No charges against Guardian reporter

Amelia Hill, a reporter who helped break the story of the hacking of a missing schoolgirl's phone, faces no criminal charges, officials said Tuesday. The Crown Prosecution Service said the police officer who leaked information to Hill also will be spared, The Guardian reported. The story in The Guardian that a private detective working for the News of the World, a tabloid owner Rupert Murdoch has since shut down, had hacked into the cellphone of Milly Dowler fueled public outrage over hacking. Milly, 13, was found dead a few months after she disappeared in 2002. Investigators interviewed Hill last year under caution, which is often a preliminary to charges. But Alison Levitt, a lawyer advising the director of public prosecutions, said charges would not serve the public interest. "There is no evidence that the police officer was paid any money for the information he provided," she said. "Moreover, the information disclosed by the police officer, although confidential, was not highly sensitive. It did not expose anyone to a risk of injury or death. It did not compromise the investigation. And the information in question would probably have made it into the public domain by some other means, albeit at some later stage."