🌊 Why Do Aussies Live So Long?

If you think your pet names are weird…

Mark Twain’s cats were named Apollinaris, Beelzebub, Blatherskite, Buffalo Bill, Sin, Sour Mash, Tammany, Zoroaster, Soapy Sal, Pestilence, and Satan.

Twain also said, “When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.” We’re going to go out on a limb and guess he wrote that before Satan — the Feline of Lies — entered his life.

–Max, Max, and Owen

KEY STORY

Aussies Live

A new study found that Australian life expectancy is now the highest in the English-speaking world

• The study, published in the journal BMJ Open, identified a significant improvement in Australian life expectancy since the 1990s. Its women and men now typically live to be 85 and 81, respectively, longer than any other English-speaking nation

• Older Australians are less likely to die from cancer or chronic diseases, like heart disease; younger ones are less likely to die from overdoses. All Australians are less likely to die from car accidents than people in countries with comparable driving levels

Dig Deeper

• The study’s authors put forward various explanations for this

• Australians are less likely to use tobacco, and the difference between health outcomes in Australia’s poorest and richest regions is smaller than in the US or the UK

• Australia also offers universal health care along with a widely used private system, which takes pressure off the public one and enables the government to provide better service than other countries with public healthcare

KEY STORY

NFL Allows Private Equity

NFL owners voted to allow private equity funds to buy up to 10% of any franchise

• Private equity (PE) funds raise money from investors to acquire companies with the goal of selling them for a profit later on

• On Tuesday, the NFL voted to allow PE investment for the first time. PE funds will be allowed to own up to 10% of any franchise. However, they must be passive owners: They’ll have no formal voting or decision-making power within the team

• The vote reportedly passed 31-1, with one team – the Cincinnati Bengals – dissenting

Dig Deeper

• Funds can invest in up to six teams. To do so, they must buy a minimum of 3% of the team

• Funds must hold their NFL investments for a minimum of six years

• Sovereign wealth funds – like Norway’s or Saudi Arabia’s oil funds – are prohibited from owning teams directly but can if they invest in an approved fund

• No single owner can own more than 7.5% of an investing fund

• The NFL is the last of the major American sports leagues to accept private equity ownership

• All the other sports leagues allow up to 30% of a franchise to be owned by institutional investors

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KEY STORY

Rulings on Who Can Vote

A series of ongoing lawsuits and rulings are deciding who can vote in the US election

• Last week, the US Supreme Court ruled on an Arizona law requiring voters to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The Court voted 5-4 to let the law stand while blocking the state from removing voters who had already registered without proof of citizenship

• This week, Democrats in Georgia filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s law that requires “reasonable inquiry” before election supervisors sign off on the final results, while Republicans in Arizona and North Carolina challenged those states’ registration and voting place rules

Dig Deeper

• Such a flurry of lawsuits is typical ahead of elections. However, they’re this year’s are taking on special significance because of fraud claims related to the 2020 election

KEY STORY

Tinder PSYOP

The United States gov’t allegedly ran ads on Tinder in Lebanon to warn against attacking US allies

• The ads warn against attacking the US and its allies, threatening retaliation: “US Central Command is fully prepared and ready with F-16 Fighting Falcons and A-10 Tudor Bolt supersonic fighters currently in the region,” one ad read in Arabic

• The ads would take users to a US Central Command post on X with pictures of jets and more threats

• Lebanon – which borders Israel – is home to Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist organization that exchanged rocket fire with Israel last weekend

Dig Deeper

• While Hezbollah and Israel exchanged rocket fire last weekend, the threat of escalation has seemingly died down for the time being

• Tinder said it has since removed the ads for violating its policies on violent or political messaging

• The Washington Post reached out to the Pentagon, which declined to comment on the story

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🪖 Israeli troops launched their largest raid on the West Bank in years

⚖️ US prosecutors issued revised charges against Donald Trump over his alleged attempts to interfere in the 2020 election

🇺🇸 Donald Trump unveiled a new set of NFT “America First” trading cards

💻 Nvidia announced its earnings and exceeded expectations, but its stock subsequently declined ~2%

🥩 The CDC said at least eight people have died after being infected with listeria from Boar’s Head deli meats tied to last month’s recall

COMMUNITY

🧐 Yesterday’s question: What’s something that annoys you about the media?

🧠 Today’s question: Do you consider drunk driving to be a major moral flaw?

We are repeating yesterday’s Roca Votes question and will feature some of your (excellent) responses from yesterday in tomorrow’s newsletter.

Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

☠️ Toxic love: A 71-year-old Indiana man admitted to poisoning his wife’s Coca-Cola with an “off-white powdery substance” in an attempt to kill her and marry her daughter

🐃 Dude, where’s my water buffalo? Officials in Iowa captured an “aggressive” water buffalo that escaped from its owner over the weekend and wandered through neighborhoods (video below)

🏸 Badminton and chill? In Hong Kong, “badminton” has become code for sex after Hong Kong’s Education Bureau released materials that suggested teens should “play badminton together” instead of having sex

🚌 Dude, where’s my house? A Texas bus driver forced two elementary school students to get off at the wrong stop despite the boys telling the driver it wasn’t theirs

🏔 Case of the Fridays: A worker on an office hiking retreat in Colorado had to be rescued after his colleagues allegedly left him stranded on a 14,230-foot mountain

ROCA WRAP

RocAround the World

Here’s a selection of quirky, shocking, or interesting stories that took place around the world this week. 

Beard or Bust

280 men were fired in Afghanistan for having insufficiently long beards.

Last week, the Tablian’s morality ministry released annual statistics about the state of “immoral acts” in Afghanistan. The findings revealed that morality police had detained 13,000 people for violating moral standards over the preceding 12 months.

The 13,000 included “281 beardless officers [who] were identified, confirmed and dismissed.”

“The hairstyles of 450 military mujahideen were corrected to comply with Sharia law,” the authorities added, saying that “some who repeated the [hairstyle] violation were sent to military courts.”

The Taliban interpret Islamic law to mean that men must have beards “the length of a fist” and have prohibited barbers from trimming facial hair. Beards are considered “a distinctive feature” that God gave men to “set them apart from women.”

Further crimes included the selling of “immoral and unethical” films and the possession of musical instruments, 21,328 of which were seized and destroyed. In Afghanistan, one man’s entertainment – of facial hair – is another’s fireable offense.

Caved In

An ice cave collapsed in Iceland, killing a tourist and leaving another seriously injured.

Iceland’s various natural attractions include ice caves and ice canyons – open areas that have formed beneath glaciers. Tour companies lead groups through these features, some of which have other-worldly appearances and rank among Iceland’s most popular tourist sites. Ice caves can also be dangerous, though, as a tragedy on Sunday revealed.

A group had taken 23 tourists on a tour of an ice canyon underneath a glacier called Breidamerkurjokull. While in the cave, its roof caved in, with chunks smashing into the visitors and trapping some inside.

Emergency responders arrived and used ice picks to break through the ice and rescue survivors. One American tourist was killed instantly, while another was severely injured.

While ice tours typically take place in cold weather, tourism companies are authorized to lead tours year-round. It’s unclear whether that will change after this tragedy.

Kite Wars

Brazil is considering banning battle kites. 

Kite flying is a popular pastime in Brazil. To the government’s chagrin, though, street gangs have taken to waging “kite battles” using sharp industrial twine rather than the typical line. The gangs compete by battling and trying to use their kite’s twine to cut an opponent’s kite free.

The battles are popular in Brazil’s poor, densely packed favelas. They’re also often illegal: Brazil allows kite flying only in designated areas. These laws are rarely enforced, though, and now, Brazil’s Congress is looking to change that.

A recent spate of injuries to passersby – including motorbike passengers who have had their throats slit – has put kite-flying on the government’s radar. A new bill would ratchet up punishments for people who kite fly outside of permitted areas or who do so with the industrial-grade wire.

The kite wars are wildly popular, though, and are often being waged by criminals who regularly fight the law. Will the government achieve a ceasefire, or is it entering into an unwinnable battle?

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

We wrote most of today’s newsletter from a Holiday Inn in Flint, MI. When we arrived in Flint, the first person we interviewed was a woman in her front yard, who told us, “Welcome to hell.” It’s hard to describe the state of Flint, but we hope our forthcoming video and reporting will do it some justice.

Although, we gotta say that, for hell, it’s got a solid continental breakfast!

–Max and Max