Today, Biden's Twitter fumbles, Wanda Satisfies campaign launch, Canada and Saudi Arabia restore diplomatic ties, Italy ends a Nazi victim compensation scheme and one of the most wanted men is arrested. From TLDR News, this is your daily briefing for Thursday, 25 May 2023. On Wednesday, Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, launched his presidential campaign on the Twitter Spaces platform. And it went pretty badly, prompting ridicule from his Republican rival Donald Trump and his potential opponent, Joe Biden.
DeSantis is widely considered to be Donald Trump's strongest challenger in the battle to be Republican presidential candidate in 2024. However, recent polling has put Trump well ahead of the pack. Rather than announce his presidential bid in the traditional way, at an event surrounded by cheering supporters and broadcast live on television, DeSantis chose to launch his campaign on Twitter Spaces, an audio-only conversation space that Twitter users can tune in and listen to. But it didn't go to plan.
Listeners, if they were even able to join, had to sit through a near half-hour delay and battle being kicked out of the feed, listening to hold music, awkward silences, hearing echoes and microphone feedback, and more. Twitter owner Elon Musk, who co-hosted the event, said the technical issues were caused by the large volume of listeners, which initially numbered around half a million. Ultimately, DeSantis did manage to make his announcement and pledged that he would lead our great American comeback. He did not mention Trump by name, but said we must end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years, adding that government is not about entertainment, not about building a brand.
DeSantis has been one of the Republican Party's leading so-called anti-woke fighters and has notably signed a six-week abortion ban into law, targeted the teaching of race and LGBT+ issues in schools, and is in a bitter war with the Walt Disney Company relating to those previously mentioned policies. His dominance in Florida politics and high national profile has made him the natural challenger to Donald Trump, but his pre-announcement campaigning and now the announcement itself has not helped to dispel criticism that he does not have what it takes to beat the former U.S. president. Trump himself had a lot of fun with DeSantis' announcement, posting on Truth Social, Wow, the Desanctus Twitter launch is a disaster.
His whole campaign will be a disaster. Watch. One video posted by Trump showed a SpaceX rocket tanked with the word Ron toppling over and exploding. Another video was a parody of DeSantis' Twitter announcement event, this time featuring Elon Musk, Ron DeSantis, George Soros, Dick Cheney, Adolf Hitler and the devil.
President Joe Biden also got in on the fun, although he was arguably more restrained, by posting a link to his campaign donation page in a tweet saying, This link works, while DeSantis' event kept crashing. So if you thought the 2024 campaign season would be boring, then you may have just been proven wrong. There's more on the way, but be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to make the daily briefing part of your daily routine. Or just search for us on your podcast app to listen along.
Canada and Saudi Arabia have agreed to fully restore diplomatic ties and appoint ambassadors. Five years on from a 2018 dispute that significantly damaged the two countries' relations. The decision to restore ties comes after a conversation between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum last November. The Canadian Foreign Ministry put out a statement saying it had been decided to restore the level of diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia to its previous level, while a Canadian government source said punitive trade measures will be lifted.
Back in 2018, the Canadian Embassy in Riyadh put out a tweet criticizing Saudi Arabia's detention of women's rights activists and demanding their release. In response, Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador, banned the Canadian ambassador from re-entering the country, froze trade deals and canceled the scholarship program with Canada. At the time, the Canadian government said it would always stand up for human rights in Canada and around the world. In response to the restoration of ties, Dennis Horak, the Canadian ambassador at the time of the feud, said having full diplomatic relations with them allows us to have our voices heard at senior levels, which in Saudi Arabia is what matters.
So that's what's been happening with Saudi Arabia and Canada today. Let's move and discuss what's been happening in relation to Italy and Nazi Germany. Victims of the Nazi atrocities in World War II in Italy have until June 28th this year to file compensation claims against Germany. The Italian government has been keen to extend the scheme to give victims as long as possible to make a claim.
Berlin has been keen for this to end sooner though. Last year, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi agreed that no more compensation should be filed against Germany after June 28th, 2023, and he set aside a special fund of 55 million euros from the Italian government that could be used to pay out cases that had already been filed. Draghi also issued a decree ending the seizing of German properties in Italy, which was used to pay for the reparations. Germany claimed that this was a violation of their sovereignty.
Back in January, a 99-year-old Italian successfully filed a claim against Germany for 130,000 euros for his suffering in a Polish labor camp in 1943. His lawyers asked the June deadline to be extended. Germany paid out 63 billion euros in compensation following the war, which is about 88 billion euros today. If you want more content like this from TLDR, then make sure you check out Nebula, where each week we release a roundup of what's been happening in Westminster in our series, This Week in Parliament.
One of the world's most wanted genocide suspects, a former Rwandan police chief, has been arrested in South Africa after decades on the run. Fulgence Kayeshima allegedly orchestrated the murder of more than 2,000 Tutsi refugees at a church during the 1994 genocide, which lasted around 100 days and saw upwards of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis killed. The Rwandan War Crimes Tribunal said the arrest means Kayeshima will finally face justice for his alleged crimes. He was one of four suspects indicted by the tribunal who were still not accounted for, one of a total of 96 indicted major suspects.
He'd been living under a false name near Cape Town at the time of his arrest by South African police and a team from the tribunal. The investigation leading to his arrest spanned multiple countries across Africa and elsewhere, the tribunal's chief said. In the final uplifting story today, we discuss brain implants that have helped a paralyzed man walk again. Gert-Jan Ocksum, a 40-year-old Dutch man, was paralyzed 12 years ago in a cycling accident.
New technology has been developed which allows him to walk again, though. The electric implants transmit wirelessly his thoughts to his legs and feet via a second implant in his spine. It's hoped that this technology will be used more widely. That's all we have time for on YouTube, but the briefing isn't over.
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