Everyone knows the Winter Olympic Games are where we watch the best athletes in the world go head-to-head on an international stage. What you may not know is that the first Winter Games were an afterthought. They were initially called International Winter Sports Week, and were so successful that afterwards they were renamed the Winter Olympics and scheduled to be held every four years.

Though the Games have evolved and grown, the key element to the Olympics has always been the athletes; the most universal sports event would be nothing without its competitors. Every Olympics, the athletes are recognized at the opening ceremony and a select few are elevated to the podium. Here are the 50 greatest Winter Olympians of all time. To compile the top 50, we enlisted the help of five Olympic experts who are among the best in their field. They each ranked the athletes they thought were the best in Olympic history and we scored their picks using a range of criteria. The formula weighed the following factors: number of times an athlete was nominated, medal count and type, and subjective factors (for example, the 1980 USA men's hockey team ranked high on our list despite earning only one medal because of the remarkable story). We also gave additional credit to athletes who placed number one on our panelists’ original lists of nominees.

In addition to winning two back-to-back Olympic titles, Dick Button has the distinction of being the first skater to land a double axel and a triple jump in competition. He also invented the flying camel spin. Button's list of skating titles goes on and on and includes seven national, three North American, a European and five world titles.

As if his accomplishments on the ice weren't enough, Button also pursued a law degree at Harvard, was a show skater and has been a hugely successful figure skating commentator on television since 1960. -- Pj Kwong

With a career spanning five Winter Olympics, from 1992 to 2006, German biathlete Ursula "Uschi" Disl was one of the dominant athletes in her sport for a decade and a half, winning nine Olympic medals for her country (two of which were gold) and even being named “German Sportswoman of the Year” in 2005 -- a rare moment of public recognition for a biathlete. —Mark Lebetkin

With a total of eight Winter Olympic medals (three gold, four silver, and one bronze), Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann is one of the most successful speed skaters in the entire world. Aptly named by the media as the "ice queen," she began to display her dominance at the 1992 Games where she placed first in both the 3,000-meter and 5,000-meter events and second in the 1,500-meter. In 1998, after knee surgery and two months before the Winter Games, she set the 3,000-meter world record and then went on to win the gold in that event while competing at Nagano. In the final race of her career, Niemann-Stirnemann went on not only to break her own 5,000-meter world record, but also to become the first woman skater to finish the race in less than seven minutes. -- Katie Rosenbrock

With a total of eight medals this cross country skier was a force for the Soviet Union at a time when women weren't frontrunners or even widely participating. She proved her athleticism during the 1972 Winter Olympics when she tied Ard Schenk for the most successful athlete. In addition to her many athletic accolades she has won several other prestigious awards. Her list of accomplishments includes receiving the Order of Lenin and earning the Silver Olympic Order in 1984. -- Diana Gerstacker

Nicknamed "Mr. Biathlon" in his home country of Germany, Sven Fischer racked up four golds and eight medals total in four Olympics, from 1994 to 2006 -- a biathlon medal count that’s tied with that of his countryman Ricco Gross, and trails only that of the sport’s reigning legend (and Fischer rival) Ole Einar Bjørndalen. Now a commentator for German television, Fischer’s biggest Olympic year was his last, at the 2006 Turin Games, where he was on the winning relay team and carried the sprint event, as well as adding a bronze in the pursuit event to his tally. -- Mark Lebetkin

Competing for the USSR in 1960 at Squaw Valley and in 1964 at Innsbruck, Lidiya Skoblikova never accepted anything less than a gold medal for every single one of the six speed skating events she competed in. During her 1960 Winter Olympics debut she scored two first place wins in both the women’s 1,500-meter and 3,000-meter events. Four years later she swept every single one of her opponents, snagging a gold medal in each of the four speed skating events, a notable achievement on its own made even more impressive by the fact that each race distance requires a special set of abilities and tactics. Adding to her already extraordinary accomplishments, that year Skoblikova also set the Olympic record in the 1,500-meter race, which she won by 2.9 seconds -- the largest margin of victory in the history of the event. —Katie Rosenbrock

This French ski legend won the "Triple Crown" of alpine skiing sweeping all three races in Grenoble at the age of 24. He’s only the second skier after Toni Sailer to win all three events at one Winter Olympics.

As a double world champion in 1966 and as the first winner of the FIS World Cup tour in 1967, the suave Frenchman handled the home nation pressure without a problem in Grenoble, not too far from where he grew up. Continuing his Olympic legacy, Killy was co-President of the 1992 Albertville Games, as the Winter Olympics returned to his native France. Killy is also a longtime International Olympic Committee (IOC) Member.

Killy is still giving back to the Olympic movement and has been the head of the IOC Coordination Commission for Sochi 2014 working closely with the Sochi Organizing Committee. So, if Putin's Games are a success, the 70-year-old Frenchman deserves much of the credit! -- Brian Pinelli

Not only was Monti the greatest bobsled pilot ever—concluding his Olympic career winning a pair of gold medals in Grenoble 1968 at the age of 40, as well as two silvers at his home Olympics in Cortina 1956—but he’s also noted for two of the greatest acts of sportsmanship in Olympic and sports history. Nicknamed "The Flying Redhead," Monte helped out English-speaking rivals, not once but twice at the ’64 Innsbruck Games. First, in the two-man, his British challengers busted a bolt on their bobsled and Monte gave them a replacement off of his team’s sled. Tony Nash drove to gold, while Monte settled for bronze. The Italian media was not happy with the Italian star. Then, in the four-man, Canadian rivals damaged their sled’s axle. Again, it was Monte and his mechanics coming to the rescue and repairing the damaged sled. Canadian driver Vic Emery took gold, while Monte and his Italian team settled for bronze. Incredible acts of sportsmanship by an Italian legend! For his selfless act of graciousness, Monti was the first athlete and only Winter Olympian ever to be presented with the Pierre de Coubertin medal, an honor awarded by the IOC to athletes who exemplify the true spirit of sportsmanship. And Monte would have likely won two more medals had bobsledding been held at the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics. -- Brian Pinelli

A luger from Germany, Georg Hackl has competed in some of the sport’s most exciting, photo-finish races and across the span of his career has conquered a handful of historic feats. He was the first Winter Olympian to medal in five consecutive Games, he is just one of just six Olympians who has won the same individual event three times, and even though he had been injured for a part of the season, at the age of 40 he proceeded to compete in his 6th Winter Olympic Games in Turin in 2006. In his entire Olympic career he's earned a total of five medals: three gold and two silver. A true Olympic star, in his homeland, he has been fondly nicknamed the "Speeding Weisswurst," or speeding white sausage, a reference to his speedy racing abilities and well-known white bodysuit. -- Katie Rosenbrock

Surely the greatest team in Winter Olympics history and from an American perspective, the greatest moment in Winter Olympics history.

However, we are talking about individuals, and not teams, so any of these players technically deserve a top spot: Mike Eruzione, Jim Craig, Mark Johnson, the list goes on. What a team, what a moment, and of course, what a Miracle!

During a time when the U.S. was struggling with exorbitant gas prices and long lines at the pump, a delicate hostage situation in Iran and many Americans just felt down and out, these young collegiate hockey studs galvanized an entire nation and changed hockey in America forever! And of course, huge props to Herb Brooks, Craig Patrick and the voice ... Al Michaels! "... 11 seconds, you've got 10 seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles?! YES!!!” —Brian Pinelli

After bronchitis put a damper on Marit Bjørgen’s performance at the 2006 Olympics in Turin -- she won a single silver medal -- the Norwegian cross country skier came back with a vengeance four years later. At the 2010 Vancouver Olympics she skied her way to three golds and five medals total, the most by any individual that year. Competing this month in Sochi, Bjørgen will be in her fourth Winter Games and looking to add more gold to her collection of seven Olympic medals -- not a bad bet for the winningest cross country skier in FIS World Cup history. -- Mark Lebetkin

Known as one of the first ever cross country skiing stars, over the course of his Olympic career Jernberg dominated the sport from the start of his very first race up until crossing his final finish line at the 1964 Games in Innsbruck. Aside from earning a total of nine Olympic medals (4 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze) across three consecutive games, he also achieved four world championship titles and was recognized by the International Olympic Committee in 1965 with the Mohammed Taher Trophy (an award that has since been discontinued). -- Katie Rosenbrock

Perhaps the greatest female speed skating sprinter ever, Bonnie Blair took three consecutive gold medals in the 500-meter between 1988 and 1993; an extremely tough "triple" to pull off. She was the only American Winter Olympian with six medals until Apolo Ohno came along. The longtime Milwaukee resident thrived on the Olympic stage, probably due to the fact that she began competing at just 4 years old! -- Brian Pinelli

Beginning her career as a moderately successful figure skater, Karin Enke -- who also competed under the name Karin Kania -- wisely switched to speed skating in time for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, where she took home gold in the 500-meter sprint event. After a dominant four years on the championship circuit, she returned to the Olympics in 1984, winning two golds and two silvers in Sarajevo -- and setting a world record in the 1,500-meter event to boot. Another appearance in the Winter Games in 1988 netted her three more medals, bringing her career total to eight -- which makes her one of two female Winter Olympians with eight medals in individual events. -- Mark Lebetkin

Clas Thunberg left a lasting mark on the history of Olympic speed skating, and his accomplishments are made all the more impressive by the fact that he didn’t even begin competing at the International level until the age of 28. He crushed his competition at the first ever Winter Games in 1924, claiming five medals (three gold, one silver, and one bronze) and the title of most successful athlete of the entire Winter Olympics that year. He returned to the rink in 1928 to snag two more gold medals, setting the record for the most gold medals ever achieved by a male speed skater -- an achievement only matched by Eric Heiden in 1980. What's more, Thunberg had the opportunity to set the bar even higher. However, he withdrew from the 1932 Games in Lake Placid, N.Y. as a protest against the new "mass-style" race starts that had been introduced that year. -- Katie Rosenbrock

The most decorated American Winter Olympic Athlete of all time only competed in three Olympic Games. Over the course of those Games he took a total of eight medals and coped with intense attention from the crowd. In his first Olympic appearance in 2002, he was surrounded by controversy. First, he was accused of throwing an Olympic trial race and then he won gold in the 1,500-meter, but only after the South Korean athlete who finished first was disqualified for apparently blocking Ohno. Despite the initial negative attention, Ohno has earned his spot in speed skating history and become an American icon. Our panelist Brian Pinelli calls him “a master technician with explosiveness on the ice like no short tracker in history." --Diana Gerstacker

Over five Winter Olympics, from 1992 through 2006, Norwegian alpine skier Kjetil-Andre Aamodt won four golds, two silvers and two bronze medals, making him the sport’s most decorated Olympian. Calling Aamodt "humble" and “much less flashy than fellow Olympic greats like Tomba, Klammer and Killy,” panelist Eric Pinelli gives the breakdown:

“Aamodt went about his business quietly while breaking record after record. He won three Olympic super-G gold medals, the first two coming in 1992 and the last in 2006, 14 years apart. Not too shabby for such a physically demanding event. And with the super-G gold, he became the first male alpine skier to win four Olympic gold medals. Aamodt’s 20 combined Olympic and World Championship medals are unmatched. [He’s] arguably the greatest all-around skier ever. Like Bode Miller, [Aamodt] has won World Cup races in all five disciplines.” —Mark Lebetkin

Our panelist Brian Pinelli calls four-time Olympic gold medalist Ricco Gross a “biathlon legend,” which is a pretty remarkable statement considering Gross’ last Olympic appearance (where he earned his fourth gold medal) was just eight years ago at the Winter Games in Turin. Still, with a total of eight Olympic medals and as the only biathlete to ever win four Olympic relay titles, there’s no doubt his name will forever be etched in history as one of the best biathletes of all time. His recipe for success: “Never try to imitate anyone else. Follow your own path, find something new, something that is yours, and stick with it." -- Katie Rosenbrock

Humble and low-key, Heiden provided the single most outstanding Olympic performance at one Games in history! 5 speed skating events, 5 gold medals, 4 Olympic records and one world record over a nine-day span in 1980, winning everything at a home Olympics at just 21 years old! And he even slipped in the 1,500 before winning in an Olympic record time.

In our current era of specialization in everything that we do, Heiden took gold in events as vastly different as the 500-meters and 10,000-meters. And he did so at an outdoor oval in the elements…bitter cold and wind, unlike today’s indoor speed skating venues, where every element is controlled. Seems utterly impossible and surely a feat that will never be matched! -- Brian Pinelli

At age 41, German speed skater Claudia Pechstein will soon be competing in her sixth Winter Olympics. Since making her Olympic debut at the 1992 Games in Albertville, Pechstein has won nine medals, five of which are gold—more medals than any other speed skater and the second-most gold medals among female Winter Olympians. That total might have been higher were it not for a scandal: blood doping allegations led to a two-year ban, sidelining her during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. (Pechstein has repeatedly denied the charge and even fought it in court.) Regardless, her previous medals remain undisputed and in Sochi she’ll be looking to further cement her status as an all-time great. -- Mark Lebetkin

Over her impressive 16-year cross-country skiing career, Raisa Smetanina earned 10 Winter Olympic medals—the most achieved by any female athlete in history. Three of those medals (two gold and one silver) were earned at the 1976 Winter Olympics alone, which tied her with Germany’s Rosi Mittermaier for the title of most successful athlete of the entire Games that year. Beyond the wild success of her Olympic debut, Smetanina went on to win two more gold medals in 1980 and 1992, was the first athlete to ever appear on the podium at five different Winter Olympic Games, and is one of just three Olympians who have collected a total of five silver medals. And as if all those firsts and bests just weren’t enough, when her relay team claimed gold in the 4x5-kilometer relay at the 1992 Games -- about two weeks before she turned 40 -- she became the oldest female medalist in all of Olympic history. -- Katie Rosenbrock

Stefania Belmondo is the perfect storm embodied in an Olympic cross-country athlete. She had the trifecta: a 10-year-long Olympic career (disrupted by a major injury), the utmost admiration from her country and an underdog story. Belmondo was considered by many to be too small for the sport of cross-country skiing; she set out to prove the naysayers wrong. Over the course of five Olympic Games, she took two gold medals, three silver and five bronze, making her the most successful Italian Winter Olympian to date. After a major injury and a disappointing 1994 Games, Belmondo took a break from cross-country, but the resolute Belmondo came back to take two gold medals at the 1999 World Championships. She closed out her Olympic career in 2002 at the Salt Lake City Olympic Games when she took her final Olympic gold medal. Her record and popularity brought her to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, where she lit the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony. —Diana Gerstacker

The Norwegian biathlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen competed at five Winter Olympics, from 1994 through 2010, and won 6 golds, 4 silvers and one bronze. Calling Bjørndalen a “dominant international force in the sport for nearly two decades” and “among the greatest athletes of all-time,” Pinelli gives the details:

“Sure, in the U.S., we don’t put too much emphasis on biathlon and infrequently is it discussed on sports talk radio, but Bjørndalen is the greatest biathlete of all-time and among the greatest Winter Olympians. His 11 total medals is second only to his cross-country skiing countryman Bjorn Dæhlie's twelve. In Salt Lake City 2002 he went four-for-four in the events he entered, taking four gold medals home to Norway." Pinelli adds: “Aside from the Olympics, his 93 World Cup biathlon wins between 1996 and 2012 may never be matched -- in any winter sport!" -- Mark Lebetkin

Few Olympic athletes are capable of garnering A-list-level celebrity, but three-time gold medal figure skater Sonja Henie was known for drawing hordes of fans so large and rowdy that police were often called in for crowd control. And it wasn’t just because she was a sweet, smiling blonde either. A fierce competitor, Henie won her first Olympic gold medal at the age of 16. From there she went on to defend that title in the next two Winter Olympic Games, and just one week after winning her third Olympic gold she placed first at the World Figure Skating Championships for the tenth straight year in a row, setting a record that has yet to be broken. A true trailblazer for the sport, Henie was known for her untraditional short-skirted costumes, white skates (black was the norm at the time), and innovative choreography. “To this day [she is] the undisputed ‘Queen’ of figure skating,” says Pinelli. -- Katie Rosenbrock

Perhaps not a household name to most American sports fans, but he's the most decorated Winter Olympic champion ever with eight gold and 12 total medals, both unequaled.

He amassed three gold and a silver in both Albertville and Nagano. At the home Games in Lillehammer, Daehlie had two silver and two bronze. Despite his amazing achievements, he will always be remembered for getting beat by the narrowest of margins on the final leg of the team 4x10-kilometer, by Silvio Fauner and the Italians. Norway was heartbroken! Despite the one disappointing loss to the Italians on home snow, Daehlie is still a living Norwegian legend! -- Brian Pinelli

For the complete list of the 50 Greatest Winter Olympians Of All Time, go to TheActiveTimes.com.

More Stories from The Active Times: -- 12 New Olympic Events Debuting Sochi -- 13 Unlikely Countries in the Winter Olympics -- The 10 Most Popular Winter Olympic Sports -- 10 Sports Too Extreme for the Winter Olympics

Meet our panelists: Brian Pinelli is a journalist covering his fifth Olympic Winter Games in Sochi. Based in Prague, Czech Republic, he has contributed to the International Herald Tribune, Around the Rings, New York Times, FISAlpine.com, Ski Racing, Snow Magazine, USAHockey.com, Universal Sports, CBS Sports, CNN World Sport and USA Today. While he immensely enjoys the rewards and challenges of his craft, he prefers to be skiing. Find him on Twitter @Brian_Pinelli.

Pj Kwong is a coach, author and an expert in all things figure skating. She has more than 25 years of coaching experience and has been part of Canada’s CBC Sports' network figure skating broadcast team as a commentator and writer since 2007. She is the author of Taking the Ice: Success Stories from Canadian Figure Skating and is currently in Sochi as an Olympic P.A. announcer for the sixth time. Find Pj at her website: pjkwong.com.

Tom Ecker is the go-to source on early Olympic history. In his youth, he was a track and field star so successful that he went on to coach Swedish Olympic track and field teams. He has been lecturing on Olympic history since 1968 and he was a professor at California State University, teaching courses on the Olympics. His most recent book, Olympic Facts and Fables is backed by 31 years of research and first-hand experience. Find Tom at his website: tomecker.com.

Bill Mallon is a co-founder and past-president of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH). He was an Editor of the Journal of Olympic History, and he has since published more than 20 books on the subject of the Olympic Games. He is an orthopedic surgeon, a former professional golfer and a recipient of the Olympic Order award, which is a high honor granted by the International Olympic Committee. He and two of his colleagues at ISOH each earned Silver in 2001 for their substantial contributions to the Olympic Movement.

Anthony Th. Bijkerk is the Secretary-General of ISOH and has been a member of the executive committee since its founding more than 20 years ago. He was an Editor of the Journal of Olympic History and a co-author of the book The 1920 Olympic Games. He received the Silver Olympic Order award in 2001, from the hands of Judo icon Anton Geesink, for substantial contributions to the Olympic Movement.

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VIDEO OF THE DAY:Winter Olympics Meet Star Wars

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Summary: Everyone knows the Winter Olympic Games are where we watch the best athletes in the world go head-to-head on an international stage. What you may not ...


More than 17 years since it was stolen from a gallery in northern Italy, Gustav Klimt's Portrait of a Woman is reportedly once again the subject of a police investigation after technological advances allowed for the case to be reopened.

The oil painting, believed to date from 1916-1917, was stolen from the Ricci-Oddi gallery in Piacenza in February 1997 and disappeared without a trace.

Now, thanks to more sophisticated testing of the frame, investigators are hoping that new test results will provide a DNA match with one or more suspects, the Italian news agency Ansa reported.

In the aftermath of the theft, which appeared to be timed to coincide with renovation work in advance of which many works were removed from the gallery, police appeared flummoxed.

They were unable to say whether the thief – or thieves – had come in through the main entrance or had used a string and hook to fish the painting through a nearby skylight. All that was left was an empty frame with a partial fingerprint which police now hope will yield an answer.

The work, acquired by the collection in 1925, was thought to be too famous to sell on, leading some to speculate that it had been stolen to order.

In it, a young woman with dark hair and rouged cheeks is shown against a green background. It is one of the most sought-after stolen works in Italy.

The Austrian artist, a co-founder of the Viennese Secession, is the subject of an exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, near Piacenza.

Summary: Police hope advances in DNA testing will help find match from partial fingerprint on frame once containing Portrait of a Woman


04/24/2014 at 06:00 AM EDT

has another occasion to celebrate: the singer turns 32 on April 24.

to win the 2002 inaugural season of

, the "Trouble" songstress has since gone on to release six albums and take home three Grammys, and she is now expecting her

has kept rocking, too. Over the course of 13 seasons and multiple judge lineups, the show has continued to launch numerous music careers – plus, an

To prove the show and its stars have grown, we took the

and matched the famous faces of

with their younger selves. Get ready for the funkiest jam band around.

Kelly Clarkson in 2013 and 2002

Photos by Wireimage and Getty; Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard

Steven Tyler in 2014 and 1990

Photos by Getty; Photo Illustration by Linzi Silverman

Paula Abdul in 1988 and 2013

Photos by Wireimage and Getty; Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard

Carrie Underwood in 2014 and 2005

Photos Provided by Getty and Wireimage; Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard

Clay Aiken in 2012 and 2003

Photos by Getty and FOX; Photo Illustration by Linzi Silverman

Jennifer Hudson in 2014 and 2006

Photos by Getty; Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard

Jennifer Lopez in 2014 and 1995

Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard; Photos Provided by Getty

Jordin Sparks in 2014 and 2007

Photos by NBC and Wireimage; Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard

Simon Cowell in 2014 and 2002

Photos by Getty; Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard

Randy Jackson in 2013 in 1987

Photos by Getty and REX USA; Photo Illustration by Linzi Silverman

Lindsay Lohan in 1998 and 2014

Photos Provided by Getty and REX USA; Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard

Summary: American Idol's famous faces prove age is nothing but a number


As Iran’s 19th annual International Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Exhibition drew to an end in Tehran last week, it was hailed as a success by both organizers and participants alike. Though none of the European or American oil giants had taken part, there was a tripling of participation by foreign companies from countries such as Germany, Spain, Canada and Japan as well as the Chinese.

“This was the most successful annual exhibition since the Ahmadinejad government came to office 8 years ago,” said Akbar Nematollahi, the expo director and head of the public relations department of Iran’s Petroleum Ministry. Participation by foreign firms had fallen under the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad government. “The number of foreign companies alone went up to around 600 from 195 last year.”

Some western firms that had not participated for years were thrilled with the reaction they saw during the 4-day long expo. “Our experience in this year’s fair was so good that we’ve already decided to come back next year with more staff and a bigger stall,” Joachim Bund, sales manager of the German company Lewa, which produces industrial pump systems, said.

“We’ve seen extreme interest in our products from Iranian companies, both private and state owned,” said Alexandre Chtcherbakov, president of the Canadian Techno and Power Tools Inc., which produces advanced lithium batteries that are used in oilfield drilling. “This is very promising for the future.”

With the election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s President and the subsequent breakthrough in the nuclear talks in Geneva last year, many think that Iran’s oil and gas sector could soon once again be open to business with Western firms. “The world is realizing that a new government with a reasonable outlook is in power. There is an old hand back at the helm of Iran’s petroleum industry, and the westerners have got the message. Right now not only are we in talks with numerous European firms, but also three major oil companies from the United States have been in touch,” Nematollahi said, declining to name the American companies due to their request to remain unidentified at the present.

“There [are] nearly $90 billion of oil and petrochemical projects available for anyone who wants to participate. Should the sanction problem be solved, Iran’s Petroleum Ministry would welcome major European and American Oil Companies because they have higher technology and better management than Chinese or Indian firms.” Nematollahi added.

At the moment, Western firms can at the most do only limited business with Iran due to sanctions, but those that took part in the Tehran expo say they are positioning themselves for the possibility that things might change. “Focusing on the Iranian market is very important for us because we think with the new government in Iran, the sanctions are near the end,” said Juan Vicente Ortiz, a head engineer of Prematecnica, a Spanish firm which produces gas flares.

Even though the Geneva Interim Nuclear Agreement in November gave hope to a possible negotiated conclusion of Iran’s nuclear case, the hurdle of the sanctions regime means that none of the western firms are willing to commit beyond its bounds. The uncertainty will continue until—and unless—there is a lasting international deal on the country’s nuclear program.

“Iran is a big opportunity for us. We stand to triple our total business, but we are not selling anything to them right now,” said Chtcherbakov. “We are a Canadian company and we will not do anything to jeopardize our position. We will keep on abiding a 100% by the sanctions regime.”

“We’ve been working here in Iran from 20 years ago. However since the sanctions started we’ve had to leave the oil and gas sector completely, and the work in other fields has become the most complicated work we do all over the world,” said Bund, whose company is still selling equipment for power plants to Iran in spite of all the difficulties caused by the sanctions regime. “For every request we get, we have to first check with the German authorities which can take 8 weeks. Maybe one out of a hundred of these requests are approved,” Bund added. “Getting back into Iran’s oil sector after the sanctions are lifted is a number one priority for us, and we feel that something, some big steps are coming, but until it does, its business as usual, and it has never been as hard as it is right now.”

In spite of the positive signs from the ongoing nuclear talks, the outcome is far from certain. Should the negotiations ultimately fail, the opening both sides are anticipating will not materialize. “I hope that the nuclear diplomacy will get results, because only then will our energy diplomacy have a chance,” Nematollahi concluded.

Summary: As Iran and the West attempt to hammer out a deal over the country's nuclear program, there was a spike in participation by foreign companies at an annual oil & gas expo in Tehran


Transatlantic Investment Management Inc. has bought a six-story office building in Boston’s Bulfinch Triangle neighborhood for $13.5 million, said a broker involved in the transaction.

The broker is Avison Young. The seller is a family trust that owned the building for more than six decades.

Built in 1887, the building at 151 Merrimac St. has 42,500 square feet of space and is currently 80 percent leased. The anchor tenant is Massachusetts General Hospital, which leases 58 percent of the building’s space, Avison Young said.

Following recent renovations, the building features infrastructure upgrades along with significant lobby improvements, including a new granite floor and marble-and- cherrywood-walled entranceway, the firm said. The property is located at the intersection of Causeway and Merrimac streets.

Bulfinch Triangle and the surrounding area are currently experiencing a burst of development activity the firm said, as 11 new projects, totaling more than 8 million square feet of space are planned or underway. Notable projects in the area include the redevelopment of the Government Center Garage, Lovejoy Wharf, and the TD Garden Tower, Avison Young said.

Avison Young principals Karyn McFarland, Scott Jamieson, and Michael Smith, along with Brandon Dickason, a vice president in the Boston office, led the team that marketed the sale of the building.

Summary: Transatlantic Investment Management buys a six-story office building in Boston’s Bulfinch Triangle neighborhood for $13.5 million, broker Avison Young says.


07/07/2014 at 02:45 PM EDT

As this North Carolina mom recently learned the hard way, one person's cheeky photo is another person's child pornography.

Jill White, a photographer from North Carolina, recently took her two-year-old daughter to the beach, where she was inspired to imitate the famous Coppertone sunscreen ads from the 1950s.

Thinking the company would enjoy her homage, White posted the picture to

. That, she says, is where her trouble started.

A Coppertone ad from the 1950s

After posting the image to the public fan page, White received notice that multiple users had reported it for being in violation of Facebook's policy prohibiting nude and pornographic images. White says she was given the option to remove the photo, or change her privacy settings to hide the image from strangers. She refused, then found herself banned from the social network for 24 hours.

"No way did I think [the picture] would fit the criteria of nudity or pornography, and if you read the terms of use in settings nowhere does it state that this would be considered either," White

The social network insisted the removal was consistent with its community standards.

"It is hard," a spokesperson for the company

. "With over one billion people using Facebook we have to put into place a set of universal guidelines that respect the views of a wide range of people."

The Coppertone ad referenced in White's photo has become polarizing in recent decades, with blogger Lindy West

"an oddly sexualized orange baby whose pants are eternally being eaten off by a dog."

keep the girl's modesty intact.

After her short ban was up, White followed Coppertone's example: She put up another version of the offending image – this time with a smiley-face emoji covering the offending backside.

Heather Bays (left) and her daughter Audrey

Summary: Jill White posted a cheeky image of her toddler's rear end to Facebook – and got her account shut down


It might be the stuff of nightmares for some but scientists have created see-through mice that could actually help us understand our anatomy.

To make the mice transparent, researchers from the California Institute of Technology first euthanised the rodents and removed their skin before treating them with chemicals.

The researchers say the transparent mice could help map out the body's system and show how cancer spreads.

Mice are used by scientists because they share similar biology to humans and can adjust to human diseases.

This similarity allows doctors to investigate samples of biopsies from diseases.

Although the idea of tissue clearing has been around for a century, to our knowledge, this is the first study to perform whole-body clearing, as opposed to first extracting and then clearing organs outside the adult body,” Viviana Gradinaru of the California Institute of Technology, who led the research, said.

Our methodology has the potential to accelerate any scientific endeavor that would benefit from whole-organism mapping, including the study of how peripheral nerves and organs can profoundly affect cognition and mental processing, and vice versa.”

Author: Sally Stevens, Approving editor: Emily McPherson

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Summary: It could be the stuff of nightmares for some but scientists have created see-through mice that could actually help us understand our anatomy.


August 15, 2014: Cops in Ferguson, Missouri, were filmed firing a tear gas canister at an Al Jazeera America TV crew, as they reported on demonstrations against the police shooting of teenager Michael Brown.

As a TV crew carefully adjusts its lighting and camera equipment, plumes of choking grey smoke suddenly engulf the scene.

But far from being a dramatic part of the broadcast, the smoke was tear gas thrown by US police at an Al Jazeera news team.

The crew was in Ferguson, Missouri covering local tension in the area yesterday following the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a police officer.

Video of the tear gassing incident, captured by local news channel KSDK, shows one of the Al Jazeera crew members waving his arms in the air and then being overcome with the gas as it surrounds him.

For a moment the cameraman keeps rolling and adjusts his lens to get the shot.

The three crew members then abandon their equipment and run away to safety.

August 14, 2014: The US city of Ferguson, Missouri, has been rocked by riots following the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by police.

All three crew members managed to get out unharmed, a spokesperson from Al Jazeera America said.

"Al Jazeera America is stunned by this egregious assault on freedom of the press that was clearly intended to have a chilling effect on our ability to cover this important story," the spokesperson said.

"We believe that this situation must be investigated along with those involving our colleagues at other media outlets."

The St. Charles County Sheriff's Department that operates the SWAT team told TheWrap that they were not responsible for launching the tear gas at the journalists.

Lieutenant David Tiefenbrunn said that although he is unaware of which police department is responsible, he does not think it was intentional.

“I'm sure that when they did deploy that, they were unaware that there were media there,” Tiefenbrunn said.

The city of Ferguson has been simmering with tension since the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown on Saturday morning.

Authorities have said the shooting occurred during a struggle over a gun in a police car.

But some witnesses say he was outside the car with his hands up when he was killed.

Nightly protests over the shooting have resulted in looting and violence, while several journalists covering the demonstrations have been arrested.

In a bid to restore order, US president Barack Obama today called for calm and peace on the city’s streets.

"Now is the time for healing. Now is the time for peace and calm on the streets of Ferguson," he told reporters on Martha's Vineyard, where he is on holiday with his family.

"Now is the time for an open and transparent process to see that justice is done."

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: As a TV crew carefully adjusts its lighting and camera equipment, plumes of light grey smoke suddenly engulf the scene.


Robert E. Klein for the Boston Globe

Fifteen years into his career, Brad Paisley is among country music’s most low-key superstars. The West Virginia native has built a devoted fanbase with his catalog of both traditional and contemporary tunes, his clever wit — on display annually as cohost of the CMA Awards — his skillful guitar playing, curiosity about human interaction, and his nice guy affability.

All of those elements are in place for his latest effort, “Moonshine in the Trunk.”

While he partakes of the current party-hearty atmosphere pervading country radio — cutting up “Limes” for margaritas and proffering cold cans of Bud Light for “Crushin’ It” — the sentiments don’t seem out of a character in a man who’s hosted several musical shindigs in the past. And he generally offers a clever spin on the fiesta as when he laughs all the way to the “River Bank,” with a narrator daydreaming of hitting the lotto but content with what he has.

Elsewhere he shines on the you-go-girl anthem “Shattered Glass,” which offers wisps of Beatles-esque lilt and harmonies, the comic ode to frivolous litigation “High Life” — with an assist from CMA cohost Carrie Underwood — and the salute to a redneck “Gone Green” on a whimsical tune written by his bassist Kenny Lewis. (Out today)

Summary: All of the elements that have made Brad Paisley one of country music’s most low-key superstars are in place for his latest effort, “Moonshine in the Trunk.”


FORTUNE — To simplify the chart at right — drawn from data sent to clients Tuesday by Canaccord Genuity’s T. Michael Walkley — I’ve left out Nokia NOK , Research in Motion BBRY , Motorola GOOG , Sony SNE , LG and HTC.

That’s because between them, Apple AAPL and Samsung shared virtually all the profits made selling mobile phones — smart and not-so-smart — over the past year and a quarter.

With the exception of BlackBerry (which turned a small profit one quarter) and HTC (three quarters), all the other major players in the game either broke even or lost money. (Those losses explain why in several quarters Apple’s and Samsung’s shares added up to more than 100%.)

Apple continues to collect far more of the industry’s profits than its market share (8% in 2012, by Canaccord’s estimate) would suggest. But according to Walkley, its run of taking the lion’s share of those profits may soon come to an end.

“During the June quarter,” he writes, “we believe softer iPhone sales combined with Samsung Galaxy S4’s global ramp should result in Samsung surpassing Apple for the top share of handset industry profits.”

Below: Canaccord’s income and profit spreadsheet.

Summary: This quarter, according to Canaccord Genuity, their positions may be reversed.


WASHINGTON — Former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke testified in federal court Thursday that insurance giant American International Group had to be rescued by the government in 2008 to avert global catastrophe.

Bernanke took the stand at a trial of a lawsuit brought by former AIG chief executive Maurice Greenberg, who is suing the government over its handling of AIG’s bailout loan. Bernanke was one of the key decision makers on the bailout, which began with an $85 billion rescue loan from the New York Federal Reserve in September 2008 and grew to nearly $185 billion in federal aid.

In early questioning, Bernanke kept his answers terse when asked about the potential damage an AIG collapse might inflict and details of how the Fed came to approve the bailout. He frequently responded ‘‘yes, sir’’ to questions posed by Greenberg’s lead attorney.

‘‘Certainly there was an enormous amount of stress on financial institutions’’ in the fall of 2008 after mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had been taken over by the government and fear cascaded through financial markets, Bernanke said.

It was a rare appearance by a former Fed chairman on the witness stand. Thomas Wheeler, the judge presiding over the nonjury trial in the US Court of Federal Claims, said last year he would make an exception and allowed Greenberg’s lawyers to depose Bernanke because the former Fed chief has first-hand knowledge of the government’s decision to bail out AIG.

Greenberg, who was AIG’s biggest shareholder, is suing the federal government for about $40 billion in damages. He asserts that it violated the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment by taking control of AIG without ‘‘just compensation’’ for the shares it received. The government took control of 80 percent of AIG’s stock in exchange for the bailout aid.

New York-based AIG, which had operations around the globe, spiraled toward collapse after making huge bets on mortgage securities that soured. It has since repaid the loan, and the government says taxpayers ultimately earned $25 billion on the investment in the company.

David Boies, the attorney representing Greenberg, questioned Bernanke about a meeting of the Fed governors on Sept. 16, 2008, to approve the emergency loan to AIG, and the extent to which details of the proposed terms of the loan were discussed.

Bernanke said he couldn’t recall whether specific details, such as various fees to AIG, were discussed before central bank officials voted. During a couple of hours of testimony, he appeared at least slightly annoyed and shifted several times in his chair.

The terms of the loan included the huge government stake in the company and an interest rate called ‘‘crazily high’’ by a government official, according to an e-mail produced in court Wednesday.

In the days before the Fed governors voted on the loan, Bernanke said, there was concern that AIG ‘‘didn’t have a clear idea’’ of how much it would be able to repay the government. Two years later, in September 2010, Bernanke testified before a panel investigating the crisis that AIG ‘‘did worse than I had anticipated.’’

He said Thursday the AIG bailout didn’t comply with time-honored principles for central bank lending to financial companies in a crisis, such as lending to companies that are cash-strapped yet still solvent and demanding valuable collateral in return.

As he had done earlier with former Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, Boies tried to point up contradictions in Bernanke’s statements about AIG and the bailout.

On the issue of collateral, Boies cited Bernanke’s 2010 testimony that AIG was looking to sell insurance subsidiaries ‘‘that have substantial value . . . so it was our assessment that they had plenty of collateral to repay our loan.’’

Bernanke is scheduled to continue his testimony Friday.

Summary: The former Federal Reserve chairman testified that American International Group had to be rescued by the government.


10/25/2014 AT 08:05 AM EDT

front man Dave Mustaine's mother-in-law, who suffers from Alzheimer's, has been missing for almost three weeks, and the distraught singer says he now just hopes someone may have picked her up – and that if they turn her in, there will be no questions asked.

"We are not interested in prosecuting anyone," Mustaine tells PEOPLE. "If anyone has taken her and are afraid to turn her in, no one is going to punish them. We just want to find out where she's at."

It's now been 20 days since Sally Estabrook, 76, first went missing from the Pinezanita RV park and campground near Julian, California, about 60 miles east of San Diego. Estabrook was there with her husband, who went to take a shower. When he returned,

. "He's pretty upset, and rightly so," Mustaine says. "Her Alzheimer's was pretty advanced. She's noncommunicative. We are really just beyond words."

An exhaustive search-and-rescue operation commenced almost immediately, which has now included teams from four counties, the U.S. Border Patrol and 300 volunteers – as well as bloodhounds and cadaver dogs. But neither Estabrook, nor her body, has been found yet.

"It's been a remarkable outpouring of volunteers," says Mustaine. "They've gone out with ATVs, horses, motorcycles, we've had people offer to use search drones. But there's been nothing. No scent. She just vanished," Mustaine says.

to check local hospitals, shelters and senior centers, and to also look in their own backyards. "A lot of times people that wander who have Alzheimer's are found very close to their homes. They just take shelter underneath bushes," Mustaine said in a media briefing on Oct. 11.

But now, Mustaine says he is convinced that someone must have picked her up.

"She's old and her body was starting to go," he says. "There's no way she could have gone out and survived out there all this time. She was way up in the mountains. So she had to have been picked up," Mustaine says. "So hopefully somebody was being nice and trying to help her. Or it could have been a convict who thinks, 'I can't say anything, I'm a wanted criminal.' There are so many different scenarios. You play this back and forth in your mind, over and over. Where did she go?"

Mustaine says that Estabrook was a beloved member of her community, with strong Christian values. "She was decent woman," he says. "She was a schoolteacher who worked with kids who had Down syndrome, and she was very active in her church. Her family has to believe that no matter where she is or was, if her life has ended, then she's in a better place."

But they haven't lost hope, and will continue to search until they get some sort of closure. "We're hoping for a good ending," he says. "Hopefully somebody knows something and will come forward."

Estabrook is 5'4", weighs 145 lbs. and has medium-length blond hair. She was last seen wearing a teal top and white capri pants.

Anyone with any information can call 858-565-5200.

Summary: The singer appeals to the public for help to find his missing mother-in-law, who suffers from Alzheimer's


Jennifer Reingold (Fortune) interviews Bob McDonald, CEO of Procter & Gamble, and Filippo Passerini, CIO of Procter & Gamble

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Hi. Well, let’s get started right away. We have a lot to talk about, and we have the distinct pleasure of having Bob McDonald, and Filippo Passerini here. P&G PG is a $79 billion company. I think you have all heard of it. It makes Crest. It makes Tide. The question is, why are you, Bob McDonald, telling everyone that you’re going to be the most digitally-enabled company in the world?

BOB MCDONALD: Jennifer, as you know, our purpose as a company is to touch and improve the lives of the world’s consumers. Today, as we sit here, we’re reaching 4.2 billion people in the world. We’ve turned that into a growth strategy called our Purpose Inspired Growth Strategy. We want to touch and improve the lives of more consumers in more parts of the world more completely. And we believe that the way to do that, one of the tactics to do that, is to digitize the work of the company from the creation of molecules all the way to running our factories off of the point of sale data of our retail partners. And, as you know, digital is nothing but ones and zeros, so we believe that if we can do that, we can digitize the work of the entire company.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: So, from a practical level, what does that mean? As I understand it, the two of you have been working together since 2008, even before you became CEO, to completely transform this company, and to make it be effectively the competitive advantage of the company, right? I mean, it’s not about ‑‑

JENNIFER REINGOLD: It’s not about the detergent, the powder itself, per se, it’s about how you get the competitive advantage, and so forth. So, Filippo, can you tell us about the process?

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Hang on one second. Is the mike off?

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Bob, can I go to you?

BOB MCDONALD: I’m just helping with the technology.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Here we go. We’re digitizing as we move here.

FILIPPO PASSERINI: This mike doesn’t work. Okay. This one is better.

The simple answer is to run the business in real-time, so the ability to predict what is going to happen. For that it is very important for us to create simulations, models, predictive models of the business, and to accelerate decision-making and to be able to respond on the fly in a very agile way. What is critical is to eliminate all the unnecessary human touch points.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: So, getting rid of all the humans, right, is that it?

FILIPPO PASSERINI: Well, what is unnecessary?

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Right. Now, but in doing this I think that you have actually reduced the processes that the company needs to make decisions. They’ve gotten it down to ‑‑ do I have this right, 88 things it takes to run P&G?

FILIPPO PASSERINI: We have identified that there are 88 things, business processes, that fundamentally run this $80 billion company. Now, if you double click you’ll go down into the thousands, but fundamentally there are 88 distinct ones. And for each one of them we have analyzed the cycle time, the number of people involved, what is the decision making time from the moment the information is available to the moment we can actually use it for business, and digitization is all of that combined. It is the ability to constantly compress time and constantly evolve the way we collaborate internally. And going more and more from a physical world to what is really a digital world is inevitably part of our business.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: So, what does that mean on a practical basis? How do you take those 88 processes? Maybe we can use a particular example of a decision, or something that’s being made throughout the company. How do you ‑‑ it sounds to me as if 88 is a very large and complex number, but I think what you’re saying is it’s actually a small number. How do you get there?

FILIPPO PASSERINI: Well, we have analyzed all the activity systems within the company, what is required for us to understand consumers, produce, manufacture, distribute, merchant, commercialize, and looking at all the activity systems, these are really the building blocks all together complete what we have to do. And you’re right, Jennifer, 88 for a company of our size, I would consider it a very small number. And these are the known processes. So, for each one of them it takes a lot of bottom up work, and the beauty is that, different to that, there has been a lot of top down directions, vision, strategies, and a cultural change.

BOB MCDONALD: Maybe I can give you a real example. We have 5,000 people in the company who used to do demand planning. So, each one would have their own spreadsheet. And they would try to plan demand based upon the inputs that they saw. Of course, they all had their own technique. Well, if you’re getting the point of sale data of a retailer, that’s a lot of samples. If you think of a CD, or in music, the more samples you have of that digital sound, the better the quality of the sound. So, as you’re getting those samples from the retailers, you can then create a Monte Carlo simulation that forecasts the future better than a human being can do it using an Excel spreadsheet.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Wow. And is there a particular decision that’s been made that we can use as an example?

BOB MCDONALD: Yes. Well, the decision is that we’ve now ‑‑ in fact, Friday I’m inaugurating a new facility in Cincinnati, where we’re aggregating the demand planning, and we’re going to have the opportunity to redeploy those people to something else, because we’re using computer based simulation to plan demand. And this is the kind of thing that’s possible.

We talked about in our branding area, when I was a brand manager, I used to ‑‑ back in 1983, I would ride home at night listening to cassette tapes of how consumers would be responding to our products. They would call our 1-800 line. We were the first company to have toll-free numbers on the backs of our packages. We don’t do that anymore. Today what we do is, we have something called consumer pulse, which is on the cockpit of every individual’s computer. Everybody has a cockpit. And on that cockpit, we take all the inputs, whether it’s tweets, whether it’s blogs, whether it’s letters, whether it’s phone calls. They all get aggregated, they all get ‑‑ we use a Bayesian numerical technique to categorize them, and then we provide that input to the brand manager or the brand group in real time, so they can literally watch the comments come in on their brand from their respective geography. And, of course, I have the same thing for the P&G brand.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: And how does that change the decision-making? It would accelerate it, I assume, but I could also imagine it might create a cacophony, in a sense, right, of so many voices?

BOB MCDONALD: It takes some training to know what to react to, and what not to. Every Monday morning, we meet with the top 50 or so leaders in the company. Some are connected virtually. Some are physically in Cincinnati. We use videoconferencing to connect them. We review the business from the previous week. We review the profit forecast, the volume forecast in real time, and we make decisions to change at that point in time. If we had not had that capability, we probably would not have hit the quarters the way we hit them in the first half of the year, as the economy was heading south. So, it’s important ‑‑

JENNIFER REINGOLD: So, you’re all sitting in the room together, you’re all looking at the same data, the same data points that are collected, together, globally.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: And you are able to make that decision in real time as opposed to going ‑‑

BOB MCDONALD: And you can click down into the data. What you find is, as you digitize your work, the biggest issue doesn’t become the ability to digitize, the biggest issue becomes the source of data. In other words, if I’m only getting data from a provider once every three months, that data is worthless to me in terms of operating a company in real time. So, what Filippo has done is, he’s started to attack the data sources in order to get that data in real time. And many suppliers can’t supply in real time. So, we have discussions with many of those suppliers.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Well, I was just going to ask about your suppliers. Do you bring them into this process? Is this something ‑‑ are you able to share this technology more broadly, and does this therefore help your relationships with the suppliers?

BOB MCDONALD: Yes. I’ll talk about the suppliers broadly, and then Filippo can talk about the suppliers of digital technology.

But, yes, we would connect a chemical company supplier to our forecast so that they have visibility of what we’re forecasting, and they can plan their demand as well. We just started this a few years ago. So, we’re not there yet. Filippo and I started it about 2005-2006. We’re not there yet, but we’re making progress, and eventually I would like to have everybody connected.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: So, everyone can rely on the same chain of information, the same source?

BOB MCDONALD: Well, that’s what’s important. It creates ‑‑ what it does is, it allows you to flatten the organization. We’ve reduced 50 percent of our vice chairmen, we’ve reduced 15 percent of our vice presidents, we’ve reduced 15 percent of our directors. We’ve taken a number of positions from the lowest level of the organization to the CEO from seven to five. You collapse the organization. Everybody gets the same data at the same time. I had to give a speech on Monday to some of our people because we have a process where every semester, every general manager in the company writes a letter to the CEO about their business. Well, I don’t want the letter to regurgitate the business to me. I have that on my cockpit. I want to understand what the strategic issues are. But you create a transparency, and that transparency, and transparency with suppliers, enables you to move more quickly.

FILIPPO PASSERINI: Jennifer, one way to think about it is that we’ve been on a cycle of weekly, monthly, quarterly, and it doesn’t have to be that way. Some of the processes will need to change every few hours, others every several months.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: So, a quarterly planning meeting loses its value, effectively.

FILIPPO PASSERINI: This is really the conceptual important point. And then, to Bob’s comment, we are looking at it from a supply chain at some point, from an employee digitization at some point, so enabling collaboration always in real time. We are looking at it from aligning business. So, I think what is different here is how pervasive the whole program is, first of all, in this alignment between CEO and the technology organization, but then importantly in the desire we have to transform the way business is done, which I consider my mission, is not to develop new systems, it’s not to bring in new technologies, although we do do that, it is transforming the way business is done starting with the business benefits, which we always quantify in advance.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: And I think when we were speaking in the green room just now, what came up was the notion here that P&G is not thinking about technology as a separate part of the business, you know, the IT Department is no longer the IT Department. The IT people are deployed within the businesses, specifically, right, in the field and so forth.

BOB MCDONALD: Yes. Filippo’s job is to transform the way we do business. So, identifying those 88 processes, which we’ve agreed on, we go through and we digitize each one of those, bringing the business partners in. One of the things Filippo has done very well is to make sure he is focused on his customer, the customer being the business leader, and allowing them to use whatever technology they want to use. He has not dictated to them, well, we’re going to buy so many of this kind of technology. We want to use the technology that people are comfortable with.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: But the other side of this is that people within the company who are not in the technology part of the business, I think you are making it a requirement that they become up to speed, that they understand the technology as a part of their responsibility. You don’t call the IT Department ‑‑

BOB MCDONALD: If you want to transform the way you do business, your human resources department has to be involved as well, right, because you want to make sure you’re hiring the right people, you want to make sure you’re training people properly. So, I asked the human resource department, and Filippo to get together, and come up with demonstrated ability to use technology for each level in the company. And we’re going to train people, but if they can’t be trained, then they’re not going to make it to the next level.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: So, just to be clear, this would be part of your performance review?

BOB MCDONALD: This is part of your performance appraisal.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: And this applies to everybody?

BOB MCDONALD: Everybody, including me.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: And if you can’t cut it, what happens?

FILIPPO PASSERINI: And then on the other side of the coin, if you wish, what we try to do is to make our solutions so compelling, and so attractive that there is really not push back, because people see the value in doing that, and the value is either cost reduction, which could be significant ‑‑ we’ve been able to reduce $900 million in cost over the last ‑‑

JENNIFER REINGOLD: How much? Sorry.

FILIPPO PASSERINI: Nine hundred million dollars over the last eight years.

BOB MCDONALD: His goal is a billion.

FILIPPO PASSERINI: So, there is a lot of that which is showing value to the business units. But, if we are to be business people rather than technologists, we need to speak the business language, and do it in a way that is relevant. Relevance for us is our fixation day-in and day-out, and we want to make sure that we really deliver concrete value. This is lowering some of the resistance you may have because people find that attractive, and they see value in it.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Can we move it a little bit to the external face of P&G? I know also that you’ve used technology very effectively to communicate both with the consumer, and with your suppliers. Do you want to give a few examples of that?

BOB MCDONALD: Let me talk about marketing and then Fillipo may want to talk about some other aspect. Our vision of marketing of the future, if you’re trying to touch and improve lives, think about the most indispensable relationships you have in life, they tend to be family members, they tend to be people that you’re very close to. So, what we want to do is we want to create a one-on-one relationship between every one of our brands and our company, and every consumer in the world. We reach 4.2 billion people today, not all one-on-one, but that’s the end point.

Digital technology enables that kind of connection. What we want to do is we want to, as you have done with us, in China and in Russia, we want to go in people’s homes, we want to understand the tension in their lives, we want to take that tension and turn that into an insight, come up with an insight, come up with a big idea, turn that big idea into something consumers can participate in and then turn that participation into a movement.

So, a good example here in the United States would be our Old Spice advertising smell like a man man. The idea is that young men are a little nervous about how they present themselves to the opposite sex, and we identified Isaiah Mustafa, who is in our ads. He’s an ex-NFL football player. Through that we created a campaign, which got a lot of notoriety. We had a lot of people parody the campaign from Sesame Street to individuals and put it up on YouTube, or blogs. And then they participated in it. We’d actually have Isaiah participate with them on a blog.

For example, before the State of the Union Address one of the questions asked to him was what his advice would be for President Obama. Do you know what he said?

BOB MCDONALD: You were laughing. He said I would start my State of the Union speech by saying, hello, ladies. Unfortunately the president didn’t use it. But, through that we’ve gotten 1.8 billion free impressions. So, advertising is very different today. You don’t talk to somebody. You engage them in a discussion and you give them the freedom to participate in that discussion, and actually to advertise for you.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: And I assume there has been a business result to that, as well?

BOB MCDONALD: Well, I’m glad you asked. Old Spice became the number one body wash and number one deodorant in the United States, because of this campaign. It also won a Grand Prix and nine other Gold Lions in Cannes at the advertising festival.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Great. I want to have a chance to open the floor up to questions. Anybody?

BOB MCDONALD: There’s one in the back.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: In the back?

QUESTION: One of the things one observes when organizations, particularly large organizations, increase transparency dramatically is that it becomes a paradise for micromanagers. If you can see what the country manager is doing in China, or the country manager in China can see what’s going on in the cities, there’s an irresistible tendency to interfere and help. P&G is not exactly known as a hands-off management company.

QUESTION: How do you strike a balance between improving transparency dramatically and preventing the sort of empowerment that you say you want?

BOB MCDONALD: I think that’s a great question. I think that’s why it’s so important that you have to dismantle the hierarchy. You dismantle the hierarchy so people don’t have time to micromanage, right, and they’re focused on the most important thing. If you have four vice chairmen they can do a lot more micromanaging than two. If you have 15 percent fewer vice presidents and so forth, so that’s number one.

Number two you train them. You have to train them. I mean, you have to train them in the technology, but you also have to train them in the transformation of their behavior. We talked about transformation earlier. That’s critically important. Number three, if they start micromanaging, then you have to talk to them about it and correct the situation. Our situation is a bit different. We only promote from within. So, most of us have known each other, in my case 31 years. So, we don’t mind telling each other that we’re being micromanaged if that’s what’s happening.

FILIPPO PASSERINI: I have a quick point here. I believe after you have the wrong vision and the right strategy, I think much of it is pushing water through the pipes. There is so much we can talk theoretically about it. We need to get going, make it happen, and I’ve been surprised by the passive reaction of several people, because they say they have information, full democracy, the way we call it. It is something that has a lot of value.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: In a way, there’s nothing to argue, or in a weird way to micromanage, because the facts are the facts, right. I mean, once you have the data source, then ‑‑

BOB MCDONALD: Well, Proctor & Gamble has been known for many years, and these aren’t my words, as a democracy of ideas. And so I think this enables that democracy to occur.

FILIPPO PASSERINI: To build on this point, the beauty is that you spend a lot of time on discussing what is happening in the business, what are the results, and I think with that we’ve been able to move from the what, which is now the same for everyone, so there is now discussion, there is not debate to the why it is happening, what is happening, and how to improve on it. So, the shift is much more on the action, is much more on the ability to take a decision first and this is to your question, Jennifer, what we think is different in the way perhaps we are doing it.

Okay. I will ask one. Sorry.

FILIPPO PASSERINI: There is one.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: I can’t see, sorry.

QUESTION: Bob, you mentioned that everybody has certain tech requirements, every level, and you need to accomplish certain things, or know certain things to get promoted. I’m curious for you, or for someone who wants to succeed you some day, what are the tech requirements to be CEO of P&G?

BOB MCDONALD: That’s a good question. My ideal is always on, always connected. So, for me I don’t believe in the cloud, because sometimes I can’t connect to a cloud in Kenya, or Ethiopia, or somewhere else. For me I can’t use a Blackberry, because I type about 60 words a minute. And so I’m pretty fast, and a Blackberry slows me down. And when it comes to deciding whether or not to build $120 million plant, or a $1 billion plant, I don’t want to be deciding that based on what I can get on a Blackberry. So, what I have Fillipo helping me with, and I have, is a relatively small computer, with a full keyboard that is virtually always on and allows me to connect with whatever cell phone towers exist in whatever country, and pay what exorbitant rates are there.

So, my background is engineering, operations research, computer science with an MBA. I think having the combination of those skills is very helpful to getting this kind of job done.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: One more question? I really can’t see.

BOB MCDONALD: Yes, they’re over here.

QUESTION: Hi, Brian Dumaine from Fortune. Bob, could you address what you’re seeing in the marketplace in terms of the use of mobile apps and shoppers? I mean are they using mobile apps to do price comparison-shopping, to pay for their groceries? What’s working and what’s not?

BOB MCDONALD: Yes, there’s been a big increase in the use of mobile apps. There’s been a big increase in the use, particularly, of sites that promise coupons. I attended a focus group with some consumers the other day who spend virtually all of their day online trying to find multiple coupons for the same brand, and then they spend all their day in the retail store trying to find a cash register operator who will stack up coupons on the same brand, which is typically not allowed by most retailers. But, they find somebody who will do it. They know their name and they know the hours that they work. And then they get these coupons and they go in there and they do that. And to them it’s a game, and it’s a little bit of a religion. And they tend to, not surprisingly, they tend to connect with each other and oftentimes that connection causes one of them then to turn their capability into a website, or a blog, or an application. So, we see that going on everywhere.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: How does that affect the business itself? How are you responding to that?

BOB MCDONALD: It’s not a big part of the business today, but certainly in any digital application, we want to be part of it. So, usually, we get connected, and we try to help the firm figure out how to commercialize it, how to make money. We work with people like Facebook, and Google, and everyone to help them, as the world’s largest advertiser, to help them understand how to commercialize it, and how to make money off of what they’ve created. And so, as Filippo was mentioning earlier, we try to work with them to develop the technology to help us, and then as we co-invent, we help them then after we’re the first mover, we help them commercialize that technology more broadly.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Is there a particular group of people that are specifically devoted to that?

BOB MCDONALD: In our company?

JENNIFER REINGOLD: What is that unit?

BOB MCDONALD: Well, we have a group that is called New Business Development, where that’s their job. They’re always on the Internet. They’re always connected. Anybody with any idea can come to us. We use a website called, I think it’s called 9Sigma, where we put out a chemistry problem at night. We come back in the morning, and we take in all the chemistry ideas we get. We had one particular case, when I was running the laundry business, we had a chemistry problem. We went home at night. The next day a Chinese scientist had solved it. We paid him $25,000. He was the richest man in China. And I don’t know yet what the value of that idea has been. The richest man in his village.

Filippo has people working with suppliers all the time on this kind of thing.

FILIPPO PASSERINI: Yes. We have concluded that it is not any longer the big fish, the small one, or the fast, but we believe it’s the fish that will know how to network with other fishes that will be the winner. We have been, to Bob’s point, we made a big philosophy, a big strategy out of collaborating and developing strategic alliances in a number of ways.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Okay. I think we’re going to have to leave it there. Thank you all very, very much.

BOB MCDONALD: Thank you very much.

JENNIFER REINGOLD: Bob, Filippo, thank you. And we’ll turn it over to Stephanie.

Summary: At Brainstorm Tech 2011 in Aspen, CO, Fortune's Jennifer Reingold interviewed Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald and CIO Filippo Passerini about how the consumer goods conglomerate is the next digital giant.


CRISIS IN THE MAKING The Political Economy of New York State Since 1945. By Peter D. McClelland and Alan L. Magdovitz. 522 pp. New York: Cambridge University Press. $24.95.

THERE is no question that we need a solid book analyzing the longterm economic decline of the Northeast in general and New York State in particular. The economic retardation of New York State, in the sense of slowing growth relative to the rest of the country, dates at least from the end of World War II, and possibly from as far back as 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. The precipitate decline in the state's manufacturing employment, which has been sliding in absolute terms since 1952, is only the most dramatic example; relative decline since World War II has been the norm for New York in virtually every sector of the economy.

Strikingly, although New York State suffered from the general economic decline of the Northeast, the loss of jobs in New York has been decidedly worse than in neighboring states or New England. The distinguishing features of New York's slippage have been an astronomically high rate of out-migration of firms and the dominance of the state's economy by New York City. The steady deterioration in the city over the past 30 years has dragged down the entire state economy.

Unfortunately, ''Crisis in the Making'' is not quite the book that we need to explain this decline; it is at best only a first draft. It contains a useful array of tables, charts and graphs tracing New York's decline, but on the whole, it is carelessly written and carelessly reasoned, and fails to organize the mass of data into a coherent analytic argument.

Why the decline? Why the high rate of firm out-migration? There has been little solid research on the process of firm location, so it is almost impossible to assign causes with precision. The authors list 11 factors that may have contributed to New York's poor performance, but concede the impossibility of constructing a detailed model that would determine, even roughly, the relative importance of each. Examples of New York's special vulnerabilities include the much higher rates of taxation in New York relative to almost all other states; the unusually cramped conditions for manufacturing establishments in New York City, which made a massive outflow of jobs almost inevitable as industry shifted to more space-intensive processes; the fact that New York City is sandwiched between the suburbs of New Jersey and Connecticut. The universal trend toward suburbanization of jobs and residences since the 1950's meant that a large portion of jobs and taxpayers moving out of New York City were lost across the state line.

''Crisis in the Making'' presents the facts of New York's decline and speculates on the range of possible causes in two early, workmanlike chapters. From that point on, however, the authors seem to lose both their good judgment and control of their material. The reral Experiment, 1960-1975.'' mainder of the book is simply an unrelieved diatribe against Nelson Rockefeller, as the authors attempt to lay virtually the entire responsibility for the state's decline at his feet.

No recent history of New York State can afford to ignore Nelson Rockefeller. During the 15 years he was Governor (1959-74) he was clearly the dominant figure in the politics and economics of the state. Just a bare list of his activities is breathtaking. He transformed the state's higher education system from a few small scattered colleges into a network of 71 campuses with an enrollment in excess of 246,000 students. He reorganized the mass-transit system and the passenger railroads. He built or rebuilt 109 hospitals and nursing homes throughout the state, 23 new mental health facilities, at least 90,000 new housing units, 3 new communities and a billiondollar-plus complex of marble office buildings in the state capital. He consistently anticipated and outstripped Federal initiatives in pollution control and transportation construction. His narcotics addiction program was the largest in the nation and his welfare standards the highest in the nation. His first Medicaid program (although it was soon rescinded) granted free and comprehensive medical insurance to 45 percent of the citizens of the state.

Clearly, in an age of political grandiosity, Nelson Rockefeller was among the most grandiose of politicians. Clearly, the breadth of his programs led to the run-up in state taxation that marked the 1960's and early 1970's. Clearly, his unorthodox financing techniques led to the overextension of the state's credit and contributed indirectly to the financial collapse in New York City.

But it is one thing to condemn Rockefeller as a political manager and quite another to link him with the state's economic decline. For the first decade or so of Rockefeller's governorship, in fact, the state enjoyed its most rapid economic growth in decades. It is easy to forget that as late as 1969, New York City had the strongest big city economy in the country, and its unemployment rate was lower than any other major city's except Dallas's.


03/31/2015 AT 04:00 PM EDT

The co-pilot believed to have

into a mountain in the French Alps had told his employer he felt depressed, parent company Lufthansa revealed Tuesday.

In 2009, Andreas Lubitz emailed his flight training school asking to rejoin after months away and shared his medical records about a "deep depressive episode," Lufthansa said in a statement to

March 24 on its way from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany. There were

among the 150 on board.

that a cell-phone video of the passengers' final moments has been found among the wreckage.

and intentionally descended the aircraft.

And authorities have already said he was

the day of the tragedy.

his German hometown is "shocked" by what he did.

"We played volleyball together, and he would give me insight into his pilot internship because I also want to be a pilot," Konstantin Keidel said. "He's being portrayed as evil, but the Andreas we knew wasn't."

Summary: Lufthansa released a statement Tuesday acknowledging that the man believed responsible for the plane crash had a history of mental illness


Updated APR 29, 2015 12:53a ET

Manny Pacquiao worried about the punching power of Miguel Cotto. He knew Juan Manuel Marquez was a slick counter puncher, and wondered how he'd fare against a fighter the caliber of Oscar De La Hoya.

He's got no such worries about Floyd Mayweather Jr. on the eve of boxing's richest fight ever.

''I cannot say he is that difficult an opponent,'' Pacquiao said Tuesday. ''My confidence right now is different than the other fights I had. I feel excited, this is it. I have to prove something.''

Just hours after arriving in this boxing capital in a motorhome from Los Angeles, Pacquiao oozed confidence at a rally attended by about 1,000 people at the Mandalay Bay hotel. The mostly Filipino crowd watched Pacquiao's latest music video and was entertained by dancers and singers before the fighter himself made a brief appearance.

''I know I'm going to win the fight in the ring,'' Pacquiao told the crowd. ''So relax.''

Oddsmakers aren't so convinced, with Pacquiao remaining about a 2-1 underdog for a fight expected to earn him more than $100 million. But Pacquiao didn't even have to break a sweat to win over the crowd that came to the hastily arranged pep rally in a convention area at the hotel.

''You're excited,'' Pacquiao said to the cheering crowd. ''I'm very excited.''

Mayweather was greeted by a much bigger crowd at the MGM Grand hotel, where Saturday's night welterweight title fight will play out. The Southern University marching band entertained and a mariachi band played outside before Mayweather arrived 20 minutes early.

For many, it was their only chance to see the two fighters without reaching deep in their pockets. Tickets for the fight itself were being offered online starting at $3,800 and going over $100,000 near ringside, while even the $10 tickets for Friday's weigh-in were being offered for $100 or more.

''Five years ago this was a $50 million fight for me and $20 million for him,'' said Mayweather, who is expected to make $180 million or more to $120 million for Pacquiao's camp.

With the real work already done, both fighters were going over game plans for a bout that was five years in the making. Pacquiao said he had two or three different strategies for the fight, depending on whether Mayweather wants to try to win with his defense or comes out attacking.

''If he wants to fight me, good for me,'' Pacquiao said. ''If he's running and moving around the ring we're prepared for that, too.''

Mayweather said that Pacquiao will be trying the same game plan that 47 others have failed to implement.

''Everybody's game plan is to come forward and throw lots of punches,'' Mayweather said. ''It hasn't worked in 19 years and 47 fights.''

It didn't work for De La Hoya, who lost to both men while helping make them the pay-per-view stars they are today. Pacquiao's trainer, Freddie Roach, was in De La Hoya's corner in 2007 when De La Hoya won most of the early rounds before fading and dropping a decision to Mayweather.

It's a fight Roach believes De La Hoya could have won had he kept jabbing. More importantly, Roach said it was a fight he learned a lot about how to take on Mayweather.

''I really did learn from the Oscar fight. It was a good lesson to me,'' Roach said. ''Floyd is tricky but not very complicated. But if you get behind him and start following him around the ring he will set a trap. I have trained Manny not to let that happen. When he sets a trap, Manny will walk away.''

De La Hoya said his head tells him Mayweather will win the fight, but his heart is with Pacquiao. He said the Filipino has an advantage with Roach in the corner, and will have a strategy to counter Mayweather's defensive moves.

''I believe this fight is going to be more exciting today than five years ago because both guys are not as agile on their feet,'' De La Hoya said. ''Mayweather has lost a step or two with his legs and so has Pacquiao. Pacquiao will have a chance to connect a few punches on Mayweather and vice versa.''

What he doesn't want to see, De La Hoya said, is Mayweather fighting just to win the fight. That strategy has helped Mayweather win all 47 of his fights, but fans are often unenthused about his performances because he thinks safety first.

In the most anticipated fight in recent times, that is not enough to stand the test of history, De La Hoya said.

''It's sometimes unfortunate that his mentality is, 'I'm undefeated and I'm going to think I'm the greatest because nobody has beaten me,' '' he said. ''It just doesn't work that way. You have to dare to be great and when you are to be great you're going to face the toughest challenges. People are going to see that and people are going to respect that.''

Summary: Pacquiao: Relax, I'm going to beat Floyd Mayweather


04/16/2015 AT 01:30 AM EDT

Abs with a side of attitude?

posted a shirtless picture to

on Wednesday in which he shows off his impressive figure while flipping the bird to the camera.

"Back into the fray â¦ Get ready for 'The Long Home' beeetches!" he captioned the photo, with a list of

's cast members, followed by "the whole gang getting dirty in the South."

the adaptation of William Gay's novel, which is set in Tennessee in the 1940s. The

star has also been working on another novel adaption recently: He is producing, directing and starring in

, which is based on John Steinbeck's 1936 novel of the same name.

If this Instagram photo is any indication of what we'll be seeing in

, we'll be first in line.

Summary: The Interview star takes off his shirt and flips the camera the bird


Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn is urging Gannett Co.’s board to be open to takeover offers after the company splits its print and broadcasting divisions.

Icahn wants the company to adopt a charter provision saying it won’t institute a poison pill -- which is designed to thwart unwanted takeover offers -- without the approval of shareholders. He also nominated two directors to Gannett’s board, he said in a letter to the company disclosed in a regulatory filing.

“These proposals are an important first step towards protecting Gannett shareholders, preserving their rights and making it simpler for either company to be acquired if shareholders wish to see this effectuated,” wrote Icahn, who holds a 6.6 percent stake in Gannett.

Gannett, the owner of USA Today, announced in August that it will spin off its publishing business in a tax-free distribution to shareholders. The split will leave behind a company focused exclusively on broadcasting and digital assets, including Cars.com and CareerBuilder.

Gannett said in a separate statement that it will evaluate Icahn’s proposals.

“We are surprised by Mr. Icahn’s aggressive actions, including his threat to run a proxy contest to force wholesale changes in Gannett’s corporate governance and dictate the corporate governance of a company whose governance profile has yet to be determined,” said Marge Magner, non-executive chairman of Gannett’s board. “His overreaching campaign to advance his own agenda will not deter the board of Gannett from continuing to serve the interests of all of our shareholders.”

Gannett shares rose 1.1 percent to $31.70 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.


MPW Insider is an online community where the biggest names in business and beyond answer timely career and leadership questions. Today’s answer for: Why is it important to have a mentor? is written by Gloria Cordes Larson, president of Bentley University.

As an attorney who has worked in public policy, government, finance, and now as president of a university–all fields dominated by men–I have faced my fair share of workplace challenges. But along the way, I wouldn’t have gained the confidence to achieve success without a strong mentor in my corner.

In one of my first jobs after law school, I was lucky enough to work under Federal Trade Commissioner Patricia P. Bailey, who was both my boss and mentor. As a presidential appointee in the 1980’s, she had successfully broken through the glass ceiling of what was then a very male-dominated federal government in Washington. Patricia not only served as a role model, but also actively helped me move up the ladder, ultimately leading to the leadership position I hold today.

According to a 2013 survey commissioned by Bentley University on preparedness and women in the workplace, the importance of mentorship programs is greatly underscored. Among non-millennial women who responded to the survey, 55% said women-specific corporate-mentorship programs could better help female employees succeed in business and 52% said that women-specific networking could help female workers thrive.

As women grow in their leadership capabilities and are eligible for promotions, they need someone to turn to for support in reaching that next level. Mentors can support your career ambitions and help you reach your goals by offering useful guidance and encouraging you to succeed. Additionally, having someone in your company who can act as a sponsor, directly advocating for you in terms of career advancement, is equally important.

Further, this may come as a surprise to some, but male managers and executives can be a great resource for women. While there may be some “old school” organizations that operate much the same way they did 50 years ago, with corporate structures still skewed toward working men, more and more companies are employing smart policies to retain high potential male and female talent. Indeed, the same Bentley University survey found a sizable group of men (almost 40%) agreed that male managers and executives can–and should–play a more active role in mentoring and developing women to better succeed in the business world.

Our economy is only at its best when every individual has an equal opportunity to participate. And that means helping those below you–whatever their gender–to grow and ultimately succeed in their careers.

Read all answers to the MPW Insider question: Why is it important to have a mentor?

When it comes to mentors, the more the merrier by Sharon Price John, CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Are you qualified to be a mentor? by Sarah Watson, chief strategy officer of BBH N.Y.

Is mentoring necessary for career advancement? by Teresa Briggs, vice chairman and west region managing partner at Deloitte.

Do all employees benefit from having a mentor? by Dawn Zier, president and CEO of Nutrisystem.

4 things your boss won’t tell you (but a mentor will) by Penny Herscher CEO of FirstRain.

What qualities make a good (and bad) mentor? by Karen Tegan Padir, president of application development at Progress Software.

Why mentoring is unlike any other professional relationshipby Jenni Luke, CEO of Step Up.

Why you don’t need a mentor to be successful by Beth Brooke-Marciniak, Global Vice Chair of Public Policy at Ernst & Young.

What qualities should you look for in a mentor? by Gay Gaddis, CEO and founder of T3.

4 things to consider before choosing a mentor by Camille Preston, founder of AIM Leadership.

The most important quality a mentor should have by Kathy Bloomgarden, CEO of Ruder Finn.

Why women are more likely to be mentors by Alyse Nelson, CEO and co-founder of Vital Voices Global Partnership.

3 reasons every employee needs a mentor by Sally Blount, Dean of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Why this AOL executive chooses her mentors — wisely by Allie Kline, CMO of AOL, Inc.

Summary: Male executives have a unique opportunity to help advance women in the workplace.


MAYOR Gerald E. Loehr of Yonkers last week formally opened his reelection campaign, and a possible re-run of the 1979 race, by attacking his opponent, former Mayor Angelo R. Martinelli, as ''a man of proven incompetence'' who had damaged the city in his six years in office.

Addressing several dozen Democratic Party members in a steamy room of the Polish Community Center, a well-used forum for political and similar functions, Mr. Loehr acknowledged that Yonkers still faced many problems, but insisted that Mr. Martinelli was not the one to solve them.

The Mayor said he had spent ''a great deal of time'' since taking office attempting to ''repair the wreckage'' of Mr. Martinelli's three terms. For him to seek a return to office, Mr. Loehr said, ''is 'chutzpah,' '' a phrase he credited amid laughter to Harry Oxman, the Democratic minority leader, who shared the speakers' table.

Mr. Loehr was especially critical of the political process that saw Mr. Martinelli obtain the endorsement of ''the morally bankrupt Conservative Party'' in Yonkers and then use it as leverage to obtain the endorsement of the Republicans, ''once a significant party in the city,'' he said.

''Let those who would vote on the Conservative line in November realize that they are not voting for a conservative philosophy, but for politial deals and patronage,'' Mr. Loehr said, criticizing the Republicans for ''submitting to this domination by a minor splinter party.''

As for his own record, Mr. Loehr acknowledged that ''we are beset with problems of crime, the necessity of turning our educational system around and immense and complex financial difficulties.'' He said those difficulties were compounded by cutbacks in state and Federal assistance.

He said that much had been done to improve the city's administration but emphasized the need for ''cooperation between the City Council, the City Manager and the Mayor's office,'' although he said there are members of the City Council ''whose cooperation will probably never be forthcoming because they cater to their own self interest.'' He described them as more interested in ward-level improvements than in the city as a whole.

His emphasis on the need for cooperation was similar, ironically, to Mr. Martinelli's own campaign pitch ''to bring everybody together.'' The Republican-Conservative candidate, for his part, has recalled that Mr. Loehr campaigned in 1979 on theme of bringing everybody together.

The affair had Irvington's 6,200 citizens buzzing. Wire services ran stories. Television crews filmed children in a delicatessen. The Mayor telephoned his comments to talk shows as far away as Spokane, Wash.

The peaceful Hudson River village found itself, almost unwillingly, at war with video games such as ''Space Invaders.'' Some parents complained that the 25-cent games cost children their lunch money and caused tardiness at school. Others said the computerized cousins of pinball machines were good clean fun and that the village should not legislate behavior that was essentially up to parents themselves to regulate.

Nonetheless, an ordinance aimed at regulating their proliferation and use was drafted and discussed at three public hearings over a nine-week period.

''One thing that these hearings have shown is that there is very little trouble in River City,'' said Patricia I. Cox, a Village Trustee, referring to the locale of ''The Music Man,'' where a pool table represented the depths of degradation.

Her comment came at the third hearing, held last week in Village Hall with all 65 folding chairs filled and onlookers sharing wall space with the hot lights of film crews. Compromise was the order of the evening.

A week before the hearing, Mayor Reginald F. Marra had reported that the five-member Board of Trustess was split. However, all five agreed that the village would allow a maximum of three video games in one commercial location, up from two. The This 'n' That delicatessen across Main Street from the Irvington Middle School has three.

''Two is company, three's a crowd,'' Ruth DeVivo told the hearing. She presented a petition signed by 331 residents calling for restriction of game use to ''after-school hours during the school week.'' Mrs. DeVivo said that the free games offered by machines to high scorers amounted to ''gambling'' and that the games encouraged ''behavior modification'' among youths.

''The games do not corrupt the children's morals,'' said Regina Schallis. ''It gives them something to do.'' The Trustees also removed from the proposed ordinance a provision limiting use of the machines to those under the age of 17, but they left in a requirement that each machine be licensed at $100 a year.

''I'm beginning to share the sentiments of those who say we have enough legislation,'' said Michael A. Cornman, a patent lawyer. ''We regulate, regulate, regulate. It's time for less government, not more.''

A vote on the amended proposals was scheduled for next month.

Stanley Lewin, a restaurant and catering executive, has failed to interest the county in his ideas for development of Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle. But last week he appeared before County Legislators to question the rejection of his proposal to turn the casino into a seafood restaurant, catering facility and marina.