May 28

Inside May 28, 2018 .qxp_Layout 1 5/24/18 9:26 PM Page 3
• President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un
Trump cancels Kim summit amid North Korea ‘hostility'
US PRESIDENT Donald
Trump has cancelled a summit
with North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un, saying the world
had "lost a great opportunity
for lasting peace".
He said his decision was
because of "tremendous anger
and open hostility" in a recent
North Korean statement.
The summit aimed to rid
the Korean peninsula of nuclear
weapons and would have
been the first time a sitting US
president met a North Korean
leader.
But both sides recently cast
doubt on whether the talks
would happen.
Mr Trump's announcement
came just hours after North
Korea said it had dismantled
tunnels at its only nuclear test
site in a move witnessed by
foreign reporters.
The Trump administration
insists that North Korea was
not responding sufficiently in
the summit preparations, raising
doubts that the meeting
would be able to achieve a
positive outcome. BBC
DAILY HERITAGE MONDAY, MAY 28, 2018
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World news in 3 stories
South Africa's Ramaphosa gives half his pay to Mandela charity
SOUTH AFRICA'S President
Cyril Ramaphosa has announced
that he will be donating
half of his salary to charity.
Mr Ramaphosa said the gesture
was aimed at encouraging
the wealthy to dedicate some of
their pay to help build the nation.
The donation of 1.8m rand
($130,000; £100,000) will be
managed by the Nelson Mandela
Foundation (NMF).
Mr Ramaphosa is one of
South Africa's richest men, with
a fortune of around $450m.
His critics often accuse him
of being out of touch with the
poor, and he was criticised for
bidding more than $2m for a
buffalo and her calf in 2012.
Mr Ramaphosa, 65, was a
businessman before he became
deputy president in 2012.
He held a stake in sectors
from telecoms and the media to
beverages and fast food - he
owned the South African franchise
of the US chain, McDonalds.
Mr Ramaphosa's decision to
take a pay cut has been met
with mixed reactions in South
Africa, reports the BBC's
Pumza Fihlani from the main
city, Johannesburg.
Some feel the donation is
"peanuts" given his wealth,
while others see it as a selfless
move aimed at reintroducing a
culture of public service in the
governing African National
Congress (ANC), she adds.
Speaking in parliament on
•Cyril Ramaphosa is popular in business circles
Wednesday, Mr Ramaphosa
said he had decided to make
the donation to the NMF in honour
of South Africa's first
democratic president, Nelson
Mandela.
"This is a private, citizendriven
initiative that will ask all
those with the means to contribute
a small portion of their
salaries to supporting the many
small projects that build the nation,"
Mr Ramaphosa said.
The fund will be launched
on 18 July to mark the 100th anniversary
of Mr Mandela's
birth.
Mr Ramaphosa became
president in February after
Jacob Zuma was forced to resign
amid a welter of corruption
allegations.
Mineral Resources Minister
Gwede Mantashe said in January
that Mr Ramaphosa would
not be corrupt because he did
not need the money.
"He is wealthy, he is rich. If
he steals, we will ask him: 'Why
do you steal, because you have
enough?'" Mr Mantashe said.
BBC
Palestinians face uncertainties
over Abbas succession
WEARING AN elegant dressing
gown, the Palestinian President,
Mahmoud Abbas, is shown walking
unaided along the corridor of Ramallah's
best private hospital.
A family photograph has him
sitting upright in bed casually
studying a newspaper.
A hospital official said the 83-
year-old leader - who had surgery
on his ear last week - now had inflammation
in his lung but was "responding
to the treatment quickly
and recovering".
The message was clearly meant
to quell swirling rumours of the
president's imminent demise.
However, his latest medical
scares are a reminder of how Palestinian
politics remains in a critical
condition.
A deep schism persists between
the president's Fatah faction and its
rival, Hamas. It is a split which has
induced a state of paralysis.
Hamas won a parliamentary poll
in 2006, a year after Mr Abbas became
president.
In 2007, it reinforced its power
•Mahmoud Abbas's office released this image of the president
(centre) walking in a hospital corridor
in Gaza, ousting forces from the
Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority
(PA), after days of clashes.
The PA was left to run parts of the
Israeli-occupied West Bank.
No presidential or legislative
vote has been organised since, and
President Abbas is now in the 13th
year of a four-year term.
Last year, local elections took
place only in the West Bank and
were boycotted by Hamas.
Increasingly, there are open discussions
among ordinary Palestinians
as well as
Israeli officials
and foreign
diplomats
about who
could be the
next leader.
It is expected
that
Hamas will
nominate Ismail
Haniyeh,
head of the
Islamist movement.
A Hamas
spokesman,
Hazem
Qassem, insists
that any
future presidential
contest
"must be an affair for all Palestinians,
not an internal Fatah issue”.
However, after the latest attempts
at a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation
failed, his group could well be
sidelined.
According to Palestinian Basic
Law, if the president dies or is incapacitated,
the parliamentary
speaker should fill in while elections
are organised.
As the current speaker is Aziz
Dweik of Hamas, many Fatah officials
have argued this article no
longer applies. They point out parliament
has not met in over a
decade because of Israeli restrictions
on Palestinian movement and
due to the Palestinians' political
split.
Last year, Mahmoud al-Aloul, a
former governor of Nablus, was
appointed as the first-ever vicechairman
of Fatah.
Figures in his party have since
said that if Mr Abbas was unable
to carry out his duties, he would
take over for three months as acting
president until elections could
be held.
That would leave the Fatah
Central Committee - the party's top
decision-making body - to make
the decisions about who would ultimately
become president. BBC