An aide to the British PM is now the subject of an inquiry into a phone hacking scandal involving the British Royal Family and one of Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloids.

LONDON – A key aide to Prime Minister David Cameron will be questioned by police over allegations a major British tabloid illegally eavesdropped on politicians and celebrities — including the British princes, a senior Scotland Yard officer said Tuesday.

via UK police likely to quiz PM’s aide over hacking – Yahoo! News.

But there is more to this fight than meets the eye because it involves some of the biggest players in the news business.  On the one hand you have Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and on the other, the New York Times.  Murdoch and The Times are engaged in a savage battle for dominance in New York. By sending their team to unearth dirt on Murdoch’s operations, The Times are playing an interesting game of hardball.

To get a deeper understanding of the unfolding drama check out Michael Wolff’s piece here.

According to police reports, two men and a woman are in custody this morning facing a number of serious charges in connection with an overnight incident at the Shangri-La condominiums in the 1100 block of Alberni Street.

via Vancouver Cops Rescue Kidnap Victim from Shangri-La | NowPublic News Coverage.

If Rupert Murdoch was hoping paywalls were going to save his newpapers he’s probably in for a let down.

Annual income per paywall subscriber on TheTimes.co.uk and WSJ.com is just a quarter that from subscribers to UK quality dailies’ print editions, Enders Analysis’ Benedict Evans observes in a new note.

Switching off the presses, after a hypothetical future print-to-digital tipping point, might save newspapers 25 percent of their total costs—but this is not enough to make up the gap from the smaller online income, Evans says.

via Analyst: Paywall Subscribers Worth A Quarter Of Print Readers | paidContent.

When you get bored of twitter, and you’ve got an iPad you should check out Longform.org.

Sometimes war can be a beautiful thing.

The iPad is about to get some company.

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, a 7-inch Android slate, is set to debut this Thursday. While we’ve been hearing about the rush of Android tablets for some time now, the Galaxy Tab is arguably the first high-end Android tablet to hit the market and thus the first real contender to Apple’s “magical” device.

via Samsung Galaxy Tab vs. the iPad: The Tablet Battle Begins – Yahoo! News.

One of Wonkette’s best pieces to-date:

“Glenn Beck,” a longtime collaborative performance art project run by a team of situationist pranksters, has moved into its next phase! Not content with posting dadaist nonsense on the GlennBeck.com URL — so on the nose! — the team acquired TheBlaze.com (the name refers to the power of flame to cleanse away man’s attempt to impose rationality on the world) as a repository for their more experimental word-collage work. “Explicit Poetry GPS Phones Help Illegals!” the chief Glenn Beck creative directors shouted, as the writing staff snapped their fingers and rattled bongos.

via Glenn Beck Launches Beatnik Wordplay Site.