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On Saturday, July 2, 2011, a high-society traffic jam descended on the cobblestoned town square of Burford, a village sixty-eight miles northwest of London, not far from the market town of Chipping Norton. Hundreds of chauffeured cars approached a gated stone wall, which opened to a long, circular driveway and the sprawling country house of Elisabeth Murdoch, a prominent television entrepreneur and the daughter of Rupert Murdoch, and her husband, Matthew Freud, who runs what may be the most powerful public-relations firm in Great Britain. In addition to their professional accomplishments, the couple have gained renown for their lavish "Chipping Norton set" parties, which are often attended by their friend Prime Minister David Cameron, government ministers, financiers, C.E.O.s, celebrities, and newspaper editors. "You're never likely to be bored," the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, an occasional guest, told me. The CNN host Piers Morgan, a former editor of Rupert Murdoch's the News of the World, once told the Daily Mail, "I've never seen so many people who hate each other together in one room."
Leaders of the Conservative and Labour Parties attended the party, as did Bono, Helena Bonham Carter, and Mark Thompson, then the director general of the BBC (and now the C.E.O. of the New York Times). So did Elisabeth's brother James Murdoch, the executive chairman of News International, the newspaper division of Rupert Murdoch's company, News Corp., and the chairman of its BSkyB network, which rivals the BBC in scale. A more reticent and repentant man might have stayed home. In July, 2009, the Guardian had broken the first in a series of stories revealing that the News of the World had hacked the phones of the Royal Family, politicians, and celebrities and had hired a convicted criminal who was involved with corrupt police officials to dig up dirt on public figures. It was also revealed that executives at News International, which owned forty per cent of England's daily newspapers, had paid hush money to make lawsuits go away, concealed evidence, and misled the police and Parliament.
Nevertheless, guests were still eager to court the Murdochs. And, at the party, at least, there was cause to celebrate. News Corp. had recently acquired Elisabeth's worldwide independent production company, Shine, which had helped create such popular entertainment shows as "MasterChef." Elisabeth seemed poised to return to News Corp., where she had worked twice previously, in various capacities. A jazz band enlivened the festivities, which lasted until morning.
"It was like 'The Last Hurrah,' the moment when politicians, newspaper editors, financiers, and celebrities could be together," one guest said. "It was unbelievably generous. Extraordinary wine, extraordinary food. Everybody danced till dawn. And then everything fell off a cliff."
Two days later, on Monday, July 4th, Nick Davies and Amelia Hill, reporters at the Guardian, revealed that the cell-phone voice mails of Milly Dowler, a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl who had disappeared in March, 2002, and whose body was found six months later, had been hacked into by the News of the World. An uproar ensued; it was, perhaps, one thing to snoop on the powerful and the wealthy, but it was quite another to take advantage of a young girl. The next week, Rupert Murdoch, who was in Sun Valley, Idaho, flew to England and apologized profusely to the Dowler family and to the public. But he defended his son James and Rebekah Brooks, the C.E.O. of News International, who supervised his four English newspapers.
Elisabeth dissented. She told a friend that she blamed James's stubbornness "for getting her father into difficulty." On a phone call with her father, her brothers, and her older half-sister, she urged James to resign, and Brooks with him. Invoking a public-relations adage of her husband's, she advised James and her father to get out ahead of the bad news and avoid any hint of a coverup. In her view, they should launch an internal investigation and fully coöperate with the police. (Rupert and James Murdoch declined to be interviewed for this article, although they did answer some questions through a spokeswoman.) Within days, Rupert Murdoch had announced that he was closing the News of the World and Brooks resigned. James later stepped down from his two chairmanships and relocated to New York, as deputy chief operating officer of News Corp.
The scandal did not recede. To date, eighty-seven people have been arrested, many of them News Corp. employees. Elisabeth had planned to join the board of News Corp. after its purchase of Shine; in the summer of 2011, she withdrew her name from consideration; she later gave up her title as Shine's C.E.O. Reporters who had largely ignored the hacking scandal while the Guardian, often alone, pursued it now clamored for her to comment. Between the fall of 2011 and the summer of 2012, she was silent. "The people I wasn't quiet with," she told me, "were my dad and brothers and Chase"—Chase Carey, the chief operating officer of News Corp.—"and some members of the board."
Finally, in August, she went public. Invited to the Edinburgh International Television Festival to give the prestigious annual MacTaggart lecture, she spoke about the need for "strength of character," and was openly critical of her brother James and of News Corp. James felt betrayed, Elisabeth told me; her father, who had seen the adulatory press that her speech garnered, refused to read it.
For years, the house of Murdoch has managed to conceal its internal divisions. Lachlan, the middle of Rupert's three children from his second marriage, was assumed to be his father's heir apparent at News Corp., but in 2005 he left the company over what he felt was his father's micromanagement. He moved to Australia, and although he remains on the News Corp. board, he has busied himself with his own media investments. James, the youngest, became the new heir, but he has always resented that Lachlan was their father's favorite. Elisabeth, the oldest, left News Corp. twice, in part because she felt that the company was less welcoming to her than to her brothers.
Her MacTaggart lecture amplified speculation about the future of the dynasty. Some of Rupert Murdoch's advisers believed that Freud was waging a campaign to position his wife as her father's successor, perhaps with her complicity. Word reached Elisabeth that her father had begun saying privately that he hoped Elisabeth would divorce Freud. The two men rarely speak, and James barely talks to Elisabeth; Freud is convinced that Elisabeth was held back at News Corp. by her gender. One family friend compared Elisabeth to Cordelia, King Lear's devoted daughter, whom he banished. "She loves her father," the friend said, "but she's the wrong sex."
Murdoch and Freud bought their Burford home—a Jacobean estate on twenty acres—in 2008. The house is so large that when Murdoch took me on a tour, on the last Sunday in September, she claimed not to know how many rooms it contains. Nearly every room has a stone fireplace and windows overlooking flower or vegetable gardens. In her office, on the second floor, are oil portraits of her father and her husband; the walls of Freud's adjoining office are covered with framed historical documents, including the Instrument of Abdication, the 1936 letter from King Edward VIII relinquishing the throne in order to marry Wallis Simpson. Attached to the main house is a restored seventeenth-century chapel. There is also a long outdoor lap pool, an indoor pool and recreation center, and a gym. Freud showed me the vast basement wine cellar, which contains thousands of bottles of wine and champagne; the garage, where he keeps a 1963 white Jaguar convertible that he says he has driven at a hundred and forty miles an hour; and a kitchen equipped to service a restaurant.
Murdoch's hair is blond and shoulder length, her features sharp and suggestive of those of her mother, Anna. Relaxing in the kitchen, Murdoch wore dark slacks, a crewneck sweater, and black sneakers, but no makeup. Freud, who has deep hollows under his eyes, was dressed in a black hoodie, jeans, and gray sneakers. The paraphernalia of six children from three marriages—backpacks, books, electronics—was strewn about. Freud is an accomplished cook. As he sipped a 1998 Pomerol, he prepared a luncheon of filet mignon, fettuccine with crab, leeks sautéed in crème fraîche, sautéed sausages embedded in pastry, curried-chicken salad, roast potatoes, and broccoli.
Murdoch is forty-four. Freud is forty-nine and is not only the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud but also the nephew of the artist Lucian Freud and the son of Sir Clement Freud, who was a Member of Parliament and a renowned writer, wit, chef, and TV personality. Freud and Murdoch met in 1997, at a business breakfast in London. Murdoch was pregnant with her second child, as was Freud's wife, Caroline Hutton, with hers. At the time, Murdoch was the director of programming of BSkyB, which was represented by Freud's public-relations firm. Their first encounter was "a car crash," Freud told me, "a very, very, very strong and intense draw." She and Freud "clicked intellectually," Murdoch told me, but she said that no immediate romance ensued. Nevertheless, she said, "I loved his mind. I loved his intensity. I found him incredibly attractive. I can talk to him. We think alike. We have similar enthusiasms for people and ideas."
Each had struggled to impress domineering fathers and to learn to carry the weight of a famous family name. "You are not allowed to walk into a room without people pointing at you," Freud said. "You feel either entitled or unworthy." Channelling his inner Sigmund, he said that he and Murdoch shared a "very strong primal yearning for an identity that is your own." They have been christened "the golden couple" by the British press. Yet with little public notice they have become almost a fifth column within the Murdoch empire, challenging the journalistic ethics of News Corp. and establishing her independence.
Elisabeth was born in Australia, where Rupert Murdoch was raised and built a newspaper empire out of two papers he had inherited from his father. She spent most of her first five years in England, as her father bought and expanded the News of the World and the Sun. (He later bought two upscale papers, the London Times and the Sunday Times.) When she was five, the family moved to New York, as Murdoch acquired first the San Antonio Express-News and, soon after, the New York Post. He prevailed upon friends to support Elisabeth's application to the Brearley School, where she credits the teachers for giving her "a bit of a kick." Her father was busy and was short on compliments but "very affectionate," Elisabeth insists. She watched television voraciously, especially reruns of "I Love Lucy," "The Brady Bunch," and "The Partridge Family." Wary of criticism of her father, she refused to read the harsh press he attracted for popularizing savage tabloid journalism and for allowing his strong conservative views to bleed into news columns.
When Murdoch was in the seventh grade, her mother announced that they were selling their Fifth Avenue apartment and moving back to Australia. Elisabeth was dispatched to the boarding school that her father had once attended. Lachlan and James, who were three and four years younger, were allowed to remain in New York with their parents to finish the school year. Asked why she was sent and not also her brothers, she said, "I don't know. I never asked that question."
She was terribly lonely. Some months later, her mother called to say that the family had decided to stay in New York. Elisabeth spent a year at a boarding school in Connecticut, then was readmitted to Brearley. Her political passions diverged from her father's. He was enamored of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher; she lionized Nelson Mandela and volunteered for the Gay Men's Health Crisis. (In the recent election, she supported Barack Obama and he supported Mitt Romney.) In 1986, she enrolled at Vassar College, and the next summer she interned at Sky News in London, then came back to volunteer for a public-access cable-news channel at Vassar. As a senior, she became romantically involved with Elkin Kwesi Pianim, the son of a Dutch mother and a Ghanaian businessman and economist who had been imprisoned for ten years for opposing a dictatorial regime.
When she graduated, in 1990, she began preparing to join the family business. "I never really questioned it, I suppose," she said. With her father's support, she moved to Australia to learn television at the independently owned Channel Nine, then the country's leading broadcast network; Pianim, who was two years younger, stayed behind to finish his degree in economics. "Australian television was a bit like the world of 'Mad Men,' " she said in her MacTaggart lecture. "There was a bar in the boardroom, salesmen drank Martinis at lunch, and there was not a single woman in senior management." Two years later, she joined News Corp., moving with Pianim to Los Angeles to work in the programming department of the Fox TV-station group, the backbone of the new Fox network. At twenty-six, after a brief stint as the program director of a small Fox station in Salt Lake City, she married Pianim and joined the programming team at FX, Fox's new cable channel.
After a year, Murdoch yearned to demonstrate her entrepreneurial mettle. "I felt I wanted to be my own boss," she said. With a bank loan guaranteed by her father, she and Pianim bought two small NBC-affiliated stations in central California. They quickly increased profits by improving local news and programming, boosting ad sales, and reducing the staff. A year later, they sold the stations and made a profit of twelve million dollars. They had their first child, and, not long after, Elisabeth decided to apply to Stanford Business School. When she called to tell her father, she says, he replied, "You don't need a fucking M.B.A.! I'll give you an M.B.A. What you need to do is to go to London and work for BSkyB and see the amazing things they're doing to introduce digital television."
In London, her new boss was Sam Chisholm, the C.E.O. of BSkyB. She was responsible for marketing, scheduling, and program acquisitions, but she came to feel that "there was no real job for me. Sam was probably told, 'Lizzie's coming.' My dad wanted to give me an opportunity," yet he was "weirdly embarrassed by any sniff of favoritism and nepotism—it's just not his character." The atmosphere, she says, was "very boys-y." The slow pace of her ascent at BSkyB "possibly knocked my confidence and made me ask, 'What am I not doing to get ahead?' " Meanwhile, her younger brothers had been elevated to bigger jobs. Lachlan rose from publisher of the Australian to publisher of the New York Post and deputy chief operating officer of News Corp.; James, after dropping out of Harvard and entering the music business, ran Internet operations for News Corp. and was promoted to C.E.O. and chairman of STAR TV, the company's satellite-television holdings in Asia. One veteran associate of Rupert Murdoch's describes Elisabeth as "very much blocked by her brothers in the sense of not having a voice. Rupert is not the most female-engaging executive." Although he has had female executives to whom he entrusted great responsibility, including Rebekah Brooks, this was not the case with Elisabeth. "I'm competitive with myself," she said. "I am one hundred per cent not competitive within my family."
By early 1997, Elisabeth Murdoch wanted to leave BSkyB, but, she said, "I probably didn't have as much confidence in myself as I do now. I was not assertive. I felt I had to prove something to myself by being on the outside." But her father loomed large, and she believed that if she left BSkyB "he would feel I failed."
In March, she met Freud. Within six months, photographs of the pair began appearing in British tabloids, and news stories speculated about an affair. (The buzz was heightened by the news, in 1998, that Murdoch and his wife had separated and that he was dating an employee, Wendi Deng, whom he eventually married.) A year later, Freud and Murdoch separated from their spouses; each had two children. Wracked with guilt—"I was an adulterer," he told me—he broke off the relationship in 2000, even after Elisabeth became pregnant with his child. They reconciled, but then split up again after the baby was born.
They finally married in August, 2001, in a lavish ceremony at Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire. Lachlan and James Murdoch gave humorous, off-color speeches. Rupert offered a warm toast that was written, like many of his speeches, by Brooks, who was treated by him as a daughter and by Elisabeth and James as a sister. James was his father's trusted business arm, while Brooks served both as his conduit for information and as his enforcer. When Brooks was editor of the Sun, Clare Short, a former Cabinet minister, lambasted the paper for daily featuring bare-breasted women on Page 3. Brooks ordered a "Hands Off Page 3" campaign that displayed Short's head atop a fat, naked figure; Short was described as "ugly" and "short on brains."
In the autumn of 2001, with Freud's encouragement, Elisabeth left BSkyB to start an independent television company, which she gave an "inspirational" name: Shine. "She needed to know if she was any good," Freud said. "She knew people wondered if she was at Sky because of Daddy." Her father, she said, "thought I was completely insane."
That same year, Shine signed a production deal with BSkyB; the broadcaster took an initial five-per-cent stake, and agreed to air some of the company's shows. Sony acquired a twenty-per-cent stake and became a distribution partner. Elisabeth raised additional funds from venture-capital firms. Rupert Murdoch's interest in television was monetary. Hers was more subjective. "I am firmly with Dennis Potter when he said the job of television is to make hearts pound," she declared in her MacTaggart lecture, invoking the creator of "The Singing Detective," "Pennies from Heaven," and other television classics. She told me, "My approach to content, no matter what genre of programming, is that it must come from a real desire to connect to an audience."
She did inherit her father's ambition. In 2008, to transform Shine into a global enterprise, she acquired Reveille, an American company founded by Ben Silverman, a former chairman of NBC Entertainment; Reveille had produced the U.S. version of "The Office." Shine also acquired several U.K. and European production houses. The company now has offices in ten countries and has sold programming in more than a hundred. Freud worried that she was overextending the company. "But she did it," he said, because she has "balls." In the U.K., Shine sold dozens of dramas and reality shows to the BBC, and to four commercial networks: Sky, Channel 4, Channel 5, and ITV. "She did a pretty terrific job in television," Michael Lynton, the C.E.O. of Sony Entertainment Group, said. "Most of the growth was organic. Our hope at the time was that there might come a time when she would sell the business to us. There was even a discussion of her running our television production business for us outside the United States." But Elisabeth was intent on maintaining her independence.
Rupert Murdoch's business associates were impressed. "She combines the best of her brothers in one package," one longtime associate of Murdoch's said. "She has the brains of James and the heart of Lachlan." Her father boasted to colleagues of her television-programming instincts. She remembers calling him one night in late 2001 after watching a popular British TV show, "Pop Idol." It was a Saturday evening "and the entire country was watching the show," she said. "I called Dad because I was so excited about it. 'Dad, I don't know if anyone at Fox knows about this show, but I'm telling you that you have to buy this show.' " The people at Fox were skeptical, until Murdoch asked to see the show and then ordered them to buy the rights. For the past ten years, "American Idol" has been the top-ranked TV show in the U.S.
Murdoch and her C.E.O. at Shine, Alex Mahon, organize four retreats each year where executives from headquarters and from Shine's worldwide offices gather. The first day of the retreat this past October was held in a building a few blocks from Shine's London offices, in Primrose Hill. Murdoch arrived after most of the executives, who were chatting over coffee in a conference room. She moved from one to another, offering hugs and asking about their families, then sat down at the middle of a long table, where she mostly listened. The next day, at an inn in Winchester, an hour outside London, she talked to some eighty executives about the many issues facing Shine, glancing from time to time at notes she had made on index cards. Afterward, they split into groups to discuss and then present to the larger group their views of Shine's challenges and priorities.
"I think Liz inspires people," Carl Fennessy, the Australian-born C.E.O. of Shine America, said at one point. "I thought that because she's a Murdoch she'd be more guarded."
Today, the Shine Group produces twenty-four scripted shows, ranging from the ambitious ("The Bridge," a Swedish crime drama with political intrigue and a semi-autistic female detective who, like Claire Danes's character in "Homeland," is both brilliant and odd) to the mundane ("Plus One" follows a man whose girlfriend leaves him to marry a boy-band star). The company produces a hundred and fifty-four non-scripted reality shows, including "Too Hot for Love," "Celebrity MasterChef," "Junior MasterChef," "MasterChef All Stars," and "Jewish Mum of the Year."
Jonathan Miller, a former C.E.O. of Nickelodeon U.K. and, until recently, a senior executive at News Corp., explained how Murdoch had built up Shine so quickly. Two franchise shows—"MasterChef" and "The Biggest Loser"—"could be made anew in country after country," he said. "That's a really good business model."
By 2010, with the industry consolidating, Murdoch felt that Shine needed more capital in order to grow. She spoke to her father and his chief operating officer, Chase Carey. At Carey's suggestion, she met with him and the chief financial officer, David DeVoe, several weeks later, in London. Carey and DeVoe proposed that News Corp. buy out Sony and become a fifty-fifty partner. "I went back to Chase and said, 'We should talk about a full acquisition,' " she told me. She believed that it would be a conflict of interest for her, as a shareholder in News Corp., to sell Shine to a News Corp. competitor. Shareholders of one or the other company would always have reason to question where her fiduciary responsibilities lay.
In the spring of 2011, News Corp. acquired Shine and its eight hundred employees for six hundred and seventy million dollars, with about forty per cent going to Elisabeth Murdoch. She stepped down as C.E.O. the following year but continues to guide the company as chairwoman; she does not take a salary. Aside from their initial conversation, her father was not involved in the purchase, she said. Freud opposed the sale. "I am unbelievably proud of my wife," he said. "She worked really hard to be Liz Murdoch, as opposed to a Murdoch." A lawsuit filed by News Corp. shareholders asserted that the company overpaid for Shine, claiming "rampant nepotism" and accusing Rupert Murdoch of treating his public company "like a wholly owned family candy store." (Both Elisabeth and a spokeswoman for News Corp. said that independent directors on the News Corp. board had validated the price after receiving a report from an expert on evaluation, and Elisabeth added, "It was a spot-on market rate.) The London Evening Standard ran the front-page headline "MURDOCH'S DAUGHTER TO GET £370M FROM DADDY." Several days later, at a party for the film "The King's Speech," Freud, who is known to have a volatile temper, approached the paper's editor, Geordie Greig, and exclaimed, "How dare you insult my wife?," and flung his Martini in Greig's face.
The four-story London building that houses Freud Communications, at 55 Newman Street, is starkly modern. When the elevator door opens to Freud's fourth-floor glass-walled office, visitors must step over an Antony Gormley sculpture of a man with outstretched arms sprawled on the marble floor. Freud's office walls are covered with commemorative pictures, family photos, a Damien Hirst painting, and three Lucian Freud charcoal portraits. The green velvet couch and a green glass conference table are more decorative than comfortable.
Freud has become an active champion of Elisabeth's business ventures. On the rare occasions when she speaks to the press, he often makes the arrangements and tries to monitor the ground rules. As Jane Martinson, of the Guardian, was transcribing a recent interview with Elisabeth, Freud called her and shouted that he didn't like some of her questions, she said, and he implied that it was the last interview he would set up for her. (Freud says that he only yells at reporters if they stray beyond the parameters they had agreed on.)
By most measures, Freud is not suited to the role of quiet advocate. "Matthew is a disrupter, a provocateur," Edward Amory, a director of Freud Communications and a former Daily Mail commentator and Tory staffer, said with admiration. "It's a funny role for someone running a large company, but Matthew thinks his role is to shake things up. I thought P.R. was catching bricks thrown by others. There's a part of Matthew that likes to throw bricks."
Freud grew up in a noisy home, the youngest of five children, three of them boys. His father, Clement, was a Liberal Party M.P. for fourteen years; before that, he had had a varied career as a celebrity TV chef, a panelist on the popular radio show "Just a Minute," a sportswriter, a broadcaster, an author, a pitchman in dog-food commercials, and a part owner of a night club. He was a curmudgeon—gruff on the telephone, rude to waiters, disdainful of his children. "He was incredibly narcissistic," Freud recalls.
As a young student, Freud was seen as more cunning than bright. "He had no understanding of the relationship between working hard and doing well," his sister Emma, a scriptwriter and broadcaster, wrote in an e-mail. "He thought that if he could be in the right place at the right time with the right bit of luck on his side, then he might have a chance of getting away with it." She described an early entrepreneurial effort at a local fair, when Freud was about nine. "Matthew had a stall and was selling mice for fifty pence," she said. "He didn't do well on the first day, so he changed his marketing tactics. He sold the mice for ten pence to small children who were wandering around on their own. Then, when the parents brought them back in horror, he charged the parents a pound to take the mice back."
Freud's grades at the Westminster School were dismal; he transferred to a state school and dropped out in his junior year. When he was sixteen, his parents shipped him off to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where they had friends. Not long after he returned to England, he was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine with intent to sell; the judge let him off with a fine. "I feared a seven-year prison sentence," Freud told me. "That sort of focussed the mind."
He skipped college and chose a profession pioneered by his great-uncle Edward L. Bernays, the founder of modern public relations, whose father was the brother of Sigmund's wife and whose mother was the psychoanalyst's sister. Matthew's first job, in the public-relations department at RCA Records, lasted two years. In 1985, at twenty-one, he established his own firm, Matthew Freud Associates, handling second- and third-tier actors and performers. His first major client was the Hard Rock Café, followed by Planet Hollywood, which granted stock options to Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Demi Moore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and other celebrities. Freud used their names to draw crowds to Planet Hollywood, and to set up interviews for reporters.
Matthew Freud Associates became the agency for film studios and for Pepsi, Mars, and Nike, which sought to associate their brands with Freud's celebrities. He was approached by stars wanting to extricate themselves from a jam, among them Geri Halliwell, who sought a smooth separation from the Spice Girls, and Guy Ritchie, who wanted to tamp down publicity surrounding his divorce from Madonna. He volunteered to help Bob Geldof and Richard Curtis, the longtime partner of Emma Freud, organize the Live 8 concerts, and he helped engineer Product Red, Bono's global campaign to fight AIDS. His firm now employs almost three hundred people, and his client list includes Walmart, Sony, the Gates Foundation, and the European magazines of Condé Nast.
In 1993, Jonathan Miller, who credits Freud with an ability to "formulate ideas that will capture people's attention," retained him to help promote Nickelodeon's début on BSkyB. England was about to launch a national lottery, and Freud suggested that Nickelodeon start a kids' lottery in partnership with Toys R Us; winners got a shopping cart and two minutes of free shopping at any outlet. The channel's audience soared, as did its advertising.
In 1994, Freud sold his company, for nineteen million dollars, to an advertising firm, only to buy it back seven years later. In 2005, he sold slightly more than fifty per cent of the company to the communications giant Publicis, and bought it back again in 2011. He branched out to the United States, opening offices in New York and Los Angeles, but by 2009 he had abandoned the effort. Critics say he failed because he was banking on his relationship with Murdoch. "Matthew is a very shrewd operator," Olivier Fleurot, the C.E.O. of the MSL Group at Publicis, said. "What makes him successful in London are his amazing connections in business and politics, being a Murdoch son-in-law, being close to Murdoch's newspapers, and being Sigmund Freud's grandson. The cocktail, which worked very well in London, didn't work in New York." Freud says that he didn't fail, insisting that the offices in the U.S. were profitable.
Over the years, Freud has become close to powerful politicians. When Tony Blair, the Labour Prime Minister, left government, Freud eased his transition to private life by providing office space. When David Cameron was campaigning to be Prime Minister and wanted to court Rupert Murdoch, Freud flew Cameron and his wife on his private jet to dine on Murdoch's sailboat, moored in the Greek isles. Blair acknowledged that Freud might be considered controversial among some members of the Labour Party, who resent him for transferring his loyalties to Cameron. But when we met in his office in London, Blair said, "When you're in his business, part of your job is to get along with everyone."
The A-list dinners hosted by Freud and Murdoch have advanced both of their business interests and have added to the impression that their ambitions are entwined. New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg has attended, as have Mick Jagger, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Gwyneth Paltrow, King Abdullah of Jordan, and Hollywood studio chiefs. Many of Murdoch's TV customers attend, as do Freud's current and prospective clients. In the U.S., New York is the center of business, finance, media, and the arts, and Washington is the center of government. London "is New York and Washington combined," says Sir Howard Stringer, the chairman of Sony, who has a home in Oxfordshire and who, with his wife, has attended parties hosted by Freud and Murdoch. "It's a very intimate, almost incestuous place. And Matthew knows everybody." The longtime Murdoch associate says of Freud, "He has phenomenal convening power." The former Labour Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell describes him as "a conductor and connector," mixing and matching people at his home.
The press tends to be less flattering, sometimes referring to him as a Svengali, "St. Matthew of the Shadows," and "Matthew Fraud." The editors of two London newspapers described him as manipulative; some reporters complain that he is a bully. He has invited journalists to movie screenings and served them cheaper wine while he and select friends drank a good claret. At the night club Annabel's, in London, in 2010, a host asked the actor Hugh Grant if he knew Freud; Grant said, "I hate him." Freud, who was standing just a few feet away, smeared a piece of chocolate cake on Grant's white shirt; Grant punched him in the eye.
The brash Freud eventually came into conflict with the Murdoch family. In January, 2010, the New York Times published a story about the success of Roger Ailes, the founder of Fox News, revealing that Fox was expected to make a profit of seven hundred million dollars that year, more than the combined profits of CNN, MSNBC, and the evening newscasts of CBS, ABC, and NBC. It also reported that "more liberal members" of the Murdoch family were unhappy with Fox News. The only family member quoted was Freud. "I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes's horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to," he told the Times.
Freud's firm earned almost three million dollars from News Corp. between 2006 and 2011, when it was on retainer, Bloomberg Businessweek reported last year. Freud's remark infuriated Rupert Murdoch, who was unaware that it was not spontaneous, that in fact it was a written response to a Times reporter. "The question is to what extent was Elisabeth complicit in that?" one Murdoch adviser said to me. Elisabeth says that she learned about Freud's comment only after he said it. At the time, she e-mailed Ailes to say that her husband had "gone rogue" and that, although "I may not agree" with everything on Fox, "I'm a big admirer of yours." Recently, I asked Ailes, who in October signed a lucrative new four-year contract with News Corp., how he would respond to Freud. "I was told but don't know for sure that Sigmund Freud had a vasectomy in 1927," he replied in an e-mail. "Obviously not soon enough."
Later in 2010, as the News of the World scandal metastasized and several of his clients found that their phones had been hacked, Freud and Elisabeth urged Rupert Murdoch not to dismiss the hacking as common industry practice and not to pay hush money to settle claims by hacking victims. Investigate and punish the miscreants, they advised; turn over e-mails and documents to the authorities; don't risk a coverup.
James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks ignored the advice. They attacked critics, blaming a few rotten apples, and Rupert Murdoch stood squarely behind them, even as Scotland Yard announced that it had received "significant new information." The issue to Elisabeth, she told me, was "How do we change the conversation? How do we get this company to heal and move on? How do we restore trust?" In an effort to rebuild their fraying relationship, Rupert Murdoch initiated a series of meetings with a professional facilitator and his children, including Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence, his daughter from his first marriage. By early 2011, they had dropped the effort.
In the weeks leading up to her MacTaggart lecture, in August, Murdoch read past lectures in bed late at night, including one by her father, in 1989, and one that James had given, in 2009. She consulted historians, friends, and television colleagues in an attempt to strike a balance between condemning News Corp.'s behavior in the hacking scandal and extolling the virtues of the organization, which was both her father's company and Shine's parent company. The core of her speech would be about the importance of programming. Her friend Henrietta Conrad, the chairman of Shine U.K., estimates that she read eight drafts of the speech; Freud probably read more. Referring to Murdoch's previous refusal to comment publicly about the News Corp. implosion, Freud told me, "The thing that made the MacTaggart lecture more bearable was that it allowed her to be silent with more dignity. She had made an appointment with her industry to speak out." Murdoch described it to me as "a personal speech," an announcement of "who Liz is."
In her introductory remarks Murdoch characterized her preparations for the talk as "a welcome distraction from some of the other nightmares much closer to home." She was the first woman to give the MacTaggart in seventeen years, and she chided her sponsors for not inviting more women to speak. In 1989, Rupert Murdoch, in his MacTaggart lecture, had emphasized his give-the-people-what-they-want philosophy and his opposition to government-funded media like the BBC. In contrast, Elisabeth spoke of "the power of television to form human connections. This was my purpose."
In explaining why she believed that her father's company would prove to be a suitable home for Shine, the enterprise she had spent eleven years building, she said that News Corp. "is first and foremost a content company, and it believes in taking long-term investments in creative risks." She lauded it for building a fourth television network in the U.S., for believing in "The Simpsons," Seth MacFarlane, and "Glee," and for risking huge sums to back James Cameron's "Titanic" and "Avatar." Yet she conceded that News Corp. was "asking itself some very significant and difficult questions about how some behaviors fell so far short of its values." She added, "I believe one of the biggest lessons of the past year has been the need for any organization to discuss, affirm, and institutionalize a rigorous set of values based on an explicit statement of purpose."
She referred to her brother's 2009 MacTaggart lecture, a highly charged argument for the free market and against public financing, in which he described Britain's broadcasting environment both as "creationism" ("the belief in a managed process with an omniscient authority") and as "authoritarianism"—a dig at the BBC. It carried strong echoes of their father's speech, which argued that broadcasting should be freed from "the bureaucrats of television" and "the dominance of one narrow set of cultural values" and placed "in the hands of those who should control it—the people." James ended by declaring that profit is the only reliable guarantor of a company's independence.
Elisabeth acknowledged that he was partially correct but took issue with this line of thought. "Profit without purpose is a recipe for disaster," she said. She continued, "It's us, human beings, we the people, who create the society we want, not profit. It is increasingly apparent that the absence of purpose—or of a moral language—within government, media, or business, could become one of the most dangerous own goals for capitalism and for freedom." She added, "Independence from regulation and the freedom we need to innovate and grow is only democratically viable when we accept that we have a responsibility to each other and not just to our bottom line. Profit must be our servant, not our master."
James and Rupert had excoriated the BBC; Elisabeth extolled its universal license fee as "a strategic catalyst to the creative industries of this great country." (She did not mention that BBC channels have bought twenty of Shine's programs.) Nevertheless, she held up her father as a champion of democracy: "My dad had the vision, the will, and the sense of purpose to challenge the old world order on behalf of 'the people.' " Going forward, she said, "we have to acknowledge and dedicate ourselves to our purpose, which is to tell great stories, to inspire our audience, and to contribute to a sense of community."
Her speech was "hailed with warm applause and whistles from the audience," the Guardian reported. Tessa Jowell told me, "A lot of people thought it was crazy to invite her, and for her to accept," but after the speech Elisabeth was no longer seen as just a Murdoch. "People were forced to see Liz as one of the most creative people in the media industry."
Not everyone was enthralled. A Guardian editor in attendance described it as a "clever" speech that shouted, "I'm the nice Murdoch." She might praise Dennis Potter, but Shine has yet to produce a program of Potter's calibre.
After the lecture, Elisabeth had one regret. "I should have said more positive things about James," she told me. But she boasted, "Ninety-nine point nine per cent of the reaction was very positive. My team was overjoyed. I had notes from complete strangers. I think some of the nicest things were to get letters and e-mails from competitors saying, 'Thank you.' They were proud after the speech. The only person who didn't like my speech—who told me so—was my dad." They did not speak for nine weeks, and finally did so only after Rupert Murdoch's close friend Robert Thomson, the editor of the Wall Street Journal, pressed her to call her father. "I think he realized it was not a loving reaction," she says of her father. When she was in New York in mid-November, she went to her father's home for dinner. She did not see James, with whom she has not had a personal conversation for many months, although they do speak occasionally about business matters. Tony Blair, who is close to both Elisabeth and her father, thinks that she succeeded in walking a fine line. "She's intensely loyal to her father and her family," he said. Invoking his own approach to reconciling warring factions, he added, "I read it as trying to find a middle way."
For the Murdoch empire in England, a middle way no longer seems viable. In the aftermath of the hacking scandal, Rupert Murdoch closed the News of the World and was forced to withdraw a bid to acquire the sixty-one per cent of BSkyB that he did not already own. James was compelled to step down as the chairman of BSkyB, although he was overwhelmingly reëlected to the BSkyB board in November.
After a long investigation, a parliamentary committee issued a hundred-and-twenty-one-page report that concluded that Rupert Murdoch is "not a fit person" to run an international company. Politicians who curried favor with Murdoch and supported his expansion in the U.K. now shied from being photographed alongside him. Murdoch has said publicly that he no longer views Great Britain as a primary investment opportunity, and, with newspaper circulation steadily falling, speculation has intensified that he might one day close the London Times and the Sunday Times, which, according to numerous accounts, are losing money. Murdoch had to break News Corp. into two companies, one comprising television, movies, and digital media, the other focussing on print and education. The division will highlight the paltry profit margins of the latter.
In July, 2011, Prime Minister Cameron, sparked by the hacking scandal, appointed Lord Justice Leveson to head a commission to investigate the failings of the British press and the often incestuous relationship between the media and government officials. Last Thursday, Leveson released a two-thousand-page report. It levelled harsh criticism at News Corp. and called for both a First Amendment-like law to protect freedom of the press and an official press watchdog to monitor press standards.
Rupert Murdoch could not rescue Rebekah Brooks, who is scheduled to go on trial in September, 2013, charged with "conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office," three counts of phone hacking, and three counts of conspiracy to subvert justice. She remains a close friend of Freud and Elisabeth, who didn't begrudge her rise in the company and appreciated her fealty to the Murdoch family.
I asked whether the behavior of Brooks and others at News Corp. wasn't a reflection of the corrupted journalistic values that Elisabeth had taken issue with in her lecture. She collected her thoughts, folded her arms, and said, "Yes is the quick answer. But, at the same time, I'm a champion of the plurality of voices and diversity of audience, and I think that doesn't mean that in certain cases behaviors cannot match one's values."
The days of lavish Chipping Norton-set parties are over. As one regular put it, "Who would come?" A British politician said of the future of News Corp., "I see it as like a political party at the crossroads. Which direction do they go in? What Elisabeth is articulating is not a negative view of the company but a way forward that deals with the public. There are others who view this as a bump in the road."
Rupert Murdoch, who is eighty-one, abhors the gossip about his successor. Like Charles de Gaulle, he cannot imagine death knocking on his door. He maintains a careful diet, works out with a trainer, and reminds people that his mother, Dame Elisabeth, is a hundred and three years old. "When the Queen Mum died, at one hundred and one," Roger Ailes recalls, "I said to Rupert, 'She had a good run.' " Murdoch replied, "I'd call it an early death."
Yet Murdoch has made it clear that when he does depart he expects that a family member will take over. For years, Elisabeth seemed to stand behind her brothers in the line. In a 2003 Times interview, a veteran colleague of the senior Murdoch's said, "Rupert never talked about her. He always talked about his sons." But the longtime Murdoch associate told me, "If someone had said to me in 2007, 'Who should succeed Rupert Murdoch?,' I would have said Elisabeth. Others agreed." They wonder why she voluntarily took herself out of the running with her decision not to join the News Corp. board after the company bought Shine, and why she gave up her salary and her C.E.O. title at Shine.
"What I wanted to do is step into a pure Shine role rather than a News Corp. role," Elisabeth told me. "It makes me a happier person." She was sipping coffee in the living room of her London home, which occupies a former Victorian greeting-card factory near Primrose Hill Park. Murdoch had publicly said that she harbored "absolutely no ambition" to succeed her father. When I asked her if she considers herself a contender for her father's job one day, she responded, "In what? The company is changing its shape so much. I think no one person will succeed him." With the division of News Corp. into two companies, there will be two C.E.O.s, and maybe two chairmen. There are three siblings, and only two top jobs. Yet one could readily imagine her rejoining News Corp. to run the television-and-movie half of the business. Intentionally or not, she has positioned herself as a powerful contender for the role, and thus as a rival to James.
As for her company, Elisabeth said, "I would love to figure out how to build a Shine in the digital space. Hopefully, with Shine; I want to call it Rise." She is convinced that video online will be huge. Already, YouTube and Amazon and Netflix are investing in original content. She sees this as a real growth opportunity for independent producers like Shine. And she notes that digital viewers are more appealing to advertisers. "The average YouTube viewer is twenty-six, versus the TV viewer, who is fifty-two," she said. She has toured Silicon Valley and immersed herself in what digital companies are up to. In January, 2012, Shine acquired ChannelFlip, a London-based media company that produces short-form Internet video content. Several months earlier, she negotiated for Shine to buy Bossa Studios, a British Web-based social-gaming firm.
"She really understands that this new medium can mean a whole set of new audiences," Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman, observes. Barry Diller, who has known Murdoch since she was nine and who was Fox's first C.E.O., called her "a superb businesswoman who went about consolidating the TV business in the U.K. before anyone else did. She built Shine. Without any question, she's the most entrepreneurially accomplished person in that family, other than Rupert."
I asked Murdoch a final question: How much of her drive was motivated by a desire to impress her father? "You'd love your parents to be proud of you," she began. "Of course that influenced me. But not so much anymore, because I feel—how to say this?—I feel that I know who I am. Each time I tried to work in his company, he wasn't impressed. I realized I had to just go and be myself." ♦


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text:
(CNN) -- Cher sits in a director's chair in one of the many rooms of her "Architectural Digest"-worthy home, perched high above a prime stretch of Malibu beach. She's talking about her infamous "Farewell Tour," an extended global trek that ran from 2002 to 2005, and was supposed to be her swan song as a touring artist.
"I never should have called it that, but it seemed like it at the time," she tells CNN. "It was like the tour that would not quit. I won't do that again."
A few feet away, members of her entourage burst into laughter.
Exactly one week later, the 67-year-old entertainer announced her "Dressed to Kill" tour which kicks off in Phoenix next March. According to Monday's press release, Cher is scheduled to headline arenas in 49 North American cities -- but who knows? The lure of her adoring fans may be too hard to resist once she's packed her G-strings.
In the meantime, she is out promoting her first album in 12 years, "Closer to the Truth." CNN's Denise Quan sat down with the outspoken Oscar, Emmy and Grammy winner about her own truth, and as usual, the star didn't disappoint with her candor.
CNN: You seem to always speak the truth. Is that accurate?
Cher: I'm not so sure that's the truth. Sometimes I don't tell the truth, which is telling the truth about not telling the truth. I think people don't tell the truth when they're afraid that something bad's going to happen if they tell the truth. But I got to be this age, and I'm doing this, and what's somebody going to do to me, really? I say things all the time that I could really get into trouble for, but they kind of blow over.
CNN: You have to admire women who have the courage to put it out there.
Cher: When I grew up, it was a time when women were just supposed to be cute and not have many opinions. My mother and her friends were quite different. They were all the most beautiful women you've ever seen ... and they were very strong women.
When I was with Sonny -- when I met him, I was 16, so it didn't bother me until I was 20-something -- it started to chafe at me. I really wanted to do what I wanted to do, say what I wanted to say. I didn't want to be shackled to somebody else's opinion, and Sonny was very much, "My opinion is your opinion." So when I decided to leave him, I just thought, "I have to get back to myself. I have to decide who I am, and just be who I am."
I have to tell you something. It doesn't always turn out. It's not always a happy ending when sometimes you say things that you think, and it goes against the grain of the larger group.
CNN: You recently turned down a chance to perform at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, in protest of the Russian government's stance on gay rights.
Cher: Well, first of all, it was back channels. But it was to be an American ambassador, to sing or to do something in the opening. I have a lot of great friends in Russia -- wonderful people, people I really love -- and I have great fans there, too.
The Olympics are the Olympics, so it wasn't something that I'd think, "Ah, that's sad." But you can't. You just can't. If I were an athlete, I'd think long and hard, because you spend your whole life preparing for the whole moment, and then your life is nothing. Your dream is nothing. So I couldn't fault an athlete. But mine was just, "It would have been fun." You just can't do it. It's not possible.
CNN: Do you think gay rights have taken a backwards turn in some parts of the world?
Cher: I think maybe gay marriage has scared some part of the world. I've seen many countries where it's punishable by death. How can people be so afraid of something that's really not going to involve them? I just don't get it.
My mother had gay friends. It's something I was around my whole life. Also, my best fan base is gay guys that have never gone (away). They've always been there. All I can hope is that the people that I know in Russia, that there are more people like that.
I never felt that when I was there. We had gay guys with us in my show, and it was like, no problem. So I hope this is just a bad period in their history, and it'll blow over. Look, when I was young, it was against the law. It's amazing how far we've come in that amount of time.
CNN: You really pushed boundaries in 1989 with your music video, "If I Could Turn Back Time."
Cher: It seems like nothing now, but the first one to push is the first one to push. So yeah, I got a lot of flack for that. It doesn't make any difference. It's a great video, and it kind of stands the test of time. But when you're pushing against the people, they either have more judgment, or they don't see the humor in it. Some people got really unhappy, and that's why they pulled the video after it had already been on for weeks and weeks. Then they started playing it late at night.
I think there are probably some things that kids shouldn't see. I don't think that was one of them. If you look at it in comparison to what's happening today, it's nothing.
CNN: What did you think of Miley Cyrus' performance on the VMAs?
Cher: You have to give her credit for trying something, for trying to stretch the boundaries. I didn't like it because I didn't think it was very good. If she had come out naked, and done that and pulled it off, I would have said, "You stretched it. You pulled it off. It was great." But I didn't love it as an art form. I thought it was sloppy. I didn't think it was professional enough for her. I think she's got to go back to the drawing board. And yet everybody's talking about it.
I certainly don't think she deserved all the flak that she got for it. It was just one performance at the VMAs. Who cares?
CNN: It's hard to believe you're 67.
Cher: I know! It's terrible. I hate that number. I don't like any of them. I thought I was 10 years younger, and I was upset. But you know, my mom has this saying -- and I'm not sure I agree with her -- but she said, "If you don't pay attention to age, then it won't pay attention to you." And she says it, and it sounds nice, but I don't buy it.
CNN: Are skimpy costumes still part of your stage show?
Cher: Well, not always, but will be as long as I can do it. My friends and I were talking the other day, and we were looking at what we were wearing and it's the same things that we've been wearing since we were in our 20s. And I remember thinking, "When will I have to stop wearing jeans, or when will I have to cut my hair?" All those things, but it doesn't seem like it.
I'm going to die wearing the same things that I love wearing. I'm going to wear my jeans. I'm going to wear wifebeaters. I'm going to wear my leather jacket. I don't care. As long as I can look good in it, and feel comfortable in it, then I'm going to do it.
CNN: Are we going to see a "Farewell Tour 2?"
Cher: Yes, absolutely! I shouldn't have called it that, but it seemed like it was at the time. It was like the tour that would not quit. It was crazy long. I won't do that again. The reason I'm doing this is mainly because I know I really will never do it again because I don't have the energy. It takes so much energy to be on the road
I know I have finite energy, and I can probably squeak by this time, but I did the longest tour ever by a woman, and I don't think there were 20-year-olds who could handle that. Three-and-a-half years is a really long time. So we'll see. But if I don't do it now, I won't do it.
I'm not like when Tina (Turner) came back and did a tour at 70. That's not going to be me. She's got a great life force.
At some point, you have to give up your career -- unless you're Tony Bennett or Betty White. I still can do it now, so I should.
CNN: I think you'll still be out there at 90, rocking a G-string.
Cher: You think so?
CNN: Yeah.
Cher: I don't.
From our media partner CNN
Denise Quan


text:
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Sodrugestvo is currently the largest oilseed crusher in Europe. With facilities in Russia, Brazil and other countries, we aim to diversify our geographic presence and become a truly international industrial operator in our sector.Read more
Sodrugestvo has developed a unique network of storage and distribution facilities in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe and more recently in Brazil and Paraguay.
These capacities allow Sodrugestvo to provide high-class services to all participants of these global agricultural markets.Read more


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OpenOffice.org may not be the number one free alternative to Microsoft Office for much longer. Since Oracle acquired Sun the future of the open source office suite has been uncertain. So uncertain in fact that a group decided to fork the code base and create an alternative implementation called LibreOffice under a new organization known as The Document Foundation.
Essentially LibreOffice is the equivalent of OpenOffice.org, but in no way is under the control of Oracle. The Document Foundation asked Oracle to come on board and to allow them to use the OpenOffice.org name. Oracle refused and asked anyone associated with LibreOffice to leave the OpenOffice.org project due to a conflict of interest.
Full Story And credits to – http://www.geek.com/articles/news/33-developers-quit-openoffice-org-2010111/


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Discussion in 'Humorous Jokes, Stories or Pictures' started by AkMike, Dec 4, 2013.
Anyone interested?
im sure willem would love some :icecream:
Come one come all! There's plenty to go around!
No thanks, got plenty.
I'd be more than happy to send some your way Bluey, just remember the snow here right now is accompanied by -15 C degrees. The warmest temp all day here so far. I hate it so you are welcome to it!
never gets anything like that cold here janey ,
but our spring and summer so far have been very confussing ,on Tuesday morning while we were unloading it was 34 c at 1000 ,by 1300 it was 16c and we had ,had an inch of rain its now 0935 Thursday and havnt seen the sun since ,
Hey Jane, Quit horning in on my give away! I've gotta get rid of this stuff by next summer!
I know what you mean it only got into the 50's here today..........nearly had to put on a jacket! :devil: :chaplin:
so it doesn't snow in phoenix ?
I thought you guys in America got snow all over the show ...
Enjoy it while it lasts. The storm that we're "enjoying" in Colorado is headed your way. Better dig out your long woolies. Tonight it's supposed to get to -24 C. It's not predicted to get above freezing until next Wednesday and the weather service is predicting that it should stop snowing by Monday. Enjoy. ;-)
sounds like you really want to be done with it mike ....
We need to give Mike a break. He has a long wait until spring. Those short days can make people touchy. We wouldn't want to be responsible for him going bonkers this early in the winter.
Here in Page AZ (1 mile from Utah) it snowed today with a high of 37F, the snow doesn't stick to the ground but tomorrow will be a high of 27F. Shirt sleeve weather for those from Winnipeg I may head for Baja California, Mexico after DSC to get warm!
Phoenix is one the few safe havens of NA, that an Florida.
:rofl: Hey Mike if you send a snow Machine with it you can ship me 30 or 40 tons it was 72 degrees here today.
thanks enysee
ive always thought all of America got covered up in snow during winter .
my daughter has always wanted to Christmas in the states so we can have a white Christmas.
but its almost dark there all day now , right ?
im guessing it doesn't snow there either bob
Nope. True for northern Alaska and Canada. In Colorado, on the shortest day of the year, the sun will rise at 7:20 and set at 16:39. There is plenty of snow at the ski resorts. The days are shorter as you move north, longer further south.
Last year we got about 6 inches lasted 2 days and was gone. weather here is really screwed up to day it 72 monday they are predicting 27 talk about ass backwards!
thank you mtgoat. that's the opposite down here ,makes sense
learnt more about America ,right here today than l did in school
Separate names with a comma.


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Research Interests
Conceptual Modeling
In this topic, our research is related to the development and evaluation of new paradigms and tools for conceptual modeling of both traditional and non-traditional applications. A tool recently developed as part of a work in this topic is OMT-G, an extended version of the OMT model for geographical applications that has been adopted by several institutions in Brazil.
Cooperative Interfaces
Cooperative interfaces are interfaces that assist the user to formulate queries to semistructured and structured dataases. Our activities in this research topic aim at the development of new query paradigms and the implementation and evaluation of interfaces based on these paradigms.
Database Design
Our research activities in this topic focus on the development of methods and tools for database design, mainly directed to the use of the ER and object-oriented models for conceptual modelling and generation of (relational) database schemas that correctly represent the semantics of the corresponding application.
Digital Libraries
In cooperation with the Digital Libraries Research Laboratory at Virginia Tech, our research work in this topic aims at incorporating in information services for digital libraries features such as: seamless interoperability of data and text repositories; consistent fusion of results from search over distinct heterogeneous information sources; use of several types of evidences to assess the relevance of retrieved objects in a query result; and new paradigms for users to issue queries and to analise their results. This joint work is developed in the context of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD).
Web and Semistructured Data Management
In the last few years, the group has been involved with the development of methods and tools for dealing with data available in the Web and in other non-structured medium (e.g., documents). The main emphasis has been in providing facilities similar to those available in traditional database systems for managing such data. This research work is mainly characterized by data extraction tool we have developed, called DEByE, and a number of companion tools for manipulating and querying semistructured data available in Web sources.
Web Information RetrievalIn this research topic, we are interested in the development of information retrieval technology for dealing with the huge amount of information available on the World Wide Web. Our research includes techniques for generic and focused Web crawling, and a model for automatic categorization of medical documents. This particular model is now being extended for dealing with other controlled domains such as the law domain. The results of this research were used in two commercial country wide search engines (TodoBR and TodoCL) as well as in medScopio, a search engine specialized in the


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Strategic Airlift Interim Solution (SALIS)
NATO member countries have pooled their resources to charter special aircraft that give the Alliance the capability to transport heavy equipment across the globe by air.
The multinational airlift consortium is chartering six Antonov An-124-100 transport aircraft, which are capable of handling 'outsize' (unusually large) cargo.
The Russian and Ukrainian Antonov aircraft are being used as an interim solution to meet shortfalls in the Alliance's strategic airlift capabilities, pending deliveries of Airbus A400M aircraft. This is why the project is called Strategic Airlift Interim Solution (SALIS).
The consortium includes 12 NATO nations (Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, the United Kingdom) and two partner nations (Finland and Sweden).
This is one of two complementary initiatives aimed at providing NATO with strategic airlift capabilities. The other is the Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC), under which ten NATO countries plus two partner countries have purchased three Boeing C-17 transport aircraft.
The SALIS contract provides two Antonov An-124-100 aircraft on part-time charter, two more on six days' notice and another two on nine days' notice. The countries have committed to using the aircraft for a minimum of 2000 flying hours per year for 2013 and for a minimum of 2450 flying hours for 2014. Additional aircraft types i.e. IL-76 and AN-225 are included in the contract but it use is subject to availability.
A single Antonov An-124-100 can carry up to 120 tons of cargo. NATO has used Antonovs in the past to transport equipment to and from Afghanistan, deliver aid to the victims of the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, and airlift African Union peacekeepers in and out of Darfur.
During their annual spring meeting in Brussels in June 2003, NATO Ministers of Defence signed letters of intent on strategic air- and sealift. Eleven nations signed the letter of intent on airlift: Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Turkey. At the June 2004 Istanbul Summit, Defence Ministers of 15 countries signed a memorandum of understanding to achieve an operational airlift capacity for outsize cargo by 2005, using up to six Antonov An-124-100 transport aircraft. In addition, the Defence Ministers of Bulgaria and Romania signed a letter of intent to join the consortium.
In January 2006, the 15 countries signed a contract with Ruslan SALIS GmbH, a subsidiary of the Russian company Volga Dnepr, based in Leipzig.
In March 2006, the 15 original signatories were joined by Sweden at a special ceremony in Leipzig to mark the entry into force of the multinational contract. The contract's initial duration was for three years but this has now been extended until the end of 2014. Finland and Poland have also now joined the SALIS programme. The SALIS contract was re-competed in 2012 and Ruslan SALIS GmbH was rewarded a new two-year contract (2013/2014) with options to extend until December 2017.
Volga-Dnepr and Ukraine's ADB provide the SALIS aircraft and also provide AN-124-100 aircraft to support the Afghanistan mission, with weekly sorties from Europe to Afghanistan and back, under contractual arrangements with NATO Support Agency (NSPA).
The capabilities of SALIS will play a big role in on-going Afghanistan re-deployment.
Strategic airlift co-ordination is carried out by the SALIS Co-ordination Cell collocated with but not part of the Movement Coordination Centre Europe (MCCE) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.


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Strategic internet marketing methods are known to yield the best results. A well thought out affiliate marketing strategy could be the difference between you making money at home or failing at it. Strategic internet marketing is a common practice that is sure to lead anyone to success no matter what their level of business knowledge is.
The basic idea of affiliate marketing is where someone will set up a page online, sometimes known as a squeeze page that includes an affiliate link. This affiliate link will be connected to that user and their affiliate account and once a visitor clicks that link and buys the product, or service, the affiliate account holder will receive a nice amount of commission. It is basically a reward system where you get rewarded if you successfully bring a sale towards a designated product, or service. It truly is a win, win situation.
There are several methods to apply an affiliate marketing strategy and one of those is called a squeeze page. A squeeze page is where someone sets up an attractive sales page via the internet and puts a dozen of their affiliate links within the page. They often stuff the page with useful information and customer testimonials so that you are convinced this product is worth the purchase. Most of the time it is worth it but do your research before you act impulsively.
Click per action, or CPA, is a great method that should be considered a smart and strategic internet marketing tool. Someone may own and website or even a blog and they have plenty of content that keeps their visitors quite happy. This user may have an ulterior motive, in a good sense, where their goal is to build a large list of emails. It can also be called a subscriber list or even a directory and this tactic is used for a certain purpose.
If a visitor were to fill out a form to subscribe to a certain mailing list, lets say for free weekly coupons via email, that form could be an affiliate link in disguise. When the action is completed the one who brought the visitor should receive a nice commission for their troubles. If you have several successful websites or blogs you can easily earn a nice amount of income when applying an affiliate marketing strategy such as click per action.
Another affiliate marketing strategy proven to be very valuable is advertisement placement. There are many companies that offer their advertisements to be place upon your website or even a blog if it is valuable. If someone clicks that ad and proceeds to purchase the item you will be receiving a commission because you are the creative person who made that specific sale possible. It is the company way of saying "Thank You" when you think about it. This has proven to probably be the most popular strategic internet marketing method for a long time now. Either way one should find success while using any of these methods that were mentioned above.


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Kit Issues, Good Friday & Sydney
Posted by Cycling Shorts. on June 8, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Kit Issues, Good Friday & Sydney by Jody Cundy So much has happened since my last update, and also because I didn't get chance to update you last month I've now got 2 busy months to fill you in on! Kit Issues! First up was the Good Friday Track Meet, the debut for my … Continue reading →
Filed under Blogs, C4, Jody Cundy MBE, Paracycling, Pro Cycling, Road, Track · Tagged with 1 mile dash, 200 Paralympic Games, Aquatic Centre, Bike, Bronze, Bronze Medal, Cycling, cyclist, Eastern Racing Creek, Flying 200, Gippingen, Gold, gold medal, Good Friday Meet, Helen Scott, Itmar Esteban, Jody Cundy Christina Kelkel, Jon-Allan Butterworth, Keirin, kit, Manchester, Olympic Flame Cauldron, Olympic Park, Para -T Cycling Team, Para-T, Paralympics, Pete Mitchell, Philip Hindes, Piacenza, rider, road race, Ross Edgar, Royal National Park, scrath race, Sergovia, Spain, Sprint, Swimmer, Swimming, Sydney, Sydney Olympic Stadium, Sydney Road Wolrd Cup, Terry Byrne, Time Trial, Track, Wollongong, World Championships, World Cup


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Engine-CodesOBDII Code ListP0420 HONDA
P0420 HONDA - Catalyst System Efficiency Below Threshold Bank 1
P0420 HONDA Possible Causes
- Faulty Three-way Catalyst Converter Bank 1
- Exhaust Tube
- Intake Air Leaks
- Faulty Oxygen (O2) Sensor
- Faulty Fuel injector(s)
- Leaking Fuel Injector (s)
- Faulty Spark plugs
- Improper Ignition Timing
- Faulty Engine Control Module (ECM)
- Dirty Air Filter
First diagnose P0420 HONDA code
Check the "Possible Causes" listed above. Visually inspect the related wiring harness and connectors. Check for damaged components and look for broken, bent, pushed out, or corroded terminals.
P0420 HONDA Tech NotesAs the code description implies the P0420 code means that the vehicle's control module has detected that the three-way catalytic converter is not working properly (is not as efficient as the factory is expecting). Replacing the oxygen (O2) sensors may sometimes fix the code, but in most cases the catalytic convert needs to be replaced to fix the problem. If the P0420 code is combined with other codes, try fixing the other codes first.
Cost of diagnosing the P0420 HONDA code
Labor: 1.0The cost of diagnosing the P0420 HONDA code is 1.0 hour of labor. The auto repair labor rates vary widely across the country, and even within the same city. Most auto repairs shops charge between $75 and $150 per hour.
When is the P0420 HONDA code detected?- Three way catalytic converter Bank 1 does not operate properly.
- Three way catalyst converter Bank 1 does not have enough oxygen storage capacity.
P0420 HONDA Possible Symptoms
- Engine Light ON (or Service Engine Soon Warning Light)
P0420 HONDA MeaningThe Engine Control Module (ECM) monitors the switching frequency ratio of heated oxygen sensors 1 (front O2 sensor) and heated oxygen sensors 2 (rear O2 sensor).
A three way catalyst converter (Manifold) with high oxygen storage capacity will indicate a low switching frequency of heated oxygen sensor 2. As oxygen storage capacity decreases, the heated oxygen sensor 2 switching frequency will increase.
When the frequency ratio of heated oxygen sensors 1 and 2 approaches a specified limit value, the three way catalyst malfunction is diagnosed.
P0420 HONDA More InformationNeed more information on how to fix the P0420 HONDA code?
Get Access to Factory Service Manuals


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I usually don't make desperate pleas on here, but I would really love your help on something! As most of you know, our mom's retreat is coming up in 49 days! (Who's counting!)
We have a huge conglomerate of amazing women coming on this trip. Foster moms, single moms, working moms and moms parenting special needs children/children of trauma/attachment disorder/etc. They really are doing the hardest job on earth. I think that they truly deserve some pampering and some VIP treatment. I am working with some corporations to sponsor some items for goody bags for these real life hero moms.
Do you have things you'd like to donate? (we'll need 15 of whatever it is) Are you a cosmetic rep who would like to donate samples/products. Are you an etsy shop who would love to donate some of your handcrafted goodies? Do you make something super cool (jewelry, soap, beauty products, stationary, etc) that you'd like include? Do you own or do you work for a corporation/store who would like to donate products/services/ gift cards? Did you make a million adoption fundraiser t-shirts and want to blow out 15 of them?
I can guarantee you that these women going on the retreat deserve the pampering and goodies you donate. But I want to also make it worth your while. When the retreat is over (October)- I'll do a huge post describing everything in our goody bags and well as links to where everything came from. This would be a great opportunity to plug your shop/store/business/fundraiser! Consider it cheap advertising! I'll also be putting together one extra goody bag to give to a lucky reader who doesn't get to go on the retreat to help you generate some buzz about your business.
Can we help each other out? If you have things you'd like to donate or have ideas for me- please email me at firstname.lastname@example.com. Thanks a million!!!
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European Union could investigate F1 group - report
"A full EU investigation would throw F1 into turmoil"
The European Union is "monitoring" the controversial new system of decision-making within formula one, it has emerged.
Earlier this month, we reported that F1's four smallest teams - Marussia, Caterham, Force India and Sauber - had written a letter complaining about the new and rule-influential Strategy Group.
The Group is made up of the grid's powerful 'big five' teams and, for historic reasons, Williams, who recently vetoed FIA president Jean Todt's plans for a 2015 budget cap.
Force India deputy Bob Fernley told the Guardian that the big teams also receive the lion's share of the commercial revenue distributed by Bernie Ecclestone.
"We have a situation where we have enriched and empowered five teams and disenfranchised six," he said.
Germany's Sport Bild suggested that the letter, described as "explosive" by one team insider, made clear the small teams' belief that the Strategy Group could be contrary to European competition law.
Now, the London newspaper The Times claims that European Union officials, specifically the competition authority, are "monitoring" the situation.
"A full (EU) investigation would throw F1 into turmoil, potentially wrecking agreements and finishing any prospect that the sport could be floated on the Singapore Stock Exchange", correspondent Kevin Eason said.
Eason revealed that "two people close to the sport" have already been interviewed by European officials, who are "said to be showing concern".
They are reportedly also concerned about the FIA's current role, after a previous EU investigation ruled that the governing body not be involved in F1's commercial matters.
The Paris-based federation is yet to comment.
"We simply cannot run a sport like this," said Fernley, who will be at a crucial meeting involving Todt and Ecclestone in London on Thursday.


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Reluctant Readers
From Wiki
Article in the Juvenile Fiction category.
- Oh Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty by Joy Masoff
- Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
- Frindle by Andrew Clements
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
- Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little by Peggy Gifford
- Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key by Jack Gantos
- Uh-Oh, Cleo by Jessica Harper
- Babymouse by Jennifer L. Holm
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
- Letters From Camp by Kate Klise
- Leon and the Champion Chip by Allen Kurzwell
- Judy Moody by Megan McDonald
- Clementine by Sara Pennypacker
- Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey
- I Was a Rat by Philip Pullman
- Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar
- Oggie Cooder by Sarah Weeks


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Pagan Community Notes is a series focused on news originating from within the Pagan community. Reinforcing the idea that what happens to and within our organizations, groups, and events is news, and news-worthy. My hope is that more individuals, especially those working within Pagan organizations, get into the habit of sharing their news with the world. So let's get started!
Starhawk, noted activist and author of "The Spiral Dance," took to Facebook to speak out on the verdict in the Trayvon Martin murder trial, and to also speak more broadly about race, and "stand your ground" laws. She initially posted: "I'm enraged and heartsick at the injustice of the Zimmerman verdict. I stand with the black leadership and their allies calling for a Department of Justice investigation, for an end to racial profiling, and the end of the dangerous laws that encourage vigilantes to target anyone they consider 'other' with impunity! So much work to do!" Then, followed up to expand on her previous statement. Quote: "I am indeed heartsick and enraged at how many young women are given long sentences for fighting back against their abusers. But people, both those cases underline one of the core ways racism and patriarchy work–by defining who gets to use violence and who does not […] I advocate nonviolence. But nonviolence is not passivity. It calls us to actively acknowledge that racism and patriarchy are deep, inherent, endemic forms of perpetual violence that infuse our society deeply, and will take much thought and work and courage to transform." She finished by addressing critics who would rather she focus on "spiritual stuff" rather than her activist work by noting that "this IS my spiritual stuff."
A new Pagan-themed community television program and videocast has launched, with a mission of serving Pagans in Oregon while also covering national and international Pagan news. Called "The Pent O'Clock News" the 30-minute program will air on Salem's CCTV Channel 23 and Corvallis' CCAT 29 television stations. Quote: "The monthly show includes stories on the national and international level that impact our Pagan Community. The focus of the show is on news about the Pagan Community in Oregon. Hosted by Oregon Pagans Carl Neal and Michelle Hawkins […] The show is an opportunity not only to more deeply connect Oregon's Pagan Community, but it is also an opportunity to introduce ourselves to our non-Pagan neighbors. Understanding begins with knowledge and it is hoped that both Magick Moment and The Pent O'Clock News can help to provide that knowledge." The Pent O'Clock News joins other Pagan-themed community television programs like Keepers of the Flame in Connecticut, along with several ongoing Pagan videocasts.
Pagan singer-songwriter Sharon Knight has released her new album "Neofolk Romantique." Quote: "A collection of Celtic traditional and original songs ranging from romantic and fanciful to dark and brooding. Faery lore, lively jigs, and haunting ballads of pirates, murder, love, death, and the quest for poetic inspiration, sung by a feisty redhead. Comes with a 21-page booklet of lyrics and song notes." This is Knight's first solo album since 2005's "Song of the Sea," though she's hasn't been idle in those intervening years, releasing an album with her band Pandemonaeon in 2010, and two album of chants with T. Thorn Coyle in 2008 and 2009. Sharon Knight will be hitting the road to promote her new album at the end of July, which includes a stop at the Faerieworlds Festival in Eugene, Oregon, where she'll be sharing a stage with Pagan-friendly artists like Omnia and S.J. Tucker. In a recent interview Knight said that she's already working on her next album, a collaboration with her husband Winter. Quote: "I am finishing up my next album with my husband Winter. He is my main collaborator and a fantastic musician […] over the years we have developed such an outstanding rapport, we practically read each others' minds in the studio, it is such a great working relationship, I can't imagine doing this without him."
Back in March I reported that that Circle Sanctuary Priestess, Death Midwife, chaplain, and Green Burial advocate Nora Cedarwind Young is terminally ill, and wasn't expected to live for much longer. However, Young has beaten the estimates and predictions, and is still with us. This happy news has created a financial crisis for Young and her family as they deal with ever-increasing medical bills and a fundraiser has been started to help them cover the costs. Quote: "One of Nora's favorite adages, "The gift you give is the gift you get!" is the theme for our efforts here. This amazing and beloved priestess has stayed with us much longer than anyone thought possible! Nora has been somewhat stabilized with a strict routine of medicines and wound care, but the cost of such endeavors, as you can imagine, has been quite a burden on the couple, even though they have insurance. The intent of this fundraiser is to alleviate the extreme stress they have been under by providing some financial help for the non-covered costs that have accumulated, and cover additional treatments, like intravenous vitamin and mineral therapies, that Nora says really make a difference in how she feels." If Nora Cedarwind Young has touched your life, please consider helping out.
In Other Pagan Community News:
- The Pagan Accessibility Project, a forthcoming book anthology that will assist Pagan event organizers and Pagan members of the disabled and Deaf communities in improving accessibility, is looking for contributors and for individuals to answer a survey about "your festival experiences as a person with a disability, illness, or addiction, or someone who is part of the Deaf or Blind Community." This project is being coordinated by Janet Callahan and Tara "Masery" Miller. The survey is open until August 1st.
- For those of you following the paganism-as-slur meta story that I first mentioned at the beginning of this month, the mainstream media has slowly picked it up, first by political snark-blog Wonkette, then by the Religion News Service, who interviews Pagan chaplain and activist Patrick McCollum. Quote: "What pagan has come to mean in modern times is people who are more attentive to our connection to the Earth, the world we live in, and our interconnectedness with everything in it."
- At the beginning of this year The Pagan Voice launched, hoping to create a world "where Pagan spirituality and philosophy is an influential voice in mainstream culture," and launched an ambitious fund-raising drive soon after. That crowdfunding initiative did not succeed, and now The Pagan Voice has announced that they are shutting down, citing poor fundraising and a stalled non-profit application process as the primary reasons. Quote: "Because we began as a relatively unkown startup with only minimal support through donations, we simply didn't have the resources to hang on for another 12-18 months while the IRS decided whether it was going to approve our application for charitable status." The production team behind the project has announced a new initiative called TangleTown Media.
- Tarot expert Mary K. Greer announces that she has found a missing link in the history of the development of tarot cards. Quote: "It's been thought for several years that the Lenormand images were derived from Coffee-ground fortune-telling or Tasseomancy. This work is the missing link that proves this theory. It has been curious that several of the Lenormand images were not found in the old lists of coffee-ground emblems, but now we know that several cards were added to the original set. The reason for the expansion of the deck to 36 cards probably came about when Hechtel decided to combine "Les Amusements des Allemands" with the German 36-piece playing card deck, which was then more popular than either the 32-card Piquet deck or the 52-card deck."
- Dr. Karl E. H. Seigfried of The Norse Mythology Blog is calling on Heathens to make their displeasure known with a short radio segment on PRI's The World which covers the acceptance of the Thor's Hammer for veteran's grave markers. Dr. Seigfried is unhappy with the flippant tone taken, and the fact that no actual Heathens were interviewed at any point in the story's progression. Quote: "Why in the world did NPR not call an actual Ásatrúar? Why did they not call Josh & Cat Heath, two solid heathens who were actively involved in this issue & who have made repeated public statements on the subject over the years?"
- Damh the Bard shares a couple videos from PaganCon 2013 which took place July 13th in the UK.
That's all I have for now, have a great day!


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Attractions, shopping, outdoor activities - everything you want to do and see in Didim is easily accessible - within walking distance, a short drive Didim is known for being a very walkable city with a compact downtown core, so you'll likely find many of the places you want to go are just a short walk from your hotel. Visit our Maps section to help plan your route. Taxis are plentiful and can be hailed on the street, as well as found at designated stands, and called for pick-up. If you prefer to drive yourself around, you'll find that most major car rental companies have offices in Didim. Parking is available at most hotels, and is easy to find around most attractions. Visit our Transit System page for more information about using Didim public transportation system to get around. Visit our page to explore other modes of getting around in Didim. Search below to find listing for taxi companies, car and RV rentals.
Turkey has come a long way from medieval practices and has flourished into a leading medical and healthcare region for Europe and a top competitor with even the US. They have low costs and excellent quality facilities, treatments, and technology making them an excellent place to receive top rate health care. Their doctors are usually trained abroad and a lot holding certification from the US. Being an EU candidate for membership they consistently uphold their standards of healthcare. If you're travelling to Turkey be assured you will receive some of the best care and will be treated by some of the best trained doctors in the country. In short, if you have to be sick, Turkey is a great place to be sick.


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Ads | Business Flyers | Volume 6This package includes 10 uniquely designed, photo collage magazine ads/business flyers. Stylish layouts were carefully constructed in photoshop with well organized layer sets. Smart objects were used for photos, everything is fully customizable and is very easy to edit. These templates are perfectly suited for any business looking for a clean, modern style that focuses on beautiful photography.
Features- 10 Unique Designs
- Fully Layered Adobe Photoshop .PSD files
- Well Organized layers makes it very easy to update
- Print Ready, CMYK, 300 DPI
- Guides for Bleed, Trim & Safe zone (starting from outside in: bleed, trim, safe)
- Very easy to update photo and copy
- Smart objects used for photos
- Free Fonts used, download links are in the "read me" file.
- Photos in the preview image are used for display purposes and are not included.
About The AuthorHi there, my name is Luke and I am very passionate about design. I take pride in my work and the support I provide to my customers. Any item you buy comes with free support, simply send me an email with the details and I will get back to you quickly. I strive to make all my items user-friendly, and I will put in the extra time needed to assist you with any questions or issues that may arise.
Below you will find all of my items organized into collections. Click on an image to view the entire set. You can also see all of my items in my portfolio. I hope you enjoy my work, feel free to get in touch if you need support, have questions or need a custom quote.


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Ldemchuk necesitaba un nuevo diseño de papelería y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 6 diseños de 2 diseñadores freelance.
Thunderbox Rentals
A couple of weeks ago we had our new company logo designed here, now we want to incorporate that into some dynamic business cards. We also need staiitionary .We are a young and upcoming rental company. We are starting by renting out portable toilets and then in the next couple of years want to expand into more rental products. We are two brothers, excited about the future. We are very casual personalities, but want our company to come across as professional and dynamic. Reliablility is key to us.
anyone who uses a toilet?? We live in northern alberta, so lots of oilfield and natural gas companies will use us for their remote sites.
Incorporating our attached logo. We like the idea of a black background on the business cards. We will need to incorporate website info, names and email address's ... Want to keep the retro look, but in a professional manner. Because we want to expand from toilets to other rental equipment, we cant focus totally on toilets...


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Rental of cabins and cottages - our TIP: Stylish cottage for up to 10 people for a SPECIAL PRICE located near the village Leskove, location of communities Uzgruň and Velké Karlovice, District Vsetín. Object is in the PLA Beskydy surrounded by forests, which are a paradise for mushroom pickers. Hikers and bikers can explore the beauty of Wallachia by marked hiking and biking trails. In winter, there is a skiing on the lift near the cottage (only 150 m) or ski center Razula (1.5 km).
Stylish wallachian cottage has 2 floors. The ground floor is consisted of 2 sitting room, a part of each of them are original tiled stove. The first has a fully equipped kitchen (electric hob, microwave, refrigerator, coffee maker) and dining room: dining table, rustic furniture, radio and gramophone. The second sitting room is a living: rustic table and chairs, sofa (which can be spread into double-bed) and TV. Upstairs there are 2 bedrooms: both with 2 beds (double bed) and 2 extra beds. Social facility includes a bathroom with bath, shower and toilet. Heating is ensured by solid fuels (tile stove 2x). There is a rustic furniture outside the cottage, some free space around and on the edge of the property flows the mountain torrent. Parking is available directly at the object.
[ zpět ]
Giant and Jizera Mountains
Comfortable cottage with a heated swimming pool located near the village of...
5 number of rooms (21 beds + 1 extra bed)
Giant and Jizera Mountains
Comfortable wellness cottage with sauna, whirlpool and swimming pool located at...
6 number of rooms (12 beds + 2 extra beds)
Beskydy Mountains
Extremely comfortable mountain chalet with swimming pool, wellness studio...
7 number of rooms (11 beds + 4 extra beds)
Giant and Jizera Mountains
Comfortable timbered cottage with sitting on the terrace situated near the hill...
8 number of rooms (24 beds)
Beskydy Mountains
Stylish timbered cottage with sauna situated in beautiful environment of...
7 number of rooms (15 beds + 1 extra bed)
South Bohemia
Luxuriously renovated cottage with sauna and pond in the garden located near the...
8 number of rooms (16 beds)
South Bohemia
Wellness cottage with indoor indoor pool (year-round operation), Finnish sauna...
5 number of rooms (8 beds + 1 extra bed)
Beskydy Mountains
Luxuriously furnished chalet with its own infrared sauna and whirlpool located...
6 number of rooms (8 beds)
Giant and Jizera Mountains
The cottage with a recessed outdoor swimming pool is located near the village...
AP pro 4 + AP pro 10 osob (14 beds)
Sumava mountains and western Bohemia
Luxury log cabin with sauna and wine cellar is located under the hill Bukovec,...
5 number of rooms (12 beds)
Giant and Jizera Mountains
Extremely comfortable cottage with stylish interiors and a heated bath barrel...
6 number of rooms (12 beds + 5 extra beds)
Bohemian Switzerland and Lusatian Mountains
Comfortable holiday cottage situated at the top of Jedlina, locality of villages...
4 rooms (8 beds)
South and central Moravia
Extremely luxurious wellnes cottage (sauna, heated bathing bar, swimming pool)...
3x AP pro 4 - 6 osob (16 beds)
Orlicke Mountains and eastern Bohemia
Comfortable wellness cottage with whirlpool, sauna and swimming pool located at...
9 number of rooms (18 beds + 7 extra beds)
South Bohemia
2x chalupa (pro 5 a 8 osob) (13 beds)
Jesenik Mountains and Oder Hills
Comfortable cottage with a common room and fireplace located at the top of Smrk,...
6 number of rooms (18 beds + 4 extra beds)
Bohemian Paradise
Timbered cottage with sauna, bathing barrel and sitting on the terrace situated...
4 rooms (8 beds)
We are also among those who go on holiday cottages? Only a timely order allows you to choose the best facility and term for you. Our clients frequently seek cottage with a swimming pool for the summer cottage in the mountains near the ski slopes in winter, spa cottages for New Year's Eve, as well as cottages for the weekend in...
Rental of cabins and cottages - our TIP: Stylish cottage for up to 10 people for a SPECIAL PRICE located near the village Leskove, location of communities Uzgruň and Velké Karlovice, District Vsetín. Object is in the PLA Beskydy surrounded by forests, which are a paradise for mushroom pickers. Hikers and bikers can explore the...
Our TIP - luxury cottage at the Vranov Dam - the object M1-004: Luxury cottage situated in a quiet location near the village Kostníky, location of dam Vranov, District Třebíč. The cottage is in the southern tip of the Czech Republic on the border of Vysočina Region and South-Moravian Region, close to the Austrian border. At the...
During the year, we take orders for the New Year's Eve stay! New Year's Eve in a cottage for rent! Rental of a cottage on New Year's Eve! New Year's Eve in a cottage in the mountains, New Year's Eve in a cottage near the ski lifts is provided by very early booking currently available dates. Overview of currently available...
TIPPOBYT s.r.o.
Cabins and cottages in the Czech and Slovak Republic
created by SYMPACT
We recommend: CS-CHALUPY, CS-UBYTOVÁNÍ