Goldman book was not meant to be an expose: author

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The former Goldman Sachs Group Inc vice president who publicly accused the bank of taking advantage of unsuspecting clients said he never intended his book to be an expose of practices at the Wall Street firm.

Preliminary reviews of Greg Smith's "Why I Left Goldman Sachs," which hits bookstores on Monday, have been lackluster. Critics say the book contains few revelations, given that it had been hyped as a "tell all" look at the investment bank.

Smith, a native of South Africa, told Reuters in a phone interview on Sunday that his book was not meant to be a manual for change on Wall Street. Instead, he said he wanted to shine a light on what was wrong in investment banking and how ordinary people - not the super-wealthy - pay for it.

"People are looking for something sensationalist and expose-like," said Smith, who sold equity derivatives at Goldman. "I would like people to look at it in a thoughtful manner, with an objective sense that Wall Street has do to things that are right.

"I didn't write this book for Wall Street, I just wanted to give the Main Street people a window into what goes on, so they could make their own judgment."

Smith created a furor earlier this year when he resigned from Goldman, saying in a New York Times op-ed column that the firm had engendered a "toxic" culture of treating clients as "muppets" - slang in Britain for idiots - and relieving them of their money.

Smith then promised the book about the bank, building up expectations of new insights about the culture at Goldman.

Grand Central Publishing, a unit of Hachette, planned a print run of 150,000 copies for the book. That is considered a relatively big number for a first run, although many will also be sold through e-book formats.

The publisher declined to say how much it had paid Smith for the book, but media reports said he had received $1.5 million as an upfront payment.

Smith's op-ed piece and his plans to write a book prompted a public relations campaign and internal inquiries at the bank, as it tried to avoid another hit to its image after suffering a barrage of bad publicity in recent years.

"The Goldman Sachs Mr. Smith describes is not one our employees would recognize," a spokesman for the firm said on Sunday. "Mr. Smith has asked for answers, yet he did not respond to our repeated attempts to contact him after his abrupt departure earlier this year."

Goldman has said it looked into Smith's allegations - including the use of "muppet" in emails - and turned up little. The bank says that unless Smith provides specific examples, it cannot check what he is alleging.

Although "Why I Left Goldman Sachs" does not reveal a new scandal at the firm, Smith said he believed his book shines a spotlight on a worsening culture of greed on Wall Street.

Smith, who worked for Goldman in London, said the company would overcharge customers, such as charities or funds managing the pensions of teachers and firemen, or sell them products they did not need and did not understand.

In some cases, Smith said, traders would use knowledge of the clients' business to make easy bets against them.

"When you're trying to make an extra $2 million off a teachers' retirement fund, it doesn't jive at least with the values that I felt," he said. "There is no criminal activity because it's legal. But it should not be allowed, because it's unethical."

Smith, who quit his $500,000-a-year job at the bank, said he would do more to push for change in finance.

"I am in a rush to spread a message and get mainstream people to realize there is a big problem and to be outraged that no one fixed it," Smith said.

"There is a real absence of people within the financial industry trying to advocate for positive reform," he said. "I would like to try to be part of that conversation."

(Additional reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra in New York; Editing by Paritosh Bansal and Lisa Von Ahn)

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Filmmaker Tony Scott died with anti-depressant, sleep aid in system

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Filmmaker Tony Scott had an anti-depressant and sleep aid in his bloodstream when he leapt to his death from a suspension bridge in August, the Los Angeles County Coroner's office said on Monday.

Preliminary autopsy results confirmed that Scott's death, which baffled investigators and much of Hollywood, was a suicide, caused by blunt force trauma and drowning.

The 68-year-old British-born director of such blockbusters as "Top Gun" and "Beverly Hills Cop II" had therapeutic levels of the anti-depressant Mirtazapine and the prescription sleep-aid Lunesta in his system, coroner's investigators found.

But the findings shed no light on a motive for Scott to commit suicide. A coroner's spokesman said a final report was still two weeks away.

Family members have dismissed early reports that Scott was suffering from inoperable brain cancer and Craig Harvey, operations chief for the coroner, has previously said that there were no obvious signs of a tumor. The preliminary autopsy report made no mention of any evidence of serious illness.

Investigators have offered no theories as to why Scott took his life, and a note he left behind did not explain the suicide.

The last person to see Scott was an onlooker parking his car on the Vincent Thomas Bridge over Los Angeles Harbor, who saw the director leap into the water just after noon on August 19. His body was recovered by law enforcement several hours later.

The bridge, the surface of which clears the harbor's navigation channel by a height of about 185 feet, connects the port district of San Pedro at the southern tip of Los Angeles to Terminal Island in the harbor.

Scott, born in northern England and frequently seen behind the camera in his signature faded red baseball cap, is credited with directing more than two dozen movies and television shows and producing nearly 50 titles.

He built a reputation for muscular but stylish high-octane thrillers that showcased some of Hollywood's biggest stars in a body of work that dated to the 1980s and established him as one of the most successful action directors in the business.

At the time of his death, Scott was reported to be involved in developing several film projects including a sequel to his biggest hit, the 1986 fighter-jet adventure "Top Gun," which starred Tom Cruise.

The brother of Oscar-winning director Ridley Scott, he is survived by his third wife, Donna, with whom he had two children.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Mohammad Zargham)

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DeGeneres honored for lifetime as U.S. entertainer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ellen DeGeneres, an American entertainer and prominent gay rights advocate, received the highest U.S. award for achievement in comedy on Monday.

Receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center, the national showcase for arts, DeGeneres was praised as a pioneering female comic whose edgy variety show has helped define the format for daytime television in recent years.

But several guests also highlighted the comedian's groundbreaking decision 15 years ago to go public with her sexual identity in a career-rattling move the comedian said was a necessary step for personal dignity.

"I did it for me and it happened to help a lot of other people and cause a big ruckus," DeGeneres, 54, told reporters before the tribute, summarizing her decision in 1997 to come out publicly as gay in tandem with her on-screen character in a move that sparked controversy and prompted some advertisers to flee.

The Twain prize, named after the 19th century satirist, is the nation's highest honor for achievements in comedy.

A native of New Orleans, DeGeneres spent her twenties as an itinerant comedian on the Los Angeles nightclub circuit until prominent spots on late night television led to her own prime time sitcom.

The original show, Ellen, featured DeGeneres in the lead role as a bookshop owner in an idiosyncratic neighborhood. While the show got a boost after the star came out of the closet, it was over a few years later.

She later returned to the standup stage, and hosted the 2001 Emmy awards, which was postponed twice after the September 11 attacks - a somewhat subdued celebration that allowed her to try to lighten the national mood.

Several guests said that DeGeneres brought a compassion to her comedy that is rare in the field.

"The rest of us comics come from really messed-up, dark childhoods. She might have come from that, I don't know. But it's not what she puts forth," said John Leguizamo, who joined the tributes. "She just puts out this beautiful goodwill."

In the last 10 seasons on television, DeGeneres has left her mark with a daytime variety show which she often uses as a way to promote a commitment to gay equality.

"For a lot of people, Ellen is their only homosexual friend," said late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.

DeGeneres is the forth woman to receive the award since its inception in 1998.

Comedian and actor Will Ferrell won last year. Past award winners have included Bob Newhart, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby.

Monday night's ceremony will be broadcast on PBS on October 30.

(Reporting By Patrick Rucker; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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New York court date in Lindsay Lohan car accident case canceled

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Embattled actress Lindsay Lohan appears to be off the hook after being arrested for leaving the scene of an accident last month when her Porsche allegedly clipped a pedestrian in an alley behind an upscale Manhattan hotel.

New York prosecutors said Lohan's scheduled court appearance on Tuesday had been canceled. No future court date was scheduled, an indication the district attorney has decided not to move forward with the case.

"Apparently prosecutors agreed that there wasn't enough to proceed." said Lohan's spokesman, Steve Honig. "This turned out to be nothing just like we said from the very beginning."

The 26-year-old actress, who has been in and out of court, rehab and prison since a 2007 drunk driving arrest in Los Angeles, was charged on September 19 with a misdemeanor after a man said he had been hit by the actress' car behind the Dream hotel.

Police issued Lohan a ticket with a court date of October 23.

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney's office declined to comment on why the case against the "Mean Girls" actress was not moving ahead.

A week after the incident in New York, Lohan reportedly got into a public spat with a man who she said refused to delete pictures he had taken of her from his phone. She claimed the man assaulted her, but charges were later dropped.

Earlier this month, police on Long Island responded to an early-morning 911 call about a verbal dispute involving Lohan and her mother, Dina, but made no arrests, a spokeswoman for the Nassau County police said.

Lohan remains on probation in California until 2014 in connection with a jewelry theft case.

(Reporting By Joseph Ax and Chris Francescani and Paul Simao)

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Robert S. McNamara's archive sells for $1 million at auction

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The personal archive of former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who served under President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis 50 years ago, sold for over $1 million at auction, far exceeding a pre-sale estimate, Sotheby's said on Tuesday.

The top-selling items in the sale were two cabinet room chairs from the Kennedy administration, along with a second signed letter from the then first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, that together fetched $146,500.

The sale included personal papers, letters, furniture and memorabilia, and marked the half century anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

McNamara, who died in 2009, helped to broker a deal to end the confrontation over the Soviet Union's plans to place nuclear weapons on Cuba.

"For two hours, the history of the 1960s became a vivid reality for those who participated in this auction. The sale was filled with extraordinary pieces from the remarkable life of this pivotal figure," David Redden, vice chairman of Sotheby's, said in a statement announcing the results.

A silver engraved paperweight given by Kennedy to close staff, showing the month of October engraved with the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, sold for $95,500, more than three times its pre-sale estimate.

"It is a paperweight created by Tiffany," Redden said in an interview ahead of the auction, adding it would be "extremely vivid for people whether they lived through that (the crisis) or not."

Another highlight of the auction was the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction, which he was awarded when he left the defense department in 1968 to head the World Bank. It sold for $34,375, nearly five times its pre-sale estimate.

All of the items were sold by his estate.

McNamara, who died at the age of 93, served as secretary of defense for both Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961-1968. During the Johnson administration, McNamara's time was dominated by the Vietnam War, which he later described in his memoir as "terribly wrong".

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; editing by Andrew Hay)

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Singer Bobby Brown arrested in LA for drunken driving: police

(Reuters) - Rhythm and blues star Bobby Brown, ex-husband of the late Whitney Houston, was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, Los Angeles police said on Wednesday.

Brown was stopped by police at the intersection of Corbin Avenue and Ventura Boulevard, north of Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles, LAPD officer Rosario Herrera said.

Herrera could not immediately provide additional details of the arrest, which was Brown's second this year for drunken driving.

Celebrity online news service TMZ, citing law enforcement sources, said Brown was driving erratically, and when stopped, officers smelled alcohol on his breath. He failed a sobriety test, TMZ said.

In March, Brown was arrested on the same charge, pleaded no contest in April, and went to a treatment center for alcohol abuse over the summer.

In June, Brown married his manager, Alicia Etheridge, in Hawaii, four months after the Houston's death in a Los Angeles hotel room.

(Reporting by Chris Francescani; Editing by Dan Burns and Jackie Frank)

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Strauss-Kahn seeks comeback via conference circuit

PARIS (Reuters) - Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief whose French presidential ambitions were shattered by a sex scandal last year, is making a comeback in business and at conferences.

The 63-year-old Strauss-Kahn was accused of trying to rape a New York hotel maid in May 2011. He protested his innocence and criminal charges against him were dropped, though civil proceedings by the woman are still pending.

Now he is promoting himself as a consultant and guest speaker at far-flung points on the world's conference circuit, where participants can demand $100,000 or more to talk for an hour, and five times that sum for star performers such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

While Strauss-Kahn's itinerary for now will keep him at some distance from the financial capitals he used to frequent, experts say his economic policy experience and a contact book that many heads of state would envy will stand him in good stead.

"He has the potential to be enormously successful," says Roy Cohen, a New York-based career coach and author of "The Wall Street Professional's Survival Guide".

"He needs to be test-driven first ... If he is able to prove that his intervention and the consultancy advisory work he is doing is powerful and effective, he's going to generate interest."

Strauss-Kahn has been little seen in public in his native France, where until recently media have been portraying him as a shunned and lonely man. Yet in the past year he has delivered keynote speeches at conferences in China, Ukraine, Morocco and South Korea.

He was warmly applauded when he spoke about global economic prospects to hundreds of students and executives in Morocco in September, at an event where his hosts at a private university introduced him not with his grandest former title but simply as Professor Strauss-Kahn, the economist.

He is scheduled to make a second appearance in Morocco at an Arab banking congress in Casablanca in mid-November. Organizers of the meeting declined to comment when contacted by Reuters, as did others hosting conferences Strauss-Kahn is due to attend.

MAGAZINE PHOTO SHOOT

His come-back plan took another step forward last month when he lodged the founding statutes of a consultancy firm, called Parnasse, at the commercial court in Paris.

On top of conference work, public speaking and consulting, Parnasse's statutes show his ambitions stretch to finance, real estate and political services in France and abroad.

Strauss-Kahn this month also gave a rare magazine interview to France's "Le Point", which photographed him relaxing at his new apartment in Paris's Montparnasse district with a tablet computer in his hand.

It was a stark contrast to the image the world watched on TV in May 2011, as he trudged handcuffed and haggard to a U.S. courthouse to be jailed briefly on criminal charges, later dropped, of trying to rape hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo.

But the potential pitfalls that lie ahead were illustrated in March when police had to bundle him into a getaway car as protesting students clashed with security guards after he gave a speech on the world economy at Britain's Cambridge University.

The case will hang over for him for some time yet; though New York prosecutors dropped the charges on the grounds that Diallo was not a reliable witness, the date of her civil suit has yet to be determined.

And in France, a court will rule on November 28 whether to pursue a judicial investigation into a prostitution ring in which he was allegedly involved. He says he has done nothing illegal and is being pursued because of his libertine lifestyle.

Yet if Strauss-Kahn can put those cases behind him, Cohen said time would work in his favor and pointed to other big names on the conference circuit who overcame image problems.

Clinton, who survived sex scandals and an impeachment trial in the late 1990s, now makes millions of dollars a year attending high-profile events.

According to financial declarations his wife Hillary Clinton makes as U.S. Secretary of State, Clinton charged $750,000 for addressing a telecoms event in Hong Kong, and $500,000 for his presence at an Abu Dhabi conference on environmental data.

EURO ZONE PROBLEM SOLVER?

Sylvie Audibert, a Paris-based consultant who coaches corporate executives on topics from stress management to life-makeover decisions, said Europe's economic crisis could give Strauss-Kahn a perfect forum to use his talents.

He recently floated an idea under which Germany and France, which are enjoying low borrowing costs as investors see their debt as safe, devote some of their savings to helping weaker countries in the euro zone.

The idea has generated little visible interest, apart from a blog mention by former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton. Greek government sources have also quashed rumors that he is advising Athens over their debt troubles.

But Audibert said that like others who have held frontline posts in politics and global economic management, Strauss-Kahn may still harbor hopes of one day taking up a public policy role, perhaps at European level.

"We're talking about people with very big egos and very big ambitions," Audibert said. "I am not convinced his ultimate goal is to remain the adviser in the shadows."

Strauss-Kahn himself hinted at his longer-term ambitions in his interview with Le Point.

"I sense a possibility of investing myself in big international projects ... For the moment, my situation stands in the way."

(Additional reporting by Dina Kyriakidou; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Will Waterman)

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Liz Taylor tops list of highest earning dead celebrities

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Elizabeth Taylor surpassed Michael Jackson as the highest-earning dead celebrity in the past year, with her estate pulling in $210 million, much of it from the auction of her jewels, costumes and artwork, Forbes said on Wednesday.

Jackson, who died in 2009, dropped into second place with earnings of $145 million, followed by Elvis Presley with $55 million.

In addition to the Taylor auction, which totaled $184 million, the actress, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 79, also earned $75 million from sales of her top selling perfume White Diamonds.

"The rest of the money came from property sales and residuals from Taylor's movies," according to Forbes. "After 'Cleopatra,' the star smartly negotiated a 10 percent ownership in each of her films."

Although Taylor bumped Jackson from the top spot, Forbes said the pop star is likely to regain it next year due to steady revenues from music sales and other ventures.

Cartoonist Charles Schulz, who created the Peanuts comic strip, came in at No. 4 with earnings of $37 million, followed by reggae star Bob Marley with $17 million.

Forbes compiled the ranking by analyzing the dead celebrities' earnings between October 2011-2012.

"We count money coming into the estate and we don't deduct for how the estate handles it," Forbes said.

Films stars and musicians dominated the list but Nobel-prize winning physicist Albert Einstein tied with Marilyn Monroe for seventh place, with each earning $10 million.

The 13 dead celebrities on the list earned a total of $532.5 million.

The full list can be found at http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2012/1024_dead-celebrities.html

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney, Editing by Christine Kearney and Tim Dobbyn)

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Visa hires JPMorgan's Charles Scharf as CEO

(Reuters) - Visa Inc said Charles Scharf, a former head of JPMorgan Chase & Co's retail financial services division, will succeed Joseph Saunders as chief executive, effective November 1.

Visa's board had been looking for a successor to Saunders, 66, who has headed the company since 2007 and was expected to retire soon.

Scharf, 47, previously served on Visa's board from 2007 to January 2011.

Known as Charlie, Scharf was moved from JPMorgan's retail banking business to its private equity arm in 2011, after the lender shuffled several retail banking executives in a push to raise profit.

Scharf worked closely with Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan, when the two men were at Citigroup Inc in the 1990s. Scharf followed Dimon to Chicago-based Bank One, which was bought by JPMorgan in 2004.

Scharf is currently managing director at One Equity Partners, which manages $10 billion of investments and commitments for JPMorgan Chase.

"We believe Scharf's large-scale management experience is a good fit ... and our initial checks have been positive regarding his leadership style," Jefferies analyst Jason Kupferberg wrote in a note to clients.

Scharf's experience with JPMorgan will also help Visa. The bank is Visa's largest card issuer and accounts for about 10 percent of its profit, Kupferberg noted.

Scharf joins at a time that Visa, competitor MasterCard Inc, and card-issuing banks are trying to chart their courses through a storm of new digital technologies and companies that have come to the payments industry from outside of banking, such as eBay Inc's PayPal and Square Inc.

Analysts do not expect Scharf to spark major changes at the payment network.

"I think Visa is doing well. I think all he is going to be charged with is moving it forward in the same direction," Wedbush Securities analyst Gil Luria said.

The San Francisco-based company has already raised its full-year earnings forecast twice this year, as more people move to card-based payments globally.

Visa is scheduled to report fourth-quarter results on October 31.

Current CEO Saunders spearheaded Visa's 2008 initial public offering and will continue as executive chairman until March 31, after which Visa will appoint a new non-executive independent chairman.

Visa said Scharf would receive $950,000 per year in base salary and a bonus of up to 500 percent.

Scharf will also get a "make-whole" award of restricted stock and options worth $19 million, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The award is based in part of compensation Scharf is leaving behind at JPMorgan.

Saunders received $11.8 million in total pay in 2011, according to regulatory filings.

Shares of the credit and debit-card network were up less than 1 percent at $137.48 on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday afternoon.

(Reporting by Jochelle Mendonca in Bangalore and David Henry in New York; Editing by Supriya Kurane and Steve Orlofsky)

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Obama tackles rape comments, "fiscal cliff" on TV talk show

BURBANK, California (Reuters) - President Barack Obama suspended the levity during an interview with late-night TV talk show host Jay Leno on Wednesday to address a Republican Senate candidate's assertion that pregnancies resulting from rape are intended by God and to express confidence that Washington could soon address the looming "fiscal cliff."

"I don't know how these guys come up with these ideas. Let me make a very simple proposition: rape is rape. It is a crime," Obama said on NBC's "The Tonight Show."

"This is exactly why you don't want a bunch of politicians, mostly male, making decisions about women's healthcare."

Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's comments that pregnancies caused by rape are "something God intended to happen" echoed across the U.S. media and sent ripples through political circles ahead of the November 6 election.

The Obama campaign, which enjoys leads among women voters in many election battleground states, sought swiftly to connect Mourdock with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. This summer Romney had to distance himself from remarks by another Republican Senate candidate, Todd Akin of Missouri, about what he called "legitimate rape."

In an interview full of jokes about marriage, Halloween and other topics, the Democratic president made a few serious comments, mostly about the hottest topic of the election: the economy.

Asked about the so-called fiscal cliff - a combination of automatic spending cuts and tax hikes set to kick in early next year - Obama said he was confident that a solution could be found before the end of the year.

"Solving this is not that hard. It requires some tough choices," Obama said, adding that some programs had to be cut and tax rates should go up for people making more than $250,000 a year.

"I hope that we can get it done by the end of this year. It just requires some compromise, which shouldn't be a dirty word."

On the economic crisis gripping the European Union, Obama said countries have been "kind of muddling along" and "they didn't respond as quickly as they could."

The United States is working with those nations to make sure they have a credible plan to maintain the unity of Europe, he added.

In a lighter moment, Obama joked about real estate mogul and TV personality Donald Trump, who recently posted a video challenging Obama to release documents about his education.

Trump has persistently questioned whether Obama, a native of Hawaii, was actually born in the United States, and Obama played off Trump's theories about his origins.

"This all dates back to when we were growing up together in Kenya," Obama joked. "We had, you know, constant run-ins on the soccer field. He wasn't very good and resented it."

(Additional reporting and writing by Lisa Lambert in Washington; Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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