Jenna von Oy Blogs: All's Fair In Love (and Raising Kids)

One of my valentines – Lila McCann Photography

Celebrity blogger Jenna von Oy is a new mama!

Best known for her roles as Six on Blossom and Stevie on The Parkers, von Oy is also a musician who has released two albums and is set to publish a book, The Betweeners.

von Oy, 35, wed Brad Bratcher on Oct. 10, 2010, and resides in Nashville with her husband and five dogs.

They welcomed their first child, daughter Gray Audrey, on May 21. She is now 8 months old.

In her latest blog, von Oy reflects on the memorable events and observations that have made her realize what loving a child truly is.

You can find her on Facebook and Twitter @JennavonOy, as well as posting on her weekly blog, The Cradle Chronicles.

Author’s Note: This month’s post officially marks my one-year anniversary of blogging for PEOPLE.com. I have loved — and continue to love — every moment of sharing the motherhood experience with all of you. Thank you for being a part of this adventure with me! Here’s to many more … — Jenna

I know a plethora of folks out there regard Valentine’s Day as a meaningless “holiday.” There are those who feel it is an overrated day of commercial benefit, perpetuated by greeting card companies and chocolate manufacturers, and I suppose they may not be entirely off-base.

After all, do we need a calendar to tell us when to give flowers, or candy, or paper hearts? Is it necessary to oversaturate the market with tangible items meant to represent something completely intangible?

While I respect those who stand staunchly by that viewpoint, I prefer not to be quite so cynical about the whole deal. Instead, I choose to see the day as a not-so-gentle nudge in the right direction for those who aren’t as romantically inclined by nature. I believe that romance is a learned habit and doesn’t come easily for everyone out there.

I realize, for instance, that in asking some men to sit down for a candlelit dinner, you might as well be asking if you can inflict them with the bubonic plague. I suspect Feb. 14th incites a perpetual “deer in the headlights” look from spouses across America, as they tear their hair out over finding a token keepsake that says, “I love you” with just the right amount of pizzazz.

The thought of coming up with gift ideas makes many a husband break out in a massive case of hives, God bless them.

But there are gifts that can’t be wrapped and sentiments that a Hallmark card can’t write for us. They generally come in the form of unconditional love, support, affection and intimate moments shared while the kids are asleep. And, in my book, they are the most treasured gifts one can give or receive.

All of the silly lollipops and forget-me-nots aside, I think Valentine’s Day is a good time to articulate our appreciation. It’s an opportunity to reflect on the little things that endear us to one another, that made us fall in love to begin with. Which brings me to…

Happy – Courtesy Jenna von Oy

I certainly don’t want to diminish the feelings any of us have for our significant others, but I believe Valentine’s Day is about love in all capacities, rather than just a romantic one. On May 21st of 2012, when my daughter was born, my husband and I fell in love all over again — with our baby girl, as well as with each other.

We are celebrating our parental love this Valentine’s Day too, because its depth has propelled us into an entirely different stratosphere. The feelings we have for Gray are limitless, overwhelming and instinctual. Though our love for her is unquantifiable, it is somewhat measured by the small moments that resonate in a big way.

Those instances have taken many forms; they’ve been hilarious, gut-wrenching, terrifying, wonderful, smile-worthy, tear-inducing and poignant … sometimes all at once!

So, in honor of the first Valentine’s Day we get to be in love as a family, I have compiled a list of some of the memorable events and observations that have made us realize what loving a child truly is. It is by no means comprehensive (we’ve only been parents for eight months, after all), but it’s a start!

Since laughter is a form of sharing love, I’ve stuck to mostly tongue-in-cheek examples. Hopefully you’ll giggle along with us as you reminisce about some of your own love-inspiring anecdotes.

A big hug of thanks to my mom, who contributed some of her experiences as well. Please feel free to leave your own additions in the comment section that follows!

Valentine’s – Courtesy Jenna von Oy

Love Is…

1. Slobbery baby kisses.

2. Knowing you’d go through another nine months of praying to the porcelain god, puffing up like a French pastry, breaking out in acne and mysterious rashes, suffering through back pain, craving pickles and ice cream, (insert your own personal hell here…) and feeling like you’ve been lifting weights from your breasts, if it meant having another child who’s as perfect as the one in your arms.

3. Inviting in the dawn of a new media decade — a.k.a. forgoing your favorite car playlist to listen to Winnie the Pooh music, and swapping out that episode of Scandal you Tivo’d in exchange for back-to-back episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba.

4. Becoming best friends with the unholy trinity — poop, puke and snot.

5. Having the covers stolen, freezing your butt off all night, then somehow winding up in the co-sleeper because your child is a nighttime nomad.

6. Trading in your party dress and stilettos for practical shoes and clothes that don’t purport to be “dry clean only.”

7. Knowing the words to every Disney song better than your child does. (Are there bonus points for dressing up like the princess who sings them?)

8. Learning that Play-Doh is not easily removed from carpets, and walls are not an ideal medium for crayon drawings.

9. Bundling your child in so much winter paraphernalia that they resemble the Michelin Man, but forgetting to put your own coat on.

10. Loving and admiring your spouse even more, because he or she is such a phenomenal parent.

11. Gladly trading in wine night with the girls to read Goodnight Moon for the hundredth time.

12. Allowing yourself to become a human jungle gym … and scratching post … and teething toy.

13. Treasuring the fact that your child is still asleep in your arms, even though your arms have gone to sleep too.

14. Praying the good in the world outweighs the bad, and your child’s innocence lasts longer than a marshmallow Peep in your pantry.

15. Saving for your child’s college fund, instead of getting a new fall wardrobe.

16. Accepting that your nipples have become a part-time taffy pull, and it’s worth it for the incredible bonding of breastfeeding. (As a side note, this is nothing against those of you who don’t breastfeed … I support you either way!)

17. Discovering that your idea of a Friday night out on the town now entails root beer, Tater Tots and tickets to Sesame Street on Ice.

18. Being overly excited about the prospect of potty training.

19. Finding redeeming qualities during the terrible twos. And the terrible threes. And…

20. Making up annoying ditties about everything from changing stinky diapers to taking naps, just to see your kid smile.

21. Discovering that sleep is a privilege. After all, you might be getting less than you did in college, but the rewards are 10 times greater than passing your exams.

22. Going to Disneyland and enduring endless rotations of “It’s a Small World.”

23. Knowing that you will never have your own ice cream cone again.

24. Crying along with your child when they get hurt for the first time.

25. Giving up your attachment to anything breakable, discovering that your plants are much shorter than they used be, and accepting that your home now serves as one giant toy box.

26. Sporting spit up on your blouse, and hoping it becomes en vogue on the fashion runways this year. What, you’re saying vomit isn’t the new black?

27. Scaring away imaginary monsters under the bed, knowing there are real ones out there in the world, and doing your best to protect your child from all of them.

28. Being excited to go to sleep at night so you can cuddle together; being excited to wake up in the morning so you can laugh together.

29. Making seven loops around the mall at Christmastime, just to find the beloved giraffe pacifier that mysteriously disappeared from the stroller.

30. Knowing you’ll never be on time again (or in my mom’s case, appreciating that you now have an excuse for why you aren’t…)

31. Acknowledging that drool has replaced Aqua Net as your favorite hair product, and your locks double as an “oh #@$&” handle for your infant.

32. Dragging three kids on a train ride to New York, and realizing you’ll never be the same afterwards … For that matter, neither will the passengers who sat anywhere near you. (God bless you for braving that, Mom!)

33. Packing half the nursery for a road trip: changes of clothing, diapers, wipes, teethers, books, a sippy cup and everything else you can think of, only to realize you’re driving in your slippers.

34. Thinking it’s cute when your baby burps loudly during a church service.

35. Noticing an hour has gone by, and all you’ve accomplished is gazing intently at your sleeping child.

36. Crying at the end of The Velveteen Rabbit, because you finally understand what “being real” is.

37. Loving every second of the experiences listed above, and realizing they don’t mean that you’ve lost sight of who you are … they mean you’ve found the best parts of you.

Day! – Courtesy Jenna von Oy

Wishing you a Valentine’s Day filled with love … no matter what form it takes.

Until next time,

– Jenna von Oy

More from Jenna’s PEOPLE.com blog series:

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Morning-after pill use up to 1 in 9 younger women

NEW YORK (AP) — About 1 in 9 younger women have used the morning-after pill after sex, according to the first government report to focus on emergency contraception since its approval 15 years ago.

The results come from a survey of females ages 15 to 44. Eleven percent of those who'd had sex reported using a morning-after pill. That's up from 4 percent in 2002, only a few years after the pills went on the market and adults still needed a prescription.

The increased popularity is probably because it is easier to get now and because of media coverage of controversial efforts to lift the age limit for over-the-counter sales, experts said. A prescription is still required for those younger than 17 so it is still sold from behind pharmacy counters.

In the study, half the women who used the pills said they did it because they'd had unprotected sex. Most of the rest cited a broken condom or worries that the birth control method they used had failed.

White women and more educated women use it the most, the research showed. That's not surprising, said James Trussell, a Princeton University researcher who's studied the subject.

"I don't think you can go to college in the United States and not know about emergency contraception," said Trussell, who has promoted its use and started a hot line.

One Pennsylvania college even has a vending machine dispensing the pills.

The morning-after pill is basically a high-dose version of birth control pills. It prevents ovulation and needs to be taken within a few days after sex. The morning-after pill is different from the so-called abortion pill, which is designed to terminate a pregnancy.

At least five versions of the morning-after pills are sold in the United States. They cost around $35 to $60 a dose at a pharmacy, depending on the brand.

Since it is sold over-the-counter, insurers generally only pay for it with a doctor's prescription. The new Affordable Care Act promises to cover morning-after pills, meaning no co-pays, but again only with a prescription.

The results of the study were released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's based on in-person interviews of more than 12,000 women in 2006 through 2010. It was the agency's first in-depth report on that issue, said Kimberly Daniels, the study's lead author.

The study also found:

—Among different age groups, women in their early 20s were more likely to have taken a morning-after pill. About 1 in 4 did.

—About 1 in 5 never-married women had taken a morning-after pill, compared to just 1 in 20 married women.

—Of the women who used the pill, 59 percent said they had done it only once, 24 percent said twice, and 17 percent said three or more times.

A woman who uses emergency contraception multiple times "needs to be thinking about a more regular form" of birth control, noted Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that does research on reproductive health.

Also on Thursday, the CDC released a report on overall contraception use. Among its many findings, 99 percent of women who've had sex used some sort of birth control. That includes 82 percent who used birth control pills and 93 percent whose partner had used a condom.

___

Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

Emergency contraception info: http://ec.princeton.edu/index.html

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Wall Street falls on Europe data but deals support

DEAR ABBY: My daughters are attractive young women, both doing well in their professional careers. "Melanie," who is 27, is married to "Sam," an extremely attractive and successful man.My 30-year-old daughter, "Alicia," has been divorced for a year. Her marriage failed two years ago because she and her husband had an appetite for sex outside their marriage. While I was disturbed about that, I was horrified to learn that Melanie allows her sister to occasionally have sex with Sam.Melanie's argument is that Sam is less likely to cheat given this situation. ...

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IHT Rendezvous: Horse Meat Scandal: Is the Era of Cheap Food Over?

LONDON — With Europe’s expanding horse meat scandal escalating from a drama to a crisis, consumers are being warned that the era of cheap food may be over.

In less than a month, the scandal has spread from Ireland, where prepared foods sold as beef products were found to contain horse, to Britain and much of the Continent.

The crisis deepened on Thursday when British officials said tests showed that a powerful equine drug, potentially harmful to human health, may have entered the food chain, my colleague Stephen Castle writes.

As European officials called on Europol, the European police agency, to coordinate investigations into what could turn out to be extensive Continent-wide fraud by criminal gangs, supermarkets in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands became the latest to remove suspect products from their shelves.

Some are already blaming a low-cost food culture for a situation that may have allowed criminals to exploit ever longer and more complex food supply chains to dump cheap horse meat into the market.

The potential illicit profits could be huge. France’s Nouvel Observateur, tracing the possible itinerary of a horse meat lasagne, said that the route from a Romanian abattoir to a French or British supermarket shelf passed through numerous intermediaries with an opportunity to switch horse for beef.

With horse meat two or three times cheaper, the magazine wrote, “the profit from the switch is reckoned to be €300,000 [$400,000] for every 25 tonnes.”

In an era of affluence, Europeans became accustomed to spending a diminishing portion of their weekly household budgets on food. But with strapped families facing tighter budgets at a time of austerity and rising international food prices, the trend has reversed.

Supermarkets have responded by attempting to keep prices down at the expense, according to critics, of content and quality.

“In a highly competitive market our food industry has not changed its business model,” according to Laura Sandys, a Conservative legislator, writing in The Times of London on Thursday. “Instead it has tried to adapt to food inflation by fitting a more expensive product into a cheap price structure.”

Ms. Sandys, concluding that “the era of cheap food is, sadly, over,” said consumers were unwittingly absorbing the rising costs of meat and grain through reductions in quality and quantity.

“So the £1 [$1.55] cottage pie in your local freezer shop will be the same price that it has been for years,” she wrote, “but today will contain less meat and more artificial fillers such as high fructose corn syrup.”

Pamela Robinson, a supply chain expert at the University of Birmingham in Britain, told The Daily Telegraph, that pressure to sell food more and more cheaply had led to the horse meat scandal.

She said supermarkets were going to have to acknowledge food prices needed to go up if they were to guarantee quality. Families also needed to be educated on how to eat healthily on a budget, rather than relying on cheap processed foods that could no longer guarantee quality.

In the midst of the horse meat scandal, some consumers are already voting with their feet.

A poll for the Sky News broadcaster indicated one-in-five British shoppers had changed their buying habits since the scandal broke. More than half of those had abandoned processed meat entirely.

Traditional butcher shops supplying well-sourced but more expensive meat have meanwhile reported a spike in sales of up to 30 percent.

In the spirit of the times, the BBC published a handy guide to healthy alternatives to pre-packaged, industrially processed foods.

The broadcaster’s Hannah Briggs quoted gastronomes who sang the praises of brined ox tongue and beef brisket, adding: “You could also try curing pig cheeks or chaps in salt and seasoning with Indonesian long pepper and herbs.”

But is the European public really ready to return to a mythical age in which a family of four could go for a week on a boiled cow heel or a pot of tripe? Or will we have to adjust to spending more for our food and less on luxuries?

Tell us if you think it’s inevitable, or even sensible, to spend more on our food. How much of your weekly budget goes to feeding the family? And how about some useful alternatives to expensive cuts? Cow heel recipes, anyone?

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HBO exec: Don’t expect a la carte programming any time soon

HBO excited subscribers on Tuesday when it announced during the D: Dive Into Media conference that its HBO GO and MAX GO iOS apps were updated with AirPlay support. The news meant iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users could finally stream content from their devices to Apple TV boxes connected to a television set. Following the announcement, AllThingsD pressed further to determine if the news meant that we might soon see true Apple TV support, or even an a la carte programming option.

[More from BGR: Every 10 years, a cataclysm kills off most phone brands – the next one is almost here]

“Our long-term plan for Go is to be across all devices, and effective today, we will be enabling AirPlay,” HBO President and COO Eric Kessler told AllThingsD, noting that the company indeed plans to support Apple TV “at some point.”

[More from BGR: Apple iWatch: People are getting excited for all the wrong reasons]

Regarding an a la carte option, however, the executive didn’t have good news to share.

“Is there a broadband segment that wants HBO? Yes, of course,” Kessler said. “But when you look at penetration rates, at disconnect rates, at infrastructure and marketing costs, the economics are just not particularly compelling”

Kessler added that the situation may change at some point in the future, but he doesn’t see it happening anytime soon.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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One Direction, Taylor Swift Among Kids' Choice Awards Nominees

By Andrea Billups

02/13/2013 at 08:50 AM EST

One Direction, (from left) Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Harry Styles

Jon Furniss/AP

Time to get slimed!

Wednesday brought the nominations for Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards, set to air March 23 with Josh Duhamel as host.

For favorite musical group, nominees include Big Time Rush, Bon Jovi, Maroon 5 and One Direction. Favorite Song nominees include: "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, "Gagnan Style" by PSY, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift, and "What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction, of which Swift's ex, Harry Styles, is a member.

"We are delighted with our nominations for the Kids' Choice Awards," Styles said in a statement to PEOPLE. "It was amazing to perform 'What Makes You Beautiful' at last year's show. Thank you as always to our incredible fans and supporters!"

Voting opens in 22 categories on nick.com on Thursday, allowing for a little Valentine's Day love for your favorite TV actors, musicians, sports and film stars. New categories added this year include favorite app and favorite villain.

Voters may also mark their ballots on Facebook using embeddable wall posts and on Twitter with custom hashtags.

This year mark's Nickelodeon's 26th annual awards. The show will be broadcast live from the University of Southern California's Galen Center on March 23, starting at 8 p.m. ET, on Nickelodeon, of course.

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Report: Tracking system needed to fight fake drugs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting the problem of fake drugs will require putting medications through a chain of custody like U.S. courts require for evidence in a trial, the Institute of Medicine reported Wednesday.

The call for a national drug tracking system comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors, for the third time in about a year, that it discovered a counterfeit batch of the cancer drug Avastin that lacked the real tumor-killing ingredient.

Fake and substandard drugs have become an increasing concern as U.S. pharmaceutical companies move more of their manufacturing overseas. The risk made headlines in 2008 when U.S. patients died from a contaminated blood thinner imported from China.

The Institute of Medicine report made clear that this is a global problem that requires an international response, with developing countries especially at risk from phony medications. Drug-resistant tuberculosis, for example, is fueled in part by watered-down medications sold in many poor countries.

"There can be nothing worse than for a patient to take a medication that either doesn't work or poisons the patient," said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of health law at Georgetown University who led the IOM committee that studied how to combat the growing problem.

A mandatory drug-tracking system could use some form of barcodes or electronic tags to verify that a medication and the ingredients used to make it are authentic at every step, from the manufacturing of the active ingredient all the way to the pharmacy, he said. His committee examined fakes so sophisticated that health experts couldn't tell the difference between the packaging of the FDA-approved product and the look-alike.

"It's unreliable unless you know where it's been and can secure each point in the supply chain," Gostin said.

Patient safety advocates have pushed for that kind of tracking system for years, but attempts to include it in FDA drug-safety legislation last summer failed.

The report also concluded that:

—The World Health Organization should develop an international code of practice that sets guidelines for monitoring, regulation and law enforcement to crack down on fake drugs.

—States should beef up licensing requirements for the wholesalers and distributors who get a drug from its manufacturer to the pharmacy, hospital or doctor's office.

__Internet pharmacies are a particularly weak link, because fraudulent sites can mimic legitimate ones. The report urged wider promotion of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's online accreditation program as a tool to help consumers spot trustworthy sites.

The Institute of Medicine is an independent organization that advises the government on health matters.

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Wall Street up modestly, extends recent rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose modestly on Wednesday, putting the S&P near its highest intraday level in more than five years as the market's recent streak of slight gains on low volume continued.

Equities have been strong performers of late, buoyed largely by healthy growth in corporate earnings, with the S&P 500 gaining 6.5 percent so far this year. The Dow is about 1 percent from an all-time intraday high, reached in October 2007.

Those gains could leave the market vulnerable to a pullback as investors take profit amid a dearth of new trading catalysts. While analysts continue to see an upward bias in markets, recent daily moves have been small and trading volumes have been light, with the S&P near its highest since November 2007.

"There is a general upward bias, but right now we're at the top of the range we've been in, so we could struggle to advance further," said Paul Nolte, managing director at Dearborn Partners in Chicago.

The S&P 500 was well over its 50-day moving average of 1,460.92, a sign the market could be overbought.

Comcast Corp agreed late Tuesday to buy General Electric Co's remaining 49 percent stake in NBC Universal for $16.7 billion. Comcast jumped 6.3 percent to $41.41 as the S&P's top percentage gainer while Dow component GE was up 3 percent to $23.26.

Deere & Co reported earnings that beat expectations and raised its full-year profit outlook. After initially rallying in premarket trading, the stock fell 0.9 percent to $93.12.

According to the latest Thomson Reuters data, of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 16.44 points, or 0.12 percent, at 14,002.26. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 1.12 points, or 0.07 percent, at 1,520.55. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 4.32 points, or 0.14 percent, at 3,190.81.

The S&P was mere points away from 1,523.57, which would represent the index's highest intraday level since November 1, 2007.

Industrial and construction shares will be in focus following President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday, during which he called for a $50 billion spending plan to create jobs by rebuilding degraded roads and bridges. He also backed higher taxes on the wealthy.

Yahoo Inc Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said Tuesday the company's search partnership with Microsoft Corp was not delivering the market share gains or the revenue boost that it should.

Retail sales rose 0.1 percent in January, as expected, as tax increases and higher gasoline prices restrained spending. Equities were little impacted by the data.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum and Nick Zieminski)

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Six More British Journalists Are Arrested in Hacking Investigation

LONDON – Adding fresh momentum to police investigations that have already cost Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire in Britain hundreds of millions of dollars, Scotland Yard said on Wednesday that six more journalists who previously worked for The News of the World tabloid were arrested at dawn on suspicion of hacking into cellphone messages.

The latest police swoop followed others in the past year that have resulted in the arrests of more than 100 reporters, editors, investigators, executives and public officials by police units investigating suspected criminal activity at British newspapers. Most of those have involved The Sun, Mr. Murdoch’s daily tabloid, and The News of the World, the highly profitable Sunday tabloid he shut down as the scandal broke in July 2011.

In an especially troublesome development for News Corporation, the New York-based parent company of the Murdoch newspapers here, the Scotland Yard statement on the latest arrests said that they involved “a further suspected conspiracy to intercept telephone voice mail messages by a number of employees who worked for the now defunct News of the World newspaper” – in effect, a new break in the police inquiry, involving suspected wrongdoing beyond the wide pattern of phone hacking at the paper that has resulted in 26 previous arrests.

The police statement said that five of the arrests on Wednesday took place in London, and one in Cheshire, a county that lies to the south of the northern city of Manchester. It said those held for questioning included three men and three women, all in their 30s and 40s, none of whom were named. The Sun later confirmed that two of the six were currently working for the newspaper, having taken jobs there after The News of the World closed. The police said the homes of all those arrested were being searched.

Mike Darcey, chief executive of News International, the Murdoch subsidiary that publishes The Sun, e-mailed staff at the paper after the arrests. “As always, I share your concerns about these arrests and recognize the huge burden it places on our journalists in the daily challenge of producing Britain’s most popular newspaper,” he said. “I am extremely grateful to all of you who succeed in that mission despite these very challenging circumstances.”

Scotland Yard gave no details of the alleged conspiracy behind Wednesday’s arrests, beyond saying that the “new lines of inquiry” it was pursuing involved suspected offenses committed in 2005 and 2006. That would place the alleged phone hacking in the same period as the only hacking case against the Murdoch papers that has resulted in convictions so far.

In 2007, The News of the World’s royal editor, Clive Goodman, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, were convicted and jailed – Mr. Goodman for four months and Mr. Mulcaire for six months – after they pleaded guilty to hacking into voice mail messages of members of the royal family.

At the time of the Goodman-Mulcaire trial, and later, Murdoch executives in Britain described the hacking of the royal telephones as a “rogue” incident, and not part of a broader pattern of newsroom wrongdoing.

But a different picture emerged after the police reopened the inquiry in 2011. Subsequently, hundreds of individuals, including celebrities, politicians, sportsmen and crime victims, were informed that their phone messages had been intercepted and many of them sued the Murdoch papers for damages and demanded public apologies.

Once the phone hacking scandal broke, the police inquiry widened to include allegations of bribing public officials, computer hacking and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by concealing or destroying evidence.

Sixty arrests — by far the largest number — have involved alleged conspiracies to bribe police officers and public officials to obtain confidential information on which to build the newspapers’ scoops. Last week, a London court was told that 144 of 169 civil suits against The News of the World had been settled out of court and that substantial but undisclosed damages were paid to the litigants. Those named as having settled their claims included Hugh Grant, the actor; Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York; the magician Uri Geller; a priest, Richard Reardon, who has ministered to the singer Charlotte Church; and an array of minor television and film celebrities.

A lawyer for the hacking victims told the court that 26 damage suits remained active, and that up to 100 new cases were likely to reach the court before News International, the Murdoch newspaper subsidiary in Britain, closes a compensation offer in April. The highest known settlement paid by the company, amounting to the equivalent of about $1.2 million, was paid in 2008 to Gordon Taylor, chief executive of Britain’s soccer players’ union, the Professional Footballers’ Association.

In an action separate from the arrests of the six journalists on Wednesday, Scotland Yard said that a 50-year-old police officer had been arrested at his home in south London by detectives investigating alleged bribes to public officials. The officer was the 60th person to be arrested under a police inquiry known as Operation Elveden, set up as part of the wider investigation of newsroom wrongdoing.

Several police officers are facing criminal corruption charges but the most serious case before the courts so far involves a Defense Ministry official, Bettina Jordan-Barber, 39, who has been charged, along with Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of The News of the World and The Sun, and John Kay, chief reporter for The Sun, with conspiracy to pay Ms. Jordan Barber the equivalent of $160,000 for confidential information.

Scotland Yard’s hacking investigation has resulted in 32 arrests, including the six on Wednesday. Twenty other people have been arrested and questioned in connection with computer hacking and other privacy breaches. Taken together, Scotland Yard has described the investigations, involving about 150 officers and support staff, as the most extensive criminal inquiry in its history.

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HTC teases flagship M7 Android phone, counts down to next week’s unveiling [video]

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