Royal wedding called off amid cheating claims

(News Terupdate) - Sweden's Princess Madeleine has called off her planned wedding to Jonas Bergstrom, the Swedish Royal Court announced following media reports that Bergstrom had sex with a college student during their engagement.

"After having thought it through thoroughly, the Princess Madeleine and Mr. Jonas Bergstrom have made the decision to go their separate ways," the court statement said.

The couple asked for "peace and quiet in this difficult situation. The extreme coverage by the press is not making this situation any easier for them," said the court statement, which was released Saturday.

Princess Madeleine Therese Amelie Josephine, 27, is the youngest child of Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia. Her older sister, Crown Princess Victoria, is due to marry gym owner Daniel Westling in June.

The split follows weeks of intense media coverage of the Swedish royal family, speculating on the state of the couple's relationship.

"I think it is great that we can now avoid all those speculations in the press about them that we have had over the last week. This has certainly cleared the air," said Elisabeth Tarras-Wahlberg, the former head of press at the royal court and now the royal commentator for CNN affiliate Swedish TV4.

"It felt like the end of a road where they had to turn one way or the other, and now they have chosen their path," Tarras-Wahlberg said in an interview with TV4.

Princess Madeleine and Bergstrom met through mutual friends in 1999 and became a couple during the summer of 2002, according to Swedish media reports. Madeleine said in an interview that it was love at first sight, and Bergstrom said he "fell in love with her blue eyes and wonderful laughter," Swedish daily Expressen wrote.

But through the years, Swedish press has been full of speculations about the ups and downs in the couple's relationship. According to the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, there were reports of Bergstrom living a wild party life at Stockholm's exclusive nightclubs as early as 2005, fueling reports their relationship was on the rocks.

But Bergstrom proposed to Madeleine in June on the Italian island of Capri. After King Carl XVI Gustaf gave his approval -- and the Swedish government subsequently signed off on their engagement as required by law -- the couple announced their engagement to the public on August 11.

But just as quickly as the engagement was announced, something happened.

The couple last appeared together in public at the Nobel dinner in Stockholm in December 2009. Over the past few weeks, Swedish press has covered the couple's potential problems with an intensity never seen before.

The first public admittance that something was not right came when Queen Silvia told Aftonbladet on April 13 that her youngest daughter's wedding would not happen this year as planned. She told the paper that there was too much going on with the preparations for the Crown Princess' wedding and that Madeleine deserved peace and quiet around her own wedding.

Then, on Wednesday, Norwegian magazine Se og Hor published an interview with Norwegian handball star Tora Uppstrom Berg in which she claimed she had been intimate with Bergstrom at the Swedish ski resort Are last year. She told the magazine that he called himself Jacob Bernstrom, and that it wasn't until she called his cell phone a few days later that she realized who he was.

According to Aftonbladet, Berg is studying photography at Art University College in Bournemouth. The paper reported that Berg had planned to hide in England when the interview was published, but because of the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull, she was stuck in Norway when the news broke.

The Swedish media continued to speculate on the couple's problems, writing that the two had seen a couples counselor and outlining what they called Bergstrom's "double life" -- by day, a respected lawyer and fiance; at night, partying with Stockholm's elite.

Tarras-Wahlberg said the decision was likely Madeleine's.

"I don't think anyone has pushed them into this decision. Madeleine is a decisive individual, and she knows what she wants, but of course this decision has been taken during discussions together with the rest of the royal family," Tarras-Wahlberg said.

"I think it is a good thing that they were able to get this cleared away before Victoria's wedding, since with the speed of the media today, by that time there will be plenty of other wonderful things to talk about so that this will only be somewhere in the background," Tarras-Wahlberg said.

The Swedish royal family may not be used to the intensity of the media over recent weeks, but in 2003 they successfully sued two German magazines after they published false information about the crown princess, according to Swedish Radio.

After the worldwide publication of the interview with Bergstrom's alleged lover, Berg told Norwegian newspaper VG that she regrets having made the affair public.

"I could never imagine the enormous consequences this would have," she told the newspaper.

In a press release sent to several newspapers in the region, Berg's family said she had been naive, and that she had received 12.500 Norwegian Kroner for the interview. The press release, published in its entirety in Expressen, said that no further money had been accepted. At the bottom, the press release was signed, "Tora with family."

The Swedish monarchy has been under fire lately, and not just because of the princess' problems.

In a recent study by Gothenburg University, published in Svenska Dagbladet, 22 percent of all Swedes want to abolish the monarchy, up from 15 percent six years ago. The Swedish writer Goran Hagg recently proposed in an interview with TV4 that the king should be elected in a public vote.

Source : CNN

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Is Wall Street too big to cheat?

New York (News Terupdate) - As the Tea Party movement has become the vehicle for the frustration of hundreds of thousands of Americans against elected officials and the government bailout of Wall Street, I've thought many times about Gordon Gekko, the fictional character in the superb 1987 movie "Wall Street."

Played by Michael Douglas, Gekko speaks to a meeting of stockholders in words that became the anthem of the '80s. "The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good. Greed is right. Greed works!"

For two years, much of the debate in Congress regarding banking and financial reform has been focused on another theme -- "Too big to fail."

More simply put: How does Congress protect the American taxpayer from again bailing out the massive banks when and if they get into financial trouble by making bad investments? If they are too big and they fail, what economic chaos will be caused by those failures?

Most Americans want to know if -- after receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts -- the banking system is safe and better able today to do its job of providing credit to companies and consumers.

With the collapse and bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the forced sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, the one bank that stands on the top of the heap is Goldman Sachs. To many Americans, Goldman is the training institution for the Treasury Department. The revolving door between the executive suites of Goldman Sachs and the executive office of the secretary of the Treasury is well-known.

But after the week Goldman Sachs just had, the more fundamental question that needs to be asked -- rather than "too big to fail" is: "Are these guys too big to cheat?"

To those of you not following the developments, this is a quick summary of Goldman's awful week.

On Tax Day, April 15, The Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors were examining whether a Goldman Sachs board member gave inside information to a hedge fund founder that, if true, is clearly illegal.

The next day, April 16, in a separate case, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Goldman and alleged that it "defrauded investors by misstating and omitting key facts about a financial product."

"Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party."

Goldman denied the charges, and its sympathizers accused President Obama -- who got nearly $1 million in campaign contributions from Goldman employees -- of orchestrating the SEC lawsuit to sell his banking reform package. And then, it turns out that Goldman has done something else dumb -- by hiring Obama's recently departed White House lawyer, Gregory Craig, to help handle its legal strategy.

Craig is an extremely competent and respected lawyer. He knows the town and the players. But Washington is full of competent lawyers and people who know the game. Obama said his administration was going to be different and the revolving door of government service and back to the private sector was going to stop. It hasn't. This is not the president's mistake. It is another Goldman Sachs mistake.

And then Monday, Goldman announced its "good news." In the first quarter of this year, the bank's earnings of $3.46 billion were 91 percent higher than a year ago. It also announced it has set aside $5.5 billion (up 17 percent) to pay salaries and bonuses to employees.

Talk about stepping on your story: fraud, cheating, insider information and then record profits. My reaction to the charges of fraud -- which, if true, are outrageous -- is: Why? If you can make enormous profits legally, why go over the line?

I had the same reaction when the two-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots were caught illegally spying on the then lowly Jets. If you can win on the football field, why violate the rules?

Is it greed, or is it working the system? Where is the leadership of these companies, and where is the ethics? I don't know enough about banking or the law to know if Goldman Sachs is guilty as charged. I don't know if its profits or bonuses are excesses. But I do know enough about politics and public relations to tell you they are a walking disaster and are the most compelling case for Wall Street reform.

The president and Democrats in Congress are on the war path. They feel they have a winning issue that will help them in November. Republicans are trying to block the reform by arguing the bill is defective and will hurt a recovering economy. They may be right, but I can tell you it's not good politics to be defending Wall Street these days.

Republicans will benefit by working to make this a better bill, not killing it. This really needs to be a bipartisan effort because so much is at stake. The Tea Party is Main Street, and Main Street isn't making billion-dollar profits and handing out million-dollar bonuses.

To the 20 million unemployed or underemployed Americans, a job itself is bonus enough. They don't agree with Gordon Gekko. They don't think greed is good or works or is right. It's Congress' job to make sure their wishes are heard and Wall Street excesses are reined in.

Source : CNN

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