told the Home Affairs Select Committee that Cameron's chief of staff told him it was not appropriate for him to brief the prime minister on the hacking investigation, adding: "And I'd be grateful if it wasn't raised".

• The former News International chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, has deflected MPs' questions about the News of the World's payments to private investigators, saying they were the responsibility of the paper's managing editor.

Brooks admitted using private investigators during her time as editor of the now-defunct tabloid, which she edited between 2000 and 2003, but said it was for "purely legitimate" purposes, such as finding out the whereabouts of convicted paedophiles.

But she said she had never heard of Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective formerly paid by the News of the World to hack into people's mobile phones, saying the first time she had heard his name was in 2006 when he was arrested for this activity.

• The government was further embroiled in the fall-out from the phone hacking scandal after the BBC reported that Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive who was arrested last month, was an informal advisor to Andy Coulson while the former News of the World editor worked for David Cameron.

The Conservative Party said Wallis, who was arrested as part of the police investigation into phone hacking, "may have provided Andy Coulson with some informal advice on a voluntary basis before the election."

This blog is being wrapped up now, but you can monitor all Guardian coverage of the phone-hacking scandal and its fall out here.