" British Prime Minister David Cameron ignored growing speculation about the 'Curse of Cameron' yesterday by tweeting a message of support to Briton Andy Murray ahead of his quarterfinal match at Wimbledon.
Cameron has gained a reputation for jinxing British sports stars puma the fur slide uk , a trend that began when he was in opposition and hit a peak last summer when he saw Murray lose in the Wimbledon final and showed up at Olympic events at which United Kingdom medal hopes lost.
Britain's top female player, Laura Robson, was knocked out of the fourth round of Wimbledon on Monday after Cameron tweeted from Kazakhstan, saying ""best wishes to @laurarobson5. 1st Brit woman in 4th round #Wimbledon for ages"".
The list of failures after Cameron's good wishes included the England rugby union team losing 6-15 to South Africa in the 2007 World Cup final and Lewis Hamilton missing out on the Formula One drivers' championship by a point.
Despite concerns the prime minister was back on Twitter yesterday to send his best wishes to the British No. 1 before his match against Spaniard Fernando Verdasco.
(Agencies)
"
CAPE TOWN, June 1 (Xinhua) -- The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) on Monday pressed the South Africans Football Association (SAFA) for clarity on on alleged corruption surrounding the 2010 World Cup.
This came after President of SAFA Danny Jordaan confirmed on Sunday that an amount of 10 million U.S. dollars was indeed paid to the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), but claimed that this money was to support their football development fund and was not a bribe.
"The revelations of alleged corruption do not discount South Africa's achievement of hosting a very successful World Cup (in 2010). However South Africans deserve to know if money changed hands improperly in our name," said Solomon Malatsi, DA Shadow Minister of Sport and Recreation.
He said the DA will be asking a series of Parliamentary questions to get clarity on the issue.
South Africans want to know why the 10 million dollars was paid to the CONCACAF in 2008 by the Local Organising Committee (LOC) and which South African representative authorised the payment from FIFA to CONCACAF on behalf of South Africa, Malatsi said.
Other questions include:
Why was this money allocated to CONCACAF out of all the world football confederations, including the Confederation of African Football?
"We will also be submitting questions to get clarity on which members of the LOC made trips to Paris in 2004. This could establish the identity of the 'high-ranking South African bid committee official' who handed over a briefcase full of cash to a family member of Jack Warner, at a Paris hotel as a bribe to secure his vote for South Africa to host the World Cup in 2010," Malatsi said.
The 2010 World Cup is, and will remain, one of South Africa's shining achievements but it is vitally important to interrogate if corruption was involved in this event, he said.
South Africa's Sports and Recreation Minister Fikile Mbalula last week dismissed allegations that the government paid bribes to host of the Soccer World Cup 2010.
South Africa has been sucked in the FIFA scandal which led to the arrest of seven people in Switzerland last Wednesday.
It had been alleged that South Africa paid 10 million dollars in kickbacks for hosting the event.
Mbalula said his department is yet to receive a copy of the allegations from the United States and promised to do everything in its powers to unearth any shenanigans.
"South Africa's Department of Sports and Recreation hereby indicates that all funding by government was transferred via the National Treasury to the national Department of Sports and Recreation and that no such amount was paid by the department Sport and Recreation and the government of SA to any individual," he said.
(Source: Xinhua)
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ROME, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Italy has the most bike-sharing services in Europe, according to the latest available numbers from the environment ministry.
The number will soon increase with the addition of a new player -- China's leading bike-sharing company Mobike, which announced Tuesday it had entered the Italian market after talks with local authorities.
Currently in Italy, visitors and locals alike can hop on one of a fleet of 13,770 shared bikes operated by seven different companies across 200 cities, towns and villages in the Mediterranean country, according to a November 2016 report by the ministry's National Observatory on Sharing Mobility.
This compares to two players in Germany -- Call a Bike, run by a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn AG railway company, and nextbike GmbH -- four in Belgium, one nationwide and three local -- and Velib', a large-scale public bike-sharing scheme in Paris that is soon to be operated by French-Spanish consortium Smoovengo.
In Italy, bike sharing kicked off in earnest in 2003 when a company called Bicincitta (Italian for Bikesinthecity) launched the first bike sharing program as we know it today -- i.e., a system in which, for a fee, users pick up a bicycle locked into a rack or electronic docking station, ride it, then return it to any station within the system.
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