2000Rebekah Wade is appointed editor of News of the World.
2002Teenager Milly Dowler's remains are found in September.
2003Wade (pictured) becomes editor of the Sun. She tells a parliamentary committee her paper paid police for information.
2005The Sunday tabloid publishes a story on Prince William's knee injury, prompting complaints by royal staff about voicemail messages being intercepted. The complaints spark a police inquiry.
2007The News of the World'sroyal affairs editor Clive Goodman is jailed for four months for listening to voicemail messages left for royal officials. His accomplice, private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, gets six months. Editor Andy Coulson resigns.
2009Wade becomes chief executive of News International.
April 2011 News of the Worldchief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and sacked senior editor Ian Edmondson are arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept phone messages. They are released on bail. The paper admits its role.
July 2011A lawyer for Dowlers family says he learned from police that the schoolgirls voicemail messages had been hacked while police were searching for her. Police say they are in touch with the parents affected by the 2002 murders in the town of Soham, where two 10-year-old girls were killed by a school caretaker. The list of possible targets include victims of the London suicide bombings of 2005, and the parents of missing girl Madeleine McCann.
July 6Prime minister David Cameron says he will order an inquiry. Murdoch appoints News Corp executive Joel Klein to oversee an investigation into the allegations. New claims reported by the Daily Telegraphsay the tabloid hacked into the phones of relatives of British soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
July 7News Corporation announces it will close down the News of the World.– (Reuters)