The Hyundai Elantra edged out the Ford Focus and Volkwagen Passat Monday to win the 2012 North American Car of the Year award.
The prestigious industry award was announced at the start of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which hosts media previews this week and opens to the public on Saturday.
The Land Rover Range Rover Evoque won the North American Truck of the Year, beating the BMW X3 and Honda CR-V.
Jaguar Land Rover North America President Andy Goss said it’s a tremendous honor and humbling for the company, which has had finalists but never a winner in the 19th annual independent awards program.
“We’re going to market the hell out of this,” said a smiling Goss on a stage above the four-cylinder sport-utility vehicle. The U.S. is the world’s largest Range Rover market.
Fifty automotive journalists voted on the winning vehicles from a group of finalists, and the vehicles must be all new or substantially changed to be eligible. Organizers accept no advertising, though automakers capitalize on the marketing value of the honors low interest rate personal loans.
John Krafcik, Hyundai’s North American CEO, said the award won’t help the compact’s sales much because the company already is selling as many Elantras as it can make at its factory in Montgomery, Ala. But the award should help solidify the brand’s image in the eyes of the American public, especially in the highly competitive compact car segment.
“It should be helpful for our brand going forward,” he said.
The company is looking at ways to boost production at the Montgomery plant, but Krafcik said Hyundai plans to focus on maintaining quality at the factory before deciding on any increases.
Hyundai sold more than 186,000 Elantras last year, nearly a 41 percent increase over 2010 figures.
Volatile markets and shaky economic times have made Americans hungrier than ever for financial advice, and Larry Swedroe is happy to oblige.
It may not be the advice they expect, however. Rather than telling you how to react to the latest news out of Europe or Washington, Swedroe wants you to tune it out. Especially, he says, you should ignore the experts who predict that the news will be good or bad for the stock market.
He’s just published his 11th book on investing, but Swedroe is no market guru. If anything, he’s an anti-guru. By the time you read about an event, he says, its implications are already reflected in the price of everything from stocks to bonds to crude oil. No one prognosticator can know more than millions of market participants.
“When they’re right, they attribute it to their genius,” Swedroe says. “When they’re wrong, they blame bad luck. There are no clear crystal balls, only cloudy ones.”
In the new book, “Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make,” Swedroe lists 77 common errors, several of which are especially dangerous during turbulent times. Being swayed by popular opinion is mistake No. 6, and paying attention to the experts is No. 10. If you try to time the market in any way, you’re guilty of No. 49.
Swedroe’s advice is so simple that it’s difficult for most people to follow. You should invest in low-cost index funds, diversify across asset classes and be cognizant of tax considerations.
“It’s not just buy and hold,” he explains. “It’s buy and hold, tax-manage, rebalance and if anything happens like a birth or death in the family or an inheritance, then revisit your investment plan. People think buy and hold means do nothing, and it’s more than that.”
Swedroe criticizes brokerage firms, mutual funds, hedge funds and even the financial media because he thinks they prey on investors’ weaknesses. Mistake No. 29, for example, is believing that actively managed funds can beat the market, and No personal loans for bad credit. 53 is working with a commission-based adviser.
Swedroe is research director at Clayton-based Buckingham Asset Management, which works on a fee-only basis and puts its clients’ $3.5 billion of assets into index-like funds.
The firm had just $11 million of assets when Swedroe joined in 1994, and his books have helped Buckingham grow. He insists, though, that they’re written to educate, not market a service.
Indeed, there’s no hard sell here. Swedroe says he’s happy if a do-it-yourself investor follows his methods, or even if a reader chooses a competing firm that embraces the same principles.
Swedroe’s books do get repetitive; “Rational Investing in Irrational Times,” published in 2002, was also organized as a collection of common mistakes. (Back then, he tallied only 52 errors.)
Each volume, though, adds new research and examples, and Swedroe says he’ll keep evangelizing as long as he can think of new ways to spread his message. He had thought “Investment Mistakes” might be his last book, but he’s now working on a shorter, breezier primer for people with brief attention spans.
Swedroe figures that his books have sold almost 200,000 copies combined, a respectable but not huge following.
What’s most rewarding, he says, is hearing from readers such as a doctor who used to day-trade and obsess over his investments. His wife was threatening to leave because he had little time for her or their small child. Reading a Swedroe book saved his marriage.
That’s why this anti-guru is so passionate about his message. It’s not just about money, he says, it’s about life.
Manufacturing in India and China improved in December, a sign the world
Spain’s new conservative government is about to unveil its first austerity measures as it embarks on an urgent mission to energize an economy saddled with shrinking output, sky-high unemployment and mountains of debt.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is presiding over a Cabinet meeting Friday that will approve the first in what is expected to be a painful series of spending freezes or cuts and other reforms over the next few months.
Rajoy’s Popular Party won a sweeping victory in Nov. 20 elections over the discredited Socialists.
Like other troubled governments in Europe, Rajoy faces the delicate task of enacting growth-discouraging deficit reduction measures in a country whose economy is expected to contract in the last quarter of 2011 and the first of 2012.
Some airline customers won’t see savings this weekend even though several federal taxes on tickets have expired.
US Airways and American Airlines raised fares to offset the tax savings.
That means instead of passing along the savings from expired taxes, the carriers are pocketing the money while customers pay the same amount as before.
But other airlines left their prices unchanged on Saturday. Consumers could save money by shopping around.
The expired taxes can total $25 or more on a typical $300 round-trip ticket. For a September trip between Dallas and San Francisco, the cheapest American flight on Travelocity.com was $24 higher than offerings from United, Continental, Delta and Virgin America, which did not raise fares.
The taxes expired after midnight Friday night when Congress failed to pass legislation to keep the Federal Aviation Administration running.
That gave airlines a choice: They could do nothing _ and pass the savings to customers _ or they could grab some of the money themselves.
“We adjusted prices so the bottom-line price of a ticket remains the same as it was before … expiration of federal excise taxes,” said American spokesman Tim Smith. US Airways spokesman John McDonald said much the same thing _ passengers will pay the same amount for a ticket as they did before the taxes expired.
Smith declined to say whether the increase would be rescinded if Congress revives the travel taxes.
Tom Parsons, who runs the Bestfares.com travel website, said consumers should get a break.
“Why would the airlines deserve it?” he said. “They already hit us with enough fees. Now they’re keeping the government fees too.”
The Transportation Department says it will lose $200 million a week. J.P. Morgan analyst Jamie Baker said airlines could take in an extra $25 million a day by raising fares during the tax holiday.
Parsons said competitive pressure eventually will force the airlines to match _ either they’ll all pass the tax savings on to passengers, or they’ll all raise fares and keep the money themselves.
Southwest Airlines and its AirTran subsidiary raised prices by $8 per round trip, said spokeswoman Marilee McInnis.
Southwest’s support could be crucial if the airlines decide to keep the tax money. Southwest carries more U.S. passengers than anyone, and it effectively sets rates on many routes. Southwest torpedoed attempts by other airlines to raise prices in the last two weeks. CEO Gary Kelly has publicly worried that airlines could frighten away passengers by raising prices too high.
That may be less of a fear this time, however, since consumers wouldn’t be shelling out more money for tickets _ they just wouldn’t get an unexpected discount, courtesy of Congress.
Several federal travel taxes expired when Congress adjourned for the weekend without passing FAA legislation. Lawmakers couldn’t break a stalemate over a Republican proposal to make it harder for airline and railroad workers to unionize.
Air traffic controllers stayed on the job, but thousands of other FAA employees were likely to be furloughed.
Airlines stopped collecting a 7.5 percent ticket tax, a separate excise tax of $3.70 per takeoff and landing, and other fees. Those add up to about $32 on a round-trip itinerary with base fare of $240 and one stop in each direction.
Other government fees for security and local airport projects are still being collected. They boost the final cost of that $240 base-fare ticket to $300.
Passengers who bought tickets before this weekend but travel during the FAA shutdown could be entitled to a refund of the taxes that they paid, said Treasury Department spokeswoman Sandra Salstrom. She said it’s unclear whether the government can keep taxes for travel at a time when it doesn’t have authority to collect the money.
London’s departing police chief revealed Tuesday that 10 of the 45 press officers in his department used to work for News International, but he denied there are any improper links between the force and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
Paul Stephenson was giving evidence to a committee of lawmakers investigating wrongdoing at the now-shuttered tabloid News of the World, and allegations of bribery and collusion between Murdoch employees and the police.
“I understand that there are 10 members of the (Department of Public Affairs) staff who have worked in News International in the past, in some cases journalists, in some cases undertaking work experience with the organization,” he said.
News International is the British newspaper division of Murdoch’s global News Corp.
Stephenson denied wrongdoing, or knowing the News of the World was engaged in phone hacking _ but acknowledged that in retrospect he was embarrassed the force had hired Neil Wallis, a former executive of the paper, as a PR consultant,
After being asked about his relationship with Wallis, who was arrested last week, Stephenson said he had “no reason to connect Wallis with phone hacking” when he was hired for the part-time job in 2009.
He said now that the scale of phone hacking at the paper has emerged, it’s “embarrassing” that Wallis worked for the police.
Stephenson announced his resignation Sunday, saying allegations about his contacts with Murdoch’s News International were a distraction from his job.
He was followed out the door by assistant commissioner John Yates, who gave evidence before a hotly anticipated appearance by Rupert Murdoch, his son James and the media mogul’s former U.K. newspaper chief, Rebekah Brooks.
Yates said that with the benefit of hindsight he would have re-opened an inquiry into electronic eavesdropping of voicemail messages.
Yates said if he “knew now” how the phone hacking scandal would enfold, he would have done something different.
He has denied wrongdoing in the scandal.
Rupert Murdoch’s car was mobbed by photographers as he arrived for a grilling from U.K. lawmakers about the phone hacking scandal that has swept from his media empire through the London police and even to the prime minister’s office.
The elder Murdoch’s Range Rover was surrounded as he arrived at the Houses of Parliament three hours early, and it quickly drove off. The vehicle returned to Parliament about half an hour before the hearing was due to start.
Politicians will be seeking more details about the scale of criminality at the News of the World, while the Murdochs will try to avoid incriminating themselves or doing more harm to their business without misleading Parliament, which is a crime.
Lawmakers are also holding a separate hearing to question London police about reports that officers took bribes from journalists to provide inside information for tabloid scoops and to ask why the force decided to shut down an earlier phone hacking probe after charging only two people.
Detectives reopened the case earlier this year and are looking at a potential 3,700 victims.
London’s Metropolitan Police force said Tuesday it had asked watchdog to investigate its head of public affairs over the scandal _ the fifth senior police official being investigated. The Independent Police Complaints Commission will look at Dick Fedorcio’s role in hiring a former News of the World executive as an adviser to the police.
Fedorcio also was questioned by lawmakers Tuesday, along with Stephenson and Yates.
It was the appearance by the Murdochs and Brooks that was drawing huge public interest.
Members of the public and journalists lined up hours ahead of time in hope of a spot in the small committee room, which holds about 40 people. More will be able to watch in an overspill room, and Britain’s TV news channels are anticipating high ratings for the appearance.
Prime Minister David Cameron cut short a visit to Africa and is expected to return to Britain for an emergency session Wednesday of Parliament on the scandal.
A former News of the World reporter, Sean Hoare, who helped blow the whistle on the scandal, was found dead Monday in his home quick pay day loan. Police said the death was “unexplained” but is not being treated as suspicious. A post-mortem was being conducted Tuesday. Hoare was in his late forties.
Brooks’ spokesman, David Wilson, said police had been handed a bag containing a laptop and papers that belong to her husband, former racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks. Wilson said the bag did not contain anything related to the phone hacking scandal and he expected police to return it soon.
The bag was found dumped in an underground parking lot near the couple’s home on Monday, but it was unclear how exactly it got there. Wilson said Tuesday that a friend of Charlie Brooks had meant to drop the bag off, but he would say only he left it in the “wrong place.”
Murdoch shut down the News of the World tabloid that Brooks once edited after it was accused of hacking into the voice mail of celebrities, politicians, other journalists and even murder victims. Still, the closure has done little to end a string of revelations about the murky ties between British politics and the country’s tabloid media.
The scandal has prompted the resignation and subsequent arrest of Brooks and the resignation of Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton, sunk Murdoch’s dream of taking full control of lucrative satellite broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting and raised questions about his ability to keep control of his global media empire.
Rupert Murdoch is eager to stop the crisis from spreading to the United States, where many of his most lucrative assets _ including the Fox TV network, 20th Century Fox film studio, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post _ are based.
In New York, News Corp. appointed commercial lawyer Anthony Grabiner to run its Management and Standards Committee, which will deal with the scandal. But News Corp. board member Thomas Perkins told The Associated Press that the 80-year-old Murdoch has the full support of the company’s board of directors, and it was not considering elevating Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey to replace Murdoch as CEO of News Corp.
News Corp.’s widely traded Class A shares fell 68 cents to $14.97 Monday _ down 17 percent since the scandal reignited on July 4.
Britain’s Independent Police Complaints Commission also is looking into the phone hacking and police bribery claims, including one that Yates inappropriately helped get a job for the daughter of Wallis. Wallis has been arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications.
London police also confirmed that they once employed a second former News of the World employee besides Wallis. Alex Marunchak had been employed as a Ukrainian language interpreter with access to highly sensitive police information between 1980 and 2000, the Metropolitan Police said.
The police force said it recognized “that this may cause concern and that some professions may be incompatible with the role of an interpreter,” adding that the matter will be looked into.
Meanwhile, Internet hackers took aim at Murdoch late Monday, defacing the sites of his other U.K. tabloid, The Sun, and shutting down website of The Times of London. Visitors to The Sun website were redirected to a page featuring a story saying Murdoch’s dead body had been found in his garden.
Internet hacking collective Lulz Security took responsibility for that hacking attack via Twitter, calling it a successful part of “Murdoch Meltdown Monday.”
Lulz Security, which has previously claimed hacks on major entertainment companies, FBI partner organizations and the CIA, hinted that more was yet to come, saying “This is only the beginning.”
It later took credit for shutting down News International’s corporate website. Another hacking collective known as Anonymous claimed the cyberattack on The Times’ website.
__
Danica Kirka and Bob Barr contributed to this report.
Meera Selva can be reached at http://twitter.com/Meera_Selva.
Jill Lawless can be reached at http://twitter.com/JillLawless
An unexpected drop in hiring put an end to the excitement that had been bubbling up on Wall Street over the past two weeks.
Stock indexes fell sharply Friday, erasing most of the week’s gains, after the government reported that U.S. employers created the fewest number of jobs in nine months. The 18,000 net jobs in created in June were a fraction of what many economists expected and dampened hopes that the economy was improving. Private companies added jobs at the slowest pace in more than a year. The unemployment rate edged up to 9.2 percent, its highest level this year.
A broader measure of weakness in the labor market was even worse. Among Americans who want to work, 16.2 percent are either unemployed or unable to find full-time jobs. That was up from 15.8 percent in May.
“There’s just a lot more evidence than before that we’re in an extended weak patch,” said Brian Gendreau, market strategist for Cetera Financial Group. He said private economists will likely reduce their projections for overall economic growth this year.
The Standard and Poor’s 500 index fell 9.42 points, or 0.7 percent, to 1,343.80. That eliminated the index’s gains from Thursday and left it with a 0.3 percent gain for the week.
The Dow Jones industrial average lost 62.29, or 0.5 percent, to 12,657.20. The Dow, which had been down by as much as 150 points Friday, had only its second down day over the past nine. The Nasdaq composite dropped 12.85, or 0.4 percent, to 2,859.81. It was its first loss in two weeks.
Companies whose business would be most affected by a weakening economy were hit hardest. Bank of America Corp., General Electric Co. and Boeing Co. were among the biggest decliners in the Dow average.
“The chance of a July bounce back in the economy looks pretty slim now,” said Jay Tyner, president of Semmax Financial Group in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Expectations for Friday’s jobs report were raised Thursday after payroll processor ADP said that private companies added more than 150,000 jobs in June. While the ADP report does not always accurately predict the broader Labor Department report, some investors said that the apparent clashing pictures of the job market were due to a jobs pickup in the last weeks of June.
Phil Orlando, chief market strategist at Federated Investors, said he believes manufacturers began rehiring workers in late June following signs that Japan’s economy was improving. Hiring slumped in May due partly to high fuel prices and disruptions of industrial supplies because of the earthquake and tsunami disasters in Japan guaranteed online payday loans.
Traders rushed to the relative safety of government bonds. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.01 percent from 3.19 percent just before the jobs report came out. Bond yields fall when demand for them increases.
Oil prices fell 2.5 percent. The slowdown in hiring suggested that demand for fuel will increase less than traders had expected. Lower fuel prices could eventually help the economy by leaving consumers with more money to spend on things other than gas.
Weak economic data this spring pushed stocks near their lowest levels of the year two weeks ago. Markets recovered last week, giving the Dow its best week in two years, on signals that the economy was rebounding. Stock indexes closed near their 2011 highs on Thursday.
Despite the weak job market, analysts still expect earnings at big U.S. companies to be strong. Companies are benefiting from export growth as the weak dollar makes American goods cheaper, and therefore more competitive, in overseas markets. Aluminum maker Alcoa Inc., one of the 30 companies in the Dow average, will be the first major corporation to report second-quarter financial results on Monday.
Orlando, the market strategist, said investors will be looking to see how companies have responded to higher commodity costs and a shortage of parts from Japan. “It’s not going to be an earnings season where you can have a blanket proclamation regarding how companies are doing this time around,” he said.
In other company news, Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate News Corp. fell nearly 4 percent as a phone-hacking scandal at its News of the World tabloid deepened. A former editor of the paper who later served as spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron was arrested Friday. News Corp. shuttered the 168-year old paper on Thursday in hopes of saving its deal to take over the lucrative British satellite TV company British Sky Broadcasting. Government approval of that deal will now be delayed because of the crisis, which has shocked Britain.
The Dow rose 0.6 for the week, the Nasdaq 1.6 percent.
Two stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was lighter than average at 3.1 billion shares.
As the jobless rate inches up and the economic recovery sputters, investors looking for a few good stocks may want to follow the money _ or rather the TV, the beloved Fender guitar, the baubles from grandma, the wedding ring.
Profits at pawn shop operator Ezcorp Inc. have jumped by an average 46 percent annually for five years. The stock has doubled from a year ago, to about $38. And the Wall Street pros who analyze the company think it will go higher yet. All seven of them are telling investors to buy the Austin, Texas, company.
Is the economy still just in a soft patch? A hard patch? Will the market rise or drop? Even experts are just guessing. In investing, it’s often better to focus on what you can safely predict, even if that safety is found in companies that thrive on hard times. One good bet: The jobless aren’t likely to find work anytime soon. And companies profiting from their bad fortune will continue to do so.
Among them:
_ Stock in payday lender Advance America Cash Advance Centers (AEA) has doubled from a year ago, to just under $8. Rival Cash America International Inc. (CSH) is up 64 percent, to $58. Such firms typically provide high interest loans _ due on payday _ to people who can’t borrow from traditional lenders.
_ Profits at Encore Capital Group, a debt collector that targets people with unpaid credit cards bills and other debts, rose nearly 50 percent last year. Encore has faced class action suits in several states, including California, over its collection practices. The Minnesota attorney general filed a suit in March. No matter. The stock (ECPG) is up 59 percent from a year ago, to more than $30.
_ Stock in Rent-A-Center (RCII), which leases televisions, couches, computers and more, is up 57 percent from a year ago to nearly $32. Nine of the 11 analysts covering the company say it will rise further and that investors should buy it.
The idea of investing in companies catering to the hard-up might not be palatable to some people. But it is profitable.
Mark Montagna, an analyst at Avondale Partners in Nashville, has developed what he calls “value retail” index of 11 companies _ dollar stores, off-price shops and clothing and footwear chains favored by shoppers looking for deals. The index is up 149 percent since February 2009, which marked the lowest month-end closing value for the S&P 500 during the recession.
Desperation stocks continue to be lifted by a drumbeat of bad news. Consumer spending, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for two months in a row _ the first back-to-back fall since November 2009. On Friday, the government reported the unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent in June, sending stocks in tailspin. On top of that, one in seven Americans now live below the poverty line, a 17-year high.
“It’s been a good year,” says John Coffey Jr., a Sterne Agee analyst, referring to the companies he follows, not the economy. Coffey created a stir late last month when he issued a report arguing shares of Ezcorp (EZPW), which also makes payday loans, were worth a third more than their price and urged investors to buy. The stock rose 7 percent in just a few hours.
The next day a widely followed survey showed consumer confidence at a seven month low.
“Here we are celebrating the second year of recovery and confidence is at levels consistent with a recession,” says David Rosenberg, an economist at money manager Gluskin Sheff. “The folks in the survey are probably not the same folks shopping at Tiffany’s.” (That company’s stock is also up nearly 50 percent since March, to about $82.)
But they probably are shopping at Dollar General Corp. Stock in the discount retailer recently hit $34.13, up 50 percent from its IPO in late 2009. And it may be worth about a third more, at least according Avondale’s Montagna.
“People are broke. They’re all chasing value. It’s a seismic shift in mindset,” he says.
Some experts think these down-and-out stocks are just as likely to fall now instead of rise. It’s not that they think the recovery will turn brisk and people will get jobs and shop elsewhere. It’s that things could get worse _ making customers too poor to borrow or buy even from these outfits. Rent-A-Center, the furniture store, is already suffering. Some of its core low-income shoppers have seen money they would have spent leasing a couch or cocktail table eaten up by rising food and fuel bills.
But not to despair. According to Nick Mitchell, an analyst at Northcoast Research, wealthier customers, say those making $45,000, are feeling so strapped lately that they’re starting to rent furniture, too.
Montagna, the Dollar General bull, says he’s seeing people earning $70,000 or more at that chain, too. Even he shops there now.
“If I’m driving past one, I stop in,” he says, adding triumphantly, “I just bought toothpaste _ Crest _ two tubes for $4.”
Britain’s phone hacking scandal reached a new intensity Wednesday as the scope of tabloid intrusion into private voicemails became more clear: Murder victims. Terror victims. Film stars. Sports figures. Politicians. The royal family’s entourage.
Almost no one, it seems, was safe from the reporters and investigators toiling for a tabloid determined to beat its rivals, whatever it takes.
The focal point was the News of the World tabloid, which faced a growing advertising boycott from major firms over the alleged phone hacking, and the top executives of its parent companies: Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, and her boss, media potentate Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch on Wednesday released a statement indicating that Brooks would continue to lead his British newspaper operation despite calls for her resignation.
The breathtaking scandal, which has already touched the offices of Prime Minister David Cameron and the London Police, widened as News International provided police with evidence that the tabloid had made illegal payments to police officers in its quest for information. Possible victims cited those payments to police as the reasons why an earlier police inquiry did not begin to turn up the extent of the hacking.
The list of potential victims grew as well. New revelations emerged Wednesday that the phones of relatives of people killed in the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks on London’s transit system, as well those tied to slain schoolgirls, may also have been targeted.
The true extent of the hacking is not yet clear _ and may not be known for months as inquiries unfold.
Graham Foulkes, whose son died in the terrorist attacks, was told by police that he was on a list of potential hacking victims.
“I just felt stunned and horrified,” Foulkes told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I find it hard to believe someone could be so wicked and so evil, and that someone could work for an organization that even today is trying to defend what they see as normal practices.”
Foulkes, who was to mourn his son Thursday on the sixth anniversary of the attack, said a completely independent investigation was needed because new information showed that the police were compromised by accepting “bribes” from the tabloid.
“The police are now implicated,” he said. “The prime minister must have an independent inquiry and all concerned should be prosecuted.”
Foulkes also demanded the resignation of Brooks, the former News of the World editor who is now chief executive of News International, the U.K. newspaper division of Murdoch’s News Corp. media empire. News Corp. owns a swath of newspapers, including News of the World, the Sun, and the Wall Street Journal.
“She’s gotta go,” Foulkes said. “She cannot say, oops, sorry, we’ve been caught out. Of course she’s responsible for the ethos and practices of her department. Her position is untenable.”
Yet Brooks, one of the most powerful women in British journalism, maintains she did not know about the phone hacking and has declared she will continue to direct the company.
Foulkes also challenged Murdoch _ a global media titan with vast newspaper, television, movie and book publishing interests in the United States, Britain, Australia and elsewhere _ to meet with him to discuss the gross intrusion into his privacy.
“I doubt he’s brave enough to face me,” said Foulkes.
In Parliament, lawmakers held an emergency debate to call for the prosecution of those responsible for hacking into the phone of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old murder victim, and others.
The Dowler case touched a raw national nerve because the paper is accused of hampering the police investigation by deleting some of Milly’s phone messages, and giving them and her parents false hope that she was still alive after she was abducted in 2002 personal business card.
Cameron called for inquiries into the News of the World’s behavior as well as into the failure of the police’s original phone hacking inquiry, which did not uncover the allegations now emerging.
“We are no longer talking here about politicians and celebrities, we are talking about murder victims, potentially terrorist victims, having their phones hacked into,” Cameron said. “It is absolutely disgusting, what has taken place, and I think everyone in this House and indeed this country will be revolted by what they have heard.”
Ordinary Britons were equally horrified.
“It’s disgusting,” said Danny Wright, 25, of Liverpool. “It’s heartless and inconsiderate that they’d do it to victims and family of murder victims.”
He said it was wrong to hack into celebrities’ phones but far worse to do it to victims’ families “because of what they’ve been through.”
According to opposition Labour Party lawmaker Tom Watson, an April 2002 story in the News of the World made a specific reference to messages that had been left on Milly’s voicemail.
Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors, said the Dowler case was crucial.
“That’s why the case has gotten so big,” he said. “If celebrities or politicians have their phones intercepted, that’s one thing. But the idea that they were doing this while a little girl was missing and a police inquiry was going on makes it a really gross intrusion.”
Satchwell said the hacking has become politically sensitive not only because Cameron’s communications chief Andy Coulson was forced to resign earlier this year because of his previous stewardship of the tabloid, but also because lawmakers opposed to Murdoch’s growing media power in Britain want to slow down his takeover of other properties.
He said the hacking of Dowler’s phone was revealed just as government regulators are preparing to decide whether Murdoch can take full control of British Sky Broadcasting.
“You have to ask yourself why that happened right now,” Satchwell said, cautioning that the public has yet to see clear evidence of illegal phone hacking except for two News of the World employees _ reporter Clive Goodman and investigator Glenn Mulcaire _ who have already served time in jail.
When police arrested Mulcaire, they seized 11,000 pages of notes, including the phone numbers of many suspected hacking victims. But police, still investigating, have in most cases not yet made clear who was actually hacked.
News of the World executives have admitted wrongdoing and offered cash settlements to a number of its victims.
The scandal has its roots in the tabloid’s efforts to scoop its competitors with news about the royal family. Representatives of the royals complained to police in late 2005 with suspicions that some of their voicemails had been hacked into.
Tabloid executives claimed at the time the two were rogue employees but that assertion has been undermined by a series of arrests at the newspaper earlier this year and by the company’s willingness to settle with other victims.
The tabloid’s parent company, News International, has insisted it is working closely with police and has a zero-tolerance policy for any wrongdoing or sketchy tactics.
Several companies hastily pulled ads Wednesday from the News of the World amid the public uproar.
Virgin Holidays canceled several ads due to run in the Sunday newspaper this week. Car makers Ford UK and Vauxhall and Halifax bank also said they have suspended advertising.
Mumsnet _ a popular online community for mothers _ removed ads from Murdoch broadcaster Sky after its members complained about the tabloid hacking.
President Barack Obama prodded Congress Tuesday to make a deal within the next two weeks on raising the nation’s borrowing limit, and he said he was summoning leaders of both parties to the White House this week to try to get it done.
Obama said he opposed any effort to “kick the can down the road” with a short-term increase, as suggested by some lawmakers _ though he stopped short of ruling that out. He reiterated his position that any deal must include not only spending cuts but also new revenue _ tax increases already ruled out by Republicans.
“We need to come together over the next two weeks to reach a deal that reduces the deficit and upholds the full faith and credit of the United States government and the credit of the American people,” Obama said at the White House.
“We’ve made progress, and I believe that greater progress is within sight, but I don’t what to fool anybody _ we still have to work through real differences,” the president said.
He said congressional leaders were being invited to meet Thursday at the White House need a personal loan with bad credit.
Obama spoke as the Aug. 2 deadline for raising the nation’s borrowing limit came closer. Experts say lawmakers must waste no time in making a deal if they are to have any chance of getting it finalized and passed through both chambers of Congress in time.
Despite the president’s optimism, it remained unclear where compromise could be found. Republicans are insisting they will note vote to raise the debt limit without major spending cuts; Democrats are refusing to sign off on cuts of such magnitude without at least some tax increases as well. Republicans say they won’t sign off on any tax hikes at all, including those Obama wants targeting the wealthiest Americans or closing loopholes to corporations.
The administration says that if the government’s borrowing limit is not increased by Aug. 2, the U.S. will face its first default ever, potentially throwing financial markets into turmoil.
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