Rebekah Brooks Got a Horse From Scotland Yard

A weird detail from coverage of the News of the World phone hacking scandal: The year after NotW royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed, Scotland Yard loaned out a retired police horse to Rebekah Brooks, who was at that time the editor of the Sun and later became chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's News International. She kept the horse for two years, returning it to the Metropolitan Police in 2010, after which it went to a new home with a police officer.

A police spokesperson says it's common for retired horses from the Mounted Branch to be loaned out to the public, and Brooks' spokesperson says she was acting as a sort of "foster parent" for the horse while it waited for a new home. But the revelation will almost certainly raise eyebrows, considering all the questions that already exist about Brooks' relationship with the Metropolitan Police, the Telegraph points out. The revelation has led to a flurry of Twitter jokes; click for a sampling. (More Rebekah Brooks stories.)