Bank with a heart

An Australian banker who was caught on live TV looking at photos of scantily clad model Miranda Kerr will not lose his job, the bank said Friday.

Macquarie Bank worker Dave Kiely was at his desk as a colleague was being interviewed about interest rates when the camera showed him apparently opening e-mail attachments of nearly nude photos

of the model. The clip became a YouTube hit and other media broadcast it

during prime time Tuesday. Australia-born Kerr, 26,

who is engaged to “Pirates of the Caribbean” star Orlando Bloom, had said she hoped Kiely would not lose his job.

“I am told there is a petition to save his job, and of course I would sign it,” news.com. au quoted her as saying.

On Friday, Macquarie said in a statement it had completed an internal review and Kiely would keep his job.

“Macquarie and the employee apologize for any offense that may have been caused,” the bank said. The London-based financial news-based Web site Here is the City had set up an e-mail campaign to help Kiely, saying he should not get fired because he has suffered enough and the pictures weren’t hardcore porn.

Car capers (cont.)

Los Angeles police say another car has been found over the side of the road where Charlie Sheen’s Mercedes was earlier pulled from a steep ravine.

Sheen reported that his Mer-cedes-Benz sedan was stolen from his gated community at around 4 a. m. Friday in Sherman Oaks. At around the same time, it was found upside down hundreds of feet down a ravine off Mulholland Drive near his home. Nobody was in the car.

Police spokesman Richard French says a photographer a few blocks away reported a Bentley down a cliff shortly after 1:30 p. m.

French says nobody was in that car, which apparently was taken from a neighborhood adjoining Sheen’s. French says three other cars in the area were broken into overnight but investigators aren’t sure if there’s a connection.

Collector Crichton

Michael Crichton was the mega-selling thriller writer behind “Jurassic Park,” “The Andromeda Strain” and TV series “ER.” He was also a private and passionate art collector who bought works by 20th-century masters including Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns.

Four pieces from Crichton’s collection valued at 20 million pounds ($32 million) went on display Friday before being auctioned by Christie’s in New York in May.

The centerpiece is “Flag” of 1960-1966, one of a series of images of the U. S. standard by Johns that transformed the art world – challenging the supremacy of abstract expressionism and paving the way for pop art’s obsession with boldly colored found objects.

“It’s truly the first great pop art object,” said Brett Gorvey, deputy chairman of Christie’s, Americas. “It allowed artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein to look to the world around them.”

Crichton – who died of cancer in November 2008 at the age of 66 –was one of the world’s most commercially successful writers, whose books and films blended science and paranoia in a popular, populist brew.