Greets and saluts from the NYC metro area. Today’s big news isn’t in NYC, but rather the UK, where a lawmaker has intimated that law enforcement is focusing on the Times of London in their widening investigation into the News Corp. hacking scandal.

The lawmaker, Tom Watson, from the opposition Labour Party, who has been a central figure in the inquiries into phone hacking, said in a message on Twitter that Scotland Yard had “confirmed to me they are investigating” The Times “over e-mail hacking.”

A spokesman for Scotland Yard, who spoke in return for anonymity under departmental rules, said officers investigating hacking were “in contact with Mr. Watson in relation to specific issues he wishes to raise” after he sent the police a letter on Jan. 23. But the spokesman declined to confirm specifically that The Times was under investigation.

News International, the British newspaper arm of the Murdoch media empire, said it had no immediate comment on Mr. Watson’s message.

The development was significant in two regards: it focused attention on e-mail hacking rather than the illicit voice mail interception at the center of inquiries so far, and it suggested that the most august of the Murdoch publications in Britain was not immune from scrutiny.

The case apparently was related to an episode in 2009 when a reporter who has since left The Times of London exposed the identity of a police officer who blogged under the pseudonym Nightjack, according to British news reports.

James Harding, the editor of The Times of London, said in written testimony to a formal inquiry into press conduct last month that “there was an incident where the newsroom was concerned that a reporter had gained unauthorized access to an e-mail account.”

The reporter “was issued with a formal written warning for professional misconduct,” Mr. Harding said.