Phone-Hacking Trial 
 
 Rupert Murdoch’s ‘News of the World’ intercepted Kate Middleton and Prince Harry's voicemails, prosecutors alleged in a London court on Thursday. 
 
 Kate Middleton and Prince Harry had their phones hacked by Rupert Murdoch’s biggest selling newspaper, a court in London heard on Thursday. 
 
 
 
 It is the first time the Murdoch media empire has been accused of illegally accessing the phone of a member of the royal family: previous allegations have centered on the hacking of phones used by royal aides. The now-shuttered Sunday tabloid, the News of the World, is accused of accessing Middleton’s voicemails to gain embarrassing personal details about her and Prince William. 
 
 The court heard that a series of private messages that were intended to be shared only by the two young lovers have recently been unearthed as part of the police investigation. "Hi, baby. It's me," began one of the messages left by her then boyfriend, Prince William, in 2006. In another, he calls her "babykins". 
 
 In a message that was allegedly left on Harry’s phone, William, the future King of England assumed a falsetto voice and pretended to be his brother’s girlfriend Chelsy Davy. “I really miss you,” he joked. “Hopefully I'll see you very soon you big hairy fat ginger.” The jury was told by the prosecution lawyer, Anthony Edis QC, about eight voicemail messages recorded by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who has pleaded guilty to a second charge of phone hacking earlier this year. 
 
 
 
 The explosive allegations are the latest in a series of damning claims of corrupt and illegal practices that the prosecution says were endemic at the News of the World. 
 
 In prosecution evidence in mid-November, the jury at the Old Bailey were shown a note seized from Mulcaire on his arrest in 2006, entitled “target evaluation.” Eighteen names were on the list including Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, then private secretary to Prince William and Harry; Helen Asprey, another royal aide; and Mark Dyer, a royal equerry to Charles and his two sons. Recent evidence has alleged the Sunday tabloid targeted Patrick Harverson, Prince Charles’s communications secretary. 
 
 Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge are the highest profile alleged victims of phone hacking to emerge during the first two months in the trial of Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and five others. 
 
 In recent weeks the jury at the Old Bailey in Central London has heard allegations that the tentacles of Murdoch’s newspaper reached right inside Buckingham Palace. When the home of Clive Goodman, the former royal correspondent for News of the World, was raided by police in August 2006, police say they discovered 15 royal phone directories, which listed the numbers of the entire royal family, staff and close friends. The jury have since been shown several timelines of admissions or ‘agreed facts’ between defense and prosecution that show the Sunday tabloid sourced a number of its royal stories from phone hacking. In 2006, the paper accused Prince Harry of cheating in exams at the Sandhurst military academy after a message on his private secretary’s phone was allegedly intercepted. 
 
 However, palace officials were not informed of this apparent security lapse about the royal directories until Goodman’s re-arrest in the light of the phone hacking scandal in 2011. The alleged breaches heard in court on Thursday were the most serious yet. 
 
 
 
 In a transcript of one of the messages, William was quoted as saying to Middleton: “Hi, baby. Um, sorry, I’ve just got back in off my night navigation exercise,” the jury were told. "I’ve been running around the woods of Aldershot chasing shadows and getting horribly lost, and I walked into some other regiment’s ambush, which was slightly embarrassing because I nearly got shot.” 
 
 The jury were then shown emails Clive Goodman sent to his editors at the News of the World explaining how William "got shot on a night exercise." Goodman's Blackadder columns in January 2006 are alleged to have relied on the exclusive revelations that William calls Kate “babykins” and a description of the military training accident. Prosecutor Andrew Edis alleged that the stories were linked to payments of around $5000 to 'Matey'--an alias for private investigator Mulcaire. 
 
 Earlier this month the court heard that Andy Coulson, who replaced Rebekah Brooks as editor of News of the World 2003 was warned by Goodman about the risks they were taking by acquiring the phone directories, let alone using them to hack phones. “These people will not be paid in anything other than cash because if they're discovered selling stuff to us they end up on criminal charges, as could we,” Goodman allegedly wrote to Coulson, in an email read in court. Coulson, who is alleged to have been conducting an affair with Rebekah Brooks at the time, later became Prime Minister David Cameron’s head of communications at Number Ten Downing Street. 
 
 In other evidence the prosecution claims that Rebekah Brooks, during her time as editor of the best-selling British daily paper, the Sun, approved over $60,000 of payments to a former Ministry of Defence employee, Bettina Jordan-Barber, who—the prosecution alleges—was the source of several stories about the royal princes as they attended the military training academy at Sandhurst. ||||| The Sunday tabloid hired an ex-police officer to follow the future King while he was in Gloucester for a period of days in 2006, according to documents obtained by BBC Newsnight. 
 
 The programme has spoken to Derek Webb, a former police detective, who says he was paid to follow high-profile targets on behalf of the newspaper. 
 
 Other people targeted by Mr Webb included Prince Harry’s former girlfriend Chelsy Davy, the Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe’s parents and the former attorney general Lord Goldsmith. 
 
 While not illegal, the industrial scale on which the covert surveillance was carried out raises further ethical questions about the newspaper’s conduct in light of the phone hacking scandal. 
 
 The following of members of the Royal Family is extra controversial in the wake of the death of Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash while being chased by paparazzi. 
 
 The initial investigation into phone hacking was prompted following a complaint from Clarence House in 2005 that Prince William’s voicemails had been hacked. 
 
 A police investigation was launched in November 2005 and in August 2006 Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire were arrested. They were sentenced in January 2007. 
 
 It means that Mr Webb was commissioned to follow Prince William while the newspaper was under police scrutiny for hacking his voicemail 
 
 Last night Mr Webb told the BBC that he was employed by the tabloid paper from 2003 until its closure earlier this year. He said: “Because I kept getting results for them, they employed my services more and more. I was getting work from them and they were very satisfied with the work.” 
 
 The timing of the revelations comes just a day before James Murdoch is due to appear in front of MPs to answer questions about his knowledge of phone hacking and other malpractice at the newspaper. 
 
 He is certain to be questioned about the hiring of private investigators after it emerged that two lawyers who represented clients in phone hacking cases were put under surveillance. 
 
 Mark Lewis, one of the lawyers, yesterday revealed that he planned to sue News International for the invasion of privacy. 
 
 He also plans to report Julian Pike to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Mr Pike is a solicitor at Farrer & Co who allegedly suggested putting the lawyers under surveillance while working on behalf of the newspaper. 
 
 Mr Pike is already subject to an investigation by the SRA over his role in the phone hacking scandal. 
 
 The Duke of Cambridge has been informed that he was followed by the private eye. 
 
 Royal sources said he has been "following the proceedings carefully" since the phone hacking scandal broke in 2006, but St James's Palace declined to comment on the latest development. 
 
 One royal insider said: "Given that the News of the World bugged the phones of members of the Royal household, nothing about what they were up to surprises us any more." 
 
 A spokesman at Clarence House refused to comment. 
 
 A News International spokesperson said: “We are not able to make any comment around the specific work carried out by Derek Webb. As is well known, The News of the World was closed by News International during the summer.”
– Prosecutors told a London court today that Rupert Murdoch's News of the World hacked the phones of Kate Middleton and Prince Harry, marking the first time the now-closed tabloid has been accused of hacking the phone of an actual member of the British royal family—as opposed to an aide. Voicemails on Middleton's phone were intercepted by the newspaper and heard by the court today, including one from 2006 in which Prince William calls her "baby" and another in which he calls her "babykins," the Daily Beast reports. In one of the messages, William tells Kate he was nearly shot by blanks while going through military training, CNN reports. The court also heard an intercepted voicemail of Prince Harry's, in which William spoke in falsetto, pretending to be Harry's then-girlfriend Chelsy Davy. In total, Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who has pleaded guilty to phone hacking in the case, recorded about eight messages, the prosecution says.