Brooks cleared as Coulson found guilty of hacking

Rebekah Brooks — the former boss of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper arm in Britain — was acquitted of orchestrating a campaign to hack into phones and bribe officials in a case that has shaken the British political establishment.

A jury at London’s Old Bailey court cleared Brooks unanimously but found Andy Coulson, her former lover and prime minister David Cameron’s ex-media chief, guilty of conspiring to intercept messages to break news about royalty, celebrities and victims of crime.

The jury is still deliberating over whether Coulson sanctioned illegal payments to public officials to generate lurid exclusives for the News of the World, which was Britain’s biggest-selling title until the scandal forced its closure.