Pop art “godfather” Blake still the outsider at 80

LONDON (Reuters) – Pop music loves him. The art establishment shuns him. At the age of 80, British artist Peter Blake is revered for his celebrated “Sgt. Pepper” Beatles album cover yet at the same time dismissed as too “cheerful” to be one of the greats.

Regularly stroking his wispy silver beard, and supported around a central London gallery by a walking cane, the man dubbed the “godfather of Pop art” still struggles to come to terms with his place in the world of contemporary culture.

“It’s a cross I bear,” he said of the fact that his art is not taken as seriously as that of some contemporaries.

“Perhaps it’s surprising that at my kind of age and with my infirmities I’m still cheerful,” he told Reuters at the Waddington Custot Galleries where his latest show, “Rock, Paper, Scissors” has just opened.

Surrounding him are works ranging from some of his earliest watercolours executed in 1948 when he was 16 to “The Family”, a sculpture he completed just a few days ago.

What is striking is just how lively they are – plastic figures of Snow White and 30 dwarves crowd outside a model of a Swiss chalet in one humorous work, and the six-foot-long “A Parade for Saul Steinberg” is a model bursting with color and references to popular culture.

Blake concedes that he is often left having to defend his work in a world where “serious” art is cherished above all.

“Painters all have a different reason to paint – it could be politics, it could be angst, it could be anger. My reason to paint is to make magic and to make cheerful things.”

He has compared himself to contemporaries like Frank Auerbach, 81, whose dark oil paintings are increasingly sought after by collectors.

“Compared to that I am light, I have to accept that,” Blake said, adding that he is a great admirer of Auerbach. “It is the reason I am quite often aesthetically undervalued.”

TELLING OFF THE TATE

The art market clearly ranks his peers above Blake, including Auerbach and David Hockney, whose “Beverly Hills Housewife” fetched $ 7.9 million at auction in 2009.

But more of a bugbear is being overlooked by Tate Modern, the most important British gallery for modern and contemporary art which, ironically, gave a major retrospective this year to a much younger artist whom Blake helped nurture – Damien Hirst.

After uttering a few choice words in what he himself called a “rant” to a newspaper against the influential Tate director Nicholas Serota, he sought to strike a more conciliatory tone.

“Oddly enough Serota came in earlier to see the show,” Blake recalled. “I said, ‘Look it’s not personal. You’re the director of the Tate … and if I don’t fit into your scheme I’m not that bitter about it. It’s a fact. I don’t hate you.

“I think he was slightly embarrassed because I have been quite voluble about it. He accepted it.”

What Serota would have seen at the exhibition was an artist still bursting with ideas in a phase of life he describes as an “encore” to the main acts of his career.

Blake named the show after the children’s game “Rock, Paper, Scissors”, and the childlike runs throughout.

“Rock” represents sculptures, some of which are occupied by superheroes, Boy Scouts, toy soldiers and knights alongside the more sobre “Army” consisting of human figures made up of wooden blocks topped by bowling balls for heads.

“Paper” covers works on paper that include Blake’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth commissioned by the Radio Times for the cover of its 2012 Diamond Jubilee souvenir issue.

“Scissors” stands for collage, and the works range from abstract 1950s creations to a series of scenes of prominent London landmarks like Westminster Abbey and Piccadilly Circus populated by comic characters, animals, skeletons or horses.

Asked how his recent work compared to earlier “acts”, he replied: “It’s not a development, it’s a leaping about.

“I describe my working methods as being like a big oak tree and the trunk is and has always been that I am a figurative painter of a certain kind of realist style – I was when I was 16 and I still am. But the branches of the tree are these excursions into other art.”

MUSIC’S MOST FAMOUS SLEEVE

Blake was producing art by 1945, aged just 13, and in the 1950s and “swinging 60s” emerged as one of the frontrunners of pop art which drew on popular culture and advertising to subvert the traditions of mainstream art.

He is best known for designing the album sleeve for the 1967 Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, featuring a collage of famous figures behind the band members dressed in bright military-style regalia.

It is one topic Blake is keen to avoid.

“Best if you don’t,” he replied with a grin, when asked if he was willing to talk about a design for which he was paid a reported 200 pounds. “I’d much rather talk about this work.”

That album has led to a lifelong association with British pop music, including designing sleeves for charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in 1984 and Madness’s latest album as well as the BRIT Award statuettes earlier this year.

Blake, it is clear, is still going strong, but only recently the outlook was far less rosy.

“All last year I wasn’t very well, and I was talking often about the fact that I was working on this show and I hoped I would live long enough to go to it,” he said.

“The question is there in the background, of mortality, but I’ve cheered up a bit and I’m not so unwell and I’m not forecasting my own death yet.”

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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More than 350 African migrants intercepted off Italy

ROME (Reuters) – Italian coastguards said they had intercepted and picked up 358 African migrants attempting to reach Italy in two overcrowded vessels on Saturday.

Two hundred and thirty-five of the migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were travelling in a rickety wooden boat and the other 123 were spotted on a rubber dinghy, said the coastguards.

A coastguard spokesman, who was unable to give any information on where the vessels departed from, said the migrants were all in decent health and were being transported to reception centres.

Italy has borne the brunt of clandestine seaborne migration to southern Europe that has ebbed and flowed for several years. Migrants say they are attracted by the prospect of a better life in Europe.

Most migrants risk the voyage across the Mediterranean Sea in small and overcrowded fishing boats. Thousands have died as a result of shipwreck, harsh conditions at sea or a lack of food and water.

(Reporting By Catherine Hornby; Editing by Ralph Gowling)

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Defeated Sierra Leone opposition says election flawed

FREETOWN (Reuters) – Sierra Leone’s main opposition party on Saturday attacked the credibility of a poll that saw incumbent President Ernest Bai Koroma elected to a second term in an outright victory.

The dispute risks tarnishing a vote deemed free and fair by observers and that many hope will help pave the way for an economic revival of the war-scarred West African nation.

Koroma’s main challenger Julius Maada Bio, a former military junta leader, said “systemic and widespread irregularities, malpractices and injustices … undermined the credibility of the results.”

While the SLPP stopped short of rejecting the results outright, a top party official said the chances it would accept its defeat when the party’s leadership meets on Tuesday were slim.

“It’s very unlikely. Our membership are very strong-hearted about it,” the SLPP’s national secretary general Banja Tejan-Sie told Reuters.

While analysts predicted ethnic loyalties would make it hard to secure the 55 percent of votes required for a first round victory in the November 15 election, Koroma and his All People’s Congress party won outright with 58.7 percent.

Bio garnered 37.4 percent of votes in a high turnout for the election, the third national poll since the end of a 1991-2002 civil war that made Sierra Leone notorious as a “blood diamonds” battleground for rebels and child soldiers.

At stake was the job of overseeing billions of dollars of investment in a natural resources boom with the potential to lift the gold, oil and iron-rich country from poverty.

Iron-ore shipments by British companies African Minerals and London Mining are expected to help the economy achieve 20 percent growth this year, below original forecasts of more than 50 percent, but still one of the highest growth rates on the planet.

While a large European Union observer mission said the advantage of incumbency meant the electoral playing field was skewed in favour of Koroma, it and other observers called the process free and fair.

More than 9,000 polling stations catered to the country of 5.5 million voters on election day.

In a statement released before the results on Friday, electoral commission chief Christiania Thorpe said recounts took place in 173 polling stations, however over-voting was only found to have occurred in five.

“It is mathematically impossible for the number of ballots in the ballot boxes to be recounted to impact the outcome of the presidential election,” the statement read.

Koroma’s spokesman Unisa Sesay said on Saturday that the poll result was credible and the NEC had thoroughly investigated the SLPP’s complaints.

“It’s not only Sierra Leoneans who are saying it,” he said. “Don’t forget that these are the elections that have been most comprehensively observed for a very long time.”

(Editing by Joe Bavier)

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Beijing’s S. China Sea rivals protest passport map

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China has enraged several neighbors with a few dashes on a map, printed in its newly revised passports that show it staking its claim on the entire South China Sea and even Taiwan.

Inside the passports, an outline of China printed in the upper left corner includes Taiwan and the sea, hemmed in by the dashes. The change highlights China’s longstanding claim on the South China Sea in its entirety, though parts of the waters also are claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia.

China’s official maps have long included Taiwan and the South China Sea as Chinese territory, but the act of including them in its passports could be seen as a provocation since it would require other nations to tacitly endorse those claims by affixing their official seals to the documents.

Ruling party and opposition lawmakers alike condemned the map in Taiwan, a self-governed island that split from China after a civil war in 1949. They said it could harm the warming ties the historic rivals have enjoyed since Ma Ying-jeou became president 4 1/2 years ago.

“This is total ignorance of reality and only provokes disputes,” said Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, the Cabinet-level body responsible for ties with Beijing. The council said the government cannot accept the map.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario told reporters in Manila that he sent a note to the Chinese Embassy that his country “strongly protests” the image. He said China’s claims include an area that is “clearly part of the Philippines’ territory and maritime domain.”

The Vietnamese government said it had also sent a diplomatic note to the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi, demanding that Beijing remove the “erroneous content” printed in the passport.

In Beijing, the Foreign Ministry said the new passport was issued based on international standards. China began issuing new versions of its passports to include electronic chips on May 15, though criticism cropped up only this week.

“The design of this type of passports is not directed against any particular country,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily media briefing Friday. “We hope the relevant countries can calmly treat it with rationality and restraint so that the normal visits by the Chinese and foreigners will not be unnecessarily interfered with.”

It’s unclear whether China’s South China Sea neighbors will respond in any way beyond protesting to Beijing. China, in a territorial dispute with India, once stapled visas into passports to avoid stamping them.

“Vietnam reserves the right to carry out necessary measures suitable to Vietnamese law, international law and practices toward such passports,” Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesman Luong Thanh Nghi said.

Taiwan does not recognize China’s passports in any case; Chinese visitors to the island have special travel documents.

China maintains it has ancient claims to all of the South China Sea, despite much of it being within the exclusive economic zones of Southeast Asian neighbors. The islands and waters are potentially rich in oil and gas.

There are concerns that the disputes could escalate into violence. China and the Philippines had a tense maritime standoff at a shoal west of the main Philippine island of Luzon early this year.

The United States, which has said it takes no sides in the territorial spats but that it considers ensuring safe maritime traffic in the waters to be in its national interest, has backed a call for a “code of conduct” to prevent clashes in the disputed territories. But it remains unclear if and when China will sit down with rival claimants to draft such a legally binding nonaggression pact.

The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam are scheduled to meet Dec. 12 to discuss claims in the South China Sea and the role of China.

___

Associated Press writers Oliver Teves in Manila, Philippines, Chris Brummitt in Hanoi, Vietnam, and researcher Zhao Liang in Beijing contributed to this report.

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Sony at greater risk than Panasonic in electronics downturn: Fitch

TOKYO (Reuters) – Panasonic Corp has a better chance than rival Sony Corp of surviving Japan‘s consumer electronics slump because of its unglamorous but stable appliance business of washing machines and fridges, credit rating agency Fitch said Friday.

Fitch cut Panasonic‘s rating by two notches to BB and Sony three notches to BB minus on Thursday, the first time one of the three major ratings agencies have put the creditworthiness of either company into junk-bond territory.

Rival agencies Moody’s and S&P rate both of Japan’s consumer electronic giants at the same level, just above junk status. Moody’s last cut its rating on Panasonic on Tuesday.

Panasonic “has the advantage of a relatively stable consumer appliance business that is still generating positive margins”, Matt Jamieson, Fitch’s head of Asia-Pacific, said in a conference call on Friday to explain its ratings downgrades.

But at Sony, he added, “most of their electronic business are loss making, they appear to be overstretched.”

Japan’s TV industry has been bested by cheaper, more innovative models from Samsung Electronics and other foreign rivals, while tablets and smartphones built by Apple Inc have become the dominant consumer electronics devices.

Investors are focusing on the fate of Sony and Panasonic after another struggling Japanese consumer electronics firm, Sharp Corp, maker of the Aquos TV, secured a $ 4.6 billion bail-out by banks including Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

Sony and Panasonic have chosen divergent survival paths.

Panasonic, maker of the Viera TV, is looking to expand its businesses in appliances, solar panels, lithium batteries and automotive components. Appliances amount to around only 6 percent of the company’s sales, but they generate margins of more than 6 percent and make up a big chunk of operating profit.

Sony, creator of the Walkman, is doubling down on consumer gadgets in a bid to regain ground from Samsung and Apple in mobile devices while bolstering digital cameras and gaming.

The latest downgrades will curtail the ability of both Japanese companies to raise money in credit markets to help fund restructurings of their business portfolios.

For now, however, that impact is limited, given the support Panasonic and Sony are receiving from their banks.

In October, Panasonic, which expects to lose $ 10 billion in the year to March 31, secured $ 7.6 billion of loan commitments from banks including Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ, a financing backstop it says will help it avoid having to seek capital in credit markets.

Sony, which has forecast a full-year profit of $ 1.63 billion helped by the sale of a chemicals business to a Japanese state bank, announced plans to raise $ 1.9 billion through a convertible bond before the latest rating downgrade.

Thomson Reuters’ Starmine structural model, which evaluates market views of credit risk, debt levels and changes in asset values gives Panasonic and Sony an implied rating of BB minus. Sharp’s implied rating is three notches lower at B minus.

Standard & Poor’s rates Panasonic and Sony at BBB, the second lowest of the investment grade, while Moody’s Investors Service has them on Baa3, the lowest of its high-grade category. Moody’s has a negative outlook for both firms while S&P sees a stable outlook for Panasonic and a negative one for Sony.

Stock markets in Japan were closed on Friday for a national holiday.

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Mark Bendeich)

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Rejected Beatles audition tape appears at auction

LONDON (Reuters) – The Beatles audition tape rejected by a record label executive in arguably the biggest blunder in pop history has resurfaced and will go on sale at a London auction next week.

Ted Owen of The Fame Bureau, an auction house specializing in pop memorabilia, said the 10-song tape was recorded on New Year’s Day, 1962, at label Decca‘s studios in north London.

Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Pete Best – who would later be replaced on drums by Ringo Starr – performed up to 15 songs at the session, 10 of which appear on the tape to be sold on November 27.

The band members had been driven from Liverpool to London the night before, and, despite getting lost on the way managed to get to the studios in time for the infamous session paid for by their manager Brian Epstein.

Decca’s senior A&R (artists and repertoire) representative Dick Rowe, who later became known as “the man who turned down the Beatles“, decided against signing them in favor of Brian Poole & The Tremeloes who also auditioned that day.

“Guitar groups are on their way out, Mr. Epstein,” he is widely quoted as saying.

Rowe did, however, sign the Rolling Stones, who went on to become one of the biggest acts in British rock, and experts dispute whether it was him or a more junior colleague who passed the Beatles over.

There are bootleg versions of the session in existence, but the “safety master”, or back-up tape, on offer at auction is unique, Owen said.

“The most important thing about this is the quality,” he told Reuters. “There are bootlegs out there, horrible bootlegs — some are at the wrong speed, others are crackily and taken from a cassette off an acetate (disc).

“This quality we have never heard.”

Despite its rarity, the tape has been estimated to fetch 18-20,000 pounds ($ 29-32,000), which Owen said had been set by the owner and was a “sensible” starting point.

He added that only a handful of collectors were likely to bid for the piece of pop history, and, given that the Beatles own the copyright through their company, a commercial record release based on the tape was extremely unlikely.

Marked as the “Silver Beatles”, which the “Fab Four” were briefly called, the tape comes with a hand-written track list and black-and-white photograph of the musicians posing in leather jackets that would be been used for the record sleeve.

Also on offer at the Popular Culture auction is a guitar used by Jimi Hendrix to play the bulk of his breakthrough set at the Monterey festival in California in 1967. The black Fender Stratocaster is expected to fetch 120-180,000 pounds.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Bullied, Institutionalized for Tourettes

From the age of 7, Frank Bonifas has endured the most severe form of Tourette syndrome, and it started long before the medical community even had a name for the neurological disorder.

Doctors convinced his parents that he could control his tics and outbursts, which had him grunting, jerking and swearing with impunity. They blamed his mother for coddling him and, in 1968, as a young teen, they sent him to a psychiatric hospital for 18 months.

Bonifas, now 58 and living in Coldwater, Ohio, experienced assaults by school bullies and was forced to take high-dose medications that made him so listless one year, he lost two months of school.

Even in hospital wards, he was tortured by staff members who thought his outbursts were deliberate. He even had to fight with Social Security to get disability payments because Tourette syndrome was not listed in the medical journals.

“I resented all psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers,” he said. “They had no idea what was wrong with me and blamed me, my mom, dad and sister for my problems.”

Now, in a self-published memoir, “Fu-Fu-Fu Frank,” he writes about his wrenching childhood and the determination he had to overcome the odds of living with a misunderstood disorder.

Bonifas prefaced his Thanksgiving day telephone interview with ABCNews.com in anticipation of his uncontrollable use of the “F word,” punctuated with grunts and screams.

“I am not a violent person,” he said. “I am a loving person who just has Tourette’s.”

Despite severe physical handicaps, Bonifas was able to write the book because of Marilyn Kanney, a former nurse and friend of his late mother who has loved and supported him since he was in high school. He calls her “a second mother.”

“She took my thoughts and put them into sentences and wrote them into paragraphs and chapters,” he said. “They were all my words, but she allowed me to make it a reality … It took us 15 years to finish it.”

Bonifas decided to go public with his story after friends encouraged him to write. His first goal was to educate others about Tourette syndrome. But the second was to be financially independent and get off disability assistance and Medicaid.

The turning point in his life was in 1973, when a husband-wife psychiatric team, Drs. Arthur and Elaine Shapiro of New York Hospital, gave his condition a name.

At 18, Bonifas was one of the first people in the United States to be diagnosed with Tourette syndrome.

“I taught my doctor everything he knows about Tourette,” said Bonifas. “Dr. Shapiro said to me at the time, ‘Frank, to your credit, you haven’t blown your brains out by now.

“I put my trust in doctors and nurses for the first time in my life,” he said.

According to the Tourette Syndrome Foundation, the disorder is defined by multiple motor and vocal tics lasting for more than one year. The verbal tics can include grunting, throat clearing, shouting and barking.

It was named for a French neuropsychiatrist, Gilles de la Tourette, who assessed the disorder in the late 1800s. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that it was widely recognized in the U.S., where it was thought to be exceptionally rare.

In 1980, the condition was broadened to include milder cases of tics. Fewer than 10 percent of all patients swear or use socially inappropriate words, which makes Bonifas’s condition so socially isolating.

The first symptoms, usually before the age of 18, are involuntary movements of the face, arms, limbs or trunk, such as kicking or stomping. They are frequent, repetitive and rapid. The patient cannot control these movements and they can involve the whole body.

ADD and OCD Can Accompany Tourette Syndrome

According to Dr. Jonathan Mink, chief of pediatric neurology at Rochester University, who sits on the board of the Tourette association, the disorder is still poorly understood and likely has a genetic link.

Many patients, like Bonifas, also have symptoms associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder.

“The majority of kids, even those bad enough to seek treatment, are likely to have their tics diminish or go away,” said Mink.

Habit reversal therapy — teaching a person with Tourette to hold his or her breath, for example, instead of saying the repeated word, can sometimes help. Antidepressants are used to treat associated anxiety.

Today, several medications have helped Bonifas manage his symptoms, but his early years were spent in torment, in and out of mental institutions, hospitals and experimental programs.

In the introduction to his memoir, doctors attest to the “exorcisms” that Bonifas underwent to rid him of his “demons.” He claims he was exploited and abused, even sexually, by many who were entrusted to care for him.

A devote Catholic and former altar boy, Bonifas once considered entering the seminary. Strangely, his first outburst of profanity occurred in the seventh grade when looking at a church spire.

The thought — “The Blessed Virgin Is a F***er” — just burst into his mind. He was convinced he would burn in hell.

But Bonifas had no control over that or other obsessive-compulsive habits, such as dressing, washing and brushing his teeth in a particular sequence.

His behavior in school was problematic, too. Teachers saw his outbursts as an attention-seeking device. He was “barking, snorting, sniffing, hissing and more.”

By high school, he was badly bullied. Seniors pulled down his pants, taunting: “Now we’ll see if he is a dog or a human being.”

Another time, he was pushed into a large garbage can and rolled down the steps to the first floor.

After being sent to a local hospital ward for treatment, he got “special care” more than a half dozen times. Orderlies confined Bonifas to a locked steel cell with a pillow and a pad. After that, he developed lifelong claustrophobia.

In exercise classes in a swimming pool, he claimed the leader seemed to enjoy dunking his head underwater until his lungs “nearly burst.”

But eventually, Bonifas found New York Hospital, where modern treatments and an educated and understanding medical team, gave him hope. He was the 35th patient Dr. Shapiro had ever treated.

His roommate was Dr. Orrin Palmer, a Maryland doctor who overcame Tourette and now practices psychiatry.

“Frank and I went through hell on these protocols,” Palmer wrote in one of the forwards in the book.

Doctors experimented with an array of high-dose medicines that caused side effects, such as insomnia, motor restlessness, mood swings and even Parkinson’s symptoms.

“I had to sign papers that I was a guinea pig,” said Bonifas. “If the medicine made me incompetent or I lost my mind or was comatose or died, they were not responsible.”

His response to his doctor’s orders was, “Just tell my small town that I am not the devil, not doing this on purpose and that I have a mind.”

After five months, his mother brought him home and things started to get better. Were it not for her, “they would have institutionalized me for life,” he said.

Today, Bonifas works as a part-time mail clerk at a local bank. He said life is still “incredibly difficult.”

But since the publishing his book, he said, “Many people have a better understanding of what I go through on a daily basis, and I have been treated much better.”

He takes a low dose of haldol, ativan, cogentin and many natural vitamins. Bonifas also has taken up yoga with a trainer.

Bonifas cares for his 88-year-old father who lives upstairs. His beloved mother died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2004.

“I just wish she were alive to read it, but my faith tells me that she is in Heaven and is proud of everything I’m trying to accomplish,” he said.

More recently, cultural attitudes toward those with Tourette syndrome have begun to change, according to Bonifas.

“Most people who have become familiar with it are more understanding,” he said. “However, many are not aware of how serious the disease is, still feel that anyone afflicted with it should be able to control all of its symptoms.”

Much still needs to be done, according to Bonifas.

“Parents and teachers can be more supportive and understanding of people who are different,” he said. “Children learn at a very early age how to treat others, and there are too many bullies today as a result of the prejudices of all who teach them.”

Bonifas volunteers in schools and organizations to help change attitudes.

With all the hurdles he has overcome, the dark shadow of growing up in a world ignorant of his needs still haunts Bonifas.

“I have tried to put my past behind me, but every day is challenging and difficult,” he said. “I’m working on it.”

“I think that all people should accept those who are different or handicapped,” he said. “They should have to spend one day in their shoes, and see how it feels.

His faith and the encouragement he has received from readers of his memoir keep him going.

“It just comes down to this: There is you and God,” he said. “I have a lot of faith and a lot of determination.”

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HP and UBS Hide Behind Their Scapegoats

The rogue is a perfect villain. This week we had two: Kweku Adoboli, the former UBS trader who got seven years in jail for rogue trades, and Mike Lynch, the rogue leader who allegedly tricked Hewlett-Packard into buying Autonomy with dodgy accounting. Both are being blamed for causing massive damage—a $ 2.3 billion loss for UBS (UBS) and an $ 8.8 billion writedown for HP (HPQ). Both are colorful characters who’d made their homes in London. Adoboli is a Ghanian-born son of privilege who was nurtured as a high-potential player at the bank; Lynch is the Irish-born mathematical genius and entrepreneur who’d built one of the U.K.’s greatest tech companies.

Whatever blame they may deserve for their actions—and Lynch has said several times this week that he deserves none—neither is a solo actor in these losses. The companies that are portraying themselves as victims deserve some blame, too.

Let’s start with UBS. On the surface, it’s a clear-cut case. Adoboli was found guilty of unauthorized trades and will spend years in jail. But UBS is also under scrutiny for failing to detect the trades. Ben Moshinsky and Lindsay Fortado of Bloomberg News report that UBS faces a fine of about £45 million from the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority. If so, that would be a welcome reminder that culture plays a role in many crimes. At the very least, UBS had a culture that enabled this young man to rack up stunning losses with relatively little oversight.

Adoboli himself goes further. In an e-mail to Bloomberg News, he says leaders such as JPMorgan Chase (JPM) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon and former Barclays (BCS) chief Bob Diamond were rewarded for taking big risks early in their career. Whether or not that’s true, neither was accused of committing fraud. But Adoboli makes an interesting point. Imagine if his behavior had resulted in a $ 2.3 billion gain for the bank. Would he have been hauled into court for those unauthorized trades? Would he even be fired? Think about the accolades that AIG (AIG) heaped on its London-based financial products unit when its credit default swaps boosted the bottom line. Then the housing market blew up and those exotic instruments essentially brought down the company, forcing a AAA-rated global giant to put itself in government hands. Suddenly, a role model unit was cast as a rogue.

The story behind HP and the culpability of Autonomy founder Mike Lynch continues to unfold. What we do know is that more than a dozen firms were involved in advising on the $ 11 billion acquisition last year. We know that HP chief Meg Whitman, who was on the board at the time of the deal, told investors on Nov. 20 that the company now needs to take a $ 8.8 billion charge on the deal because of a “willful sustained effort” to “inflate the underlying financial metrics” to “mislead investors and potential buyers.” And who inflated those numbers? “Some” Autonomy employees, according to Whitman, though she also blames accounting firm Deloitte for failing to catch it. (The FBI has opened an investigation.) What about the HP management or directors who voted to pay an 80 percent premium on top of what investors thought Autonomy was worth? Do they deserve any blame? Well, Apotheker and the former head of strategy are gone.

But let’s not ignore the environment in which this massive hit is taking place. HP is a company that’s battling a persistent decline in its revenue, net income, and market share. Last quarter, it took an $ 8 billion charge for another acquisition—Electronic Data Systems, which HP bought for $ 13.9 billion in 2008. HP’s stock has more than halved since Apotheker left. Lynch may have been a marketing genius in allegedly selling HP a bill of goods on his company, but even he can’t be blamed for that.

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Former Ivory Coast leader’s wife wanted by ICC

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court unsealed an indictment Thursday against former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo‘s wife on charges including murder, rape and persecution. It was the first time in the court’s 10-year history it has charged a woman.

The world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal said the arrest warrant was issued on Feb. 29 for former first lady Simone Gbagbo for crimes against humanity.

Her husband, Laurent Gbagbo, is already in custody at the court’s detention unit in The Hague facing similar charges stemming from his fight to retain power after losing a 2010 presidential election. If his wife is extradited, they could face justice together in an unprecedented husband-wife trial.

But a senior member of Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara‘s government, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media, said Ivory Coast has already informed the ICC that the nation will not let her go.

“We informed them of this a long time ago,” he said.

The court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, urged Ivory Coast to extradite Gbagbo.

“The type of crimes committed in the aftermath of the 2010 elections did not happen by chance — they were planned and coordinated at the highest political and military levels and all those bearing the greatest responsibility must be held to account,” Bensouda said in a statement.

She said prosecutors continue to investigate crimes committed by both sides in Ivory Coast’s bloody power struggle and expect to issue further arrest warrants in the future.

“The investigations are objective, impartial and independent, and are conducted in strict accordance with the law,” she said.

Ivory Coast officials are holding the 63 year old under house arrest in the northwest town of Odienne. Last week, Ivorian prosecutor Noel Dje Enrike Yahau said lawyers had questioned Simone Gbagbo there for two days and that the domestic charges against her remained the same: genocide, blood crimes and economic crimes.

Unsealing the ICC arrest warrant issued nearly nine months ago appears to be a tactic by the court to put pressure on Ouattara’s administration to hand over Ms. Gbagbo.

If authorities in Ivory Coast want to prosecute her, they have to convince judges at The Hague tribunal that their case involves the same crimes she is charged with at the ICC. It is a court of last resort, meaning it only takes cases from countries unwilling or unable to prosecute them.

The international court said in the warrant that there is evidence pro-Gbagbo forces deliberately attacked perceived supporters of Ouattara in the aftermath of the election.

Judges who reviewed evidence supporting the charges against Ms. Gbagbo said they found “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Ms. Gbagbo bears individual criminal responsibility for the crimes … as ‘an indirect co-perpetrator.’”

The warrant called Gbagbo an “alter ego for her husband” with the power to make state decisions. It said there is evidence to suggest she “instructed the pro-Gbagbo forces to commit crimes against individuals who posed a threat to her husband’s power.”

Her husband was the first former head of state to be taken into custody by the court when he was extradited to The Hague by the Ivory Coast government last year.

Prosecutors say about 3,000 people died in violence by both sides after Gbagbo refused to concede defeat following the election. Ouattara finally took power in April 2011 with the help of French and U.N. forces.

Ivory Coast is not a member state of the court, but has voluntarily accepted its jurisdiction.

It is very rare for a woman to be charged by an international war crimes court. In the past, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicted former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic of persecution and sentenced her to 11 years imprisonment.

The announcement of the arrest warrant and Ivory Coast’s refusal to hand over Gbagbo appeared likely to raise tensions between supporters of her husband and those who back Ouattara.

Moussa Toure Zeguen, a leader of the Gbagbo allies in exile in Ghana, said by phone from Accra that the former president’s supporters had no faith in the Ivorian authorities to give Simone Gbagbo a fair trial.

“We don’t trust them. The only thing that Ouattara is doing is revenge,” Zeguen said. “He wants to try us without trying any of the fighters from his side who also committed crimes. It is not fair, and this cannot bring reconciliation.”

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Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal, and Robbie Corey-Boulet in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, contributed to this report.

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Ex-’Price is Right’ model gets $8.5M in damages

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The producers of “The Price is Right” owe a former model on the show more than $ 7.7 million in punitive damages for discriminating against her after a pregnancy, a jury determined Wednesday.

The judgment came one day after the panel determined the game show’s producers discriminated against Brandi Cochran. They awarded her nearly $ 777,000 in actual damages.

Cochran, 41, said she was rejected when she tried to return to work in early 2010 after taking maternity leave. The jury agreed and determined that FremantleMedia North America and The Price is Right Productions owed her more than $ 8.5 million in all.

“I’m humbled. I’m shocked,” Cochran said after the jury announced its verdict. “I’m happy that justice was served today not only for women in the entertainment industry, but women in the workplace.”

FremantleMedia said it was standing by its previous statement, which said it expected to be “fully vindicated” after an appeal.

“We believe the verdict in this case was the result of a flawed process in which the court, among other things, refused to allow the jury to hear and consider that 40 percent of our models have been pregnant,” and further “important” evidence, FremantleMedia said.

In their defense, producers said they were satisfied with the five models working on the show at the time Cochran sought to return.

Several other former models have sued the series and its longtime host, Bob Barker, who retired in 2007.

Most of the cases involving “Barker’s Beauties” — the nickname given the gown-wearing women who presented prizes to contestants — ended with out-of-court settlements.

Comedian-actor Drew Carey followed Barker as the show’s host.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .

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