Greetings from Sierra Leone.

Max F is wrapping up his Africa travels and ready for a new bunkmate. He’s currently reporting from Sierra Leone, where he’s spent the past three nights sleeping with a tarantula in his room. He hasn’t been so worried about a roommate biting him since he and Max T shared a hotel in Tallahassee, FL.

Hope you have a great Monday. Don’t buy into the “Monday is bad” hype — let’s have a great day!

In today's edition:

🔑 Key Story

UN Aid Agency Under Fire

Israel accused a UN agency of assisting Hamas’s October 7 attack on the same day that the UN’s top court demanded Israel do more to protect civilians

• On Friday, the UN’s top court ruled that Israel must do more to protect civilian lives in Gaza

• Also on Friday, Israel and the UN claimed that 12 members of a UN agency assisted Hamas’s October 7th attack. The UN agency – the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) – is the primary aid organization on the ground in Gaza

• The UN fired those employees and launched an internal investigation. Following the news, the US and other countries paused funding to the UNRWA, prompting warnings that the agency could begin running out of funds by early February

🔑 Key Story

Deadly Attack on US Forces

A drone strike in Jordan killed three US servicemembers and injured 25

• The strike targeted a US base in Jordan on Sunday. Responding to the news, President Biden said, “We know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq”

• The attack marked the first US military deaths in the Middle East since October 7. Following the news, several Republicans criticized Biden’s strategy against Iran, with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-NC) calling on the US to begin directly striking targets in Iran

🔑 Key Story

World’s Largest Cruise Sets Sail

Icon of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship, began its maiden voyage on Saturday

• The $2B vessel has 40+ restaurants, seven swimming pools, six water slides, and the world’s largest orchestra at sea. It has 20 decks and can carry 7,600 passengers plus 2,350 crew members at full capacity

• On Saturday, after being christened by soccer great Lionel Messi, the vessel began its maiden voyage

• Icon of the Seas is designed to be more climate-friendly than other cruise ships, although some climate activists have claimed it will actually emit more carbon over its life cycle than traditional ships

🔑 Key Story

McMahon Steps Down

Vince McMahon, the chairman and co-founder of WWE, resigned following sexual assault allegations

• McMahon co-founded the company that would become WWE in 1980. He has since grown WWE into the world’s largest wrestling company

• In 2022, McMahon resigned as CEO following revelations that he paid women millions of dollars to suppress allegations of sexual assault

• McMahon remained the chairman of WWE’s parent company. On Thursday, another woman sued McMahon for sexual assault; a day later, he resigned, although in a statement he denied the allegations 

⚓ Dive Deeper

• A quick six extra updates for the day: Read the Rundown

• Dive deeper into Israel’s allegations against UNRWA

• Dive deeper into the deadly drone attack on US forces in Jordan

• Dive deeper into the maiden voyage of the world’s largest cruise

• Dive deeper into the exit of ex-WWE CEO Vince McMahon

⚓ Dive Deeper

• A quick six extra updates for the day: Read the Rundown

• Dive deeper into Israel’s allegations against UNRWA

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🗣 Community

Daily Poll

Yesterday’s Poll: Do you support or oppose the use of the death penalty in your country?

Support: 48%
Oppose: 30%
It depends: 22%

🍿 Happy Hour

🏈 The Swiftie Bowl: The Kansas City Chiefs will face the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas on February 11. The 49ers opened as 2.5-point favorites

👮🏻‍♂️ Uno reverse card: A 36-year-old Louisiana man pretending to be a police officer tried to pull over a Ford F-250 driven by a sheriff’s office deputy chief. The real officer arrested the impersonator

🎾 Hate the sin, love the Sinner: 22-year-old Italian Jannik Sinner upset Novak Djokovic and then Daniil Medvedev to win the Australian Open men’s title, his first major

🔫 Four score and 71 years ago: Pennsylvania state police launched an investigation following a Walmart employee’s discovery of a Civil War revolver in a parking lot trash bin

🦓🚒 The show goes on: Indiana police rescued 10 circus animals including five zebras, four camels, and a miniature horse from a burning semi-truck on an Indiana highway

🚡 Gondola Hell: A woman was stranded overnight in a gondola — without her phone or a light — for 15 hours at California’s Heavenly Mountain Resort on a skiing trip with her friends

🌯 Deep Dive

Roca Wrap

A breakfast advocacy group in England wants to bring the pineapple back.

The English Breakfast Society (EBS) is dedicated to preserving and promoting the cultural significance of the English breakfast.

A "Full English Breakfast" is a hearty meal typically consisting of bacon, sausages, eggs, baked beans, black pudding, toast, and grilled tomatoes and mushrooms. EBS, however, says tomatoes and mushrooms may be an incorrect addition. Instead, it wants to add a side of pineapple.

“Interestingly, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the pineapple was considered to be a high-status breakfast item in Great Britain,” EBS’ leader told The Daily Telegraph. “Pineapples used to be seen as exotic, expensive, difficult to obtain and were a highly prized breakfast ingredient for wealthy English families, which is why you can find lots of old English pineapple breakfast recipes.”

This is not the first time EBS has advocated on behalf of England’s beloved first meal.

Last year, the society declared that hash browns had no place on a full English breakfast. “The hash brown – the reconstituted, tater-based fast-food – was popularized by McDonald’s but somehow we now find it in our English breakfast,” EBS’ leader told the Times. “Somebody had to put their foot down. Otherwise we’ll find kebab meat in our English breakfast before long.”

Now, he and the rest of the EBS members are advocating for the return of the pineapple.

“If you wanted to add a touch of the exotic to your plate and eat like a 17th-century lord, there is no reason not to give it a try,” he said. “Nobody really likes the tomatoes that usually come with a full English breakfast so why shouldn’t we swap them for a grilled pineapple slice?”

Any English readers out there? Let us know what you think by replying to this email!

🌎 On-the-Ground

Many of you requested we run Wraps from our Ethiopia trip last year. So before we begin our next on-the-ground series in Eastern Europe, we are running back one of the most popular installments from Ethiopia. We hope you enjoy!

Roca Reports

Life is changing quickly in the Omo Valley.

Ethiopia’s population is divided between 80+ ethnic groups. The largest of those number in the tens of millions and have their own states; others number in the thousands and don’t.

Eight ethnic groups coexist in the Omo Valley. The valley surrounds the Omo River, which runs from northern Ethiopia to Kenya. Mountainous and traditionally without roads, the valley’s eight tribes – sometimes separated by no more than a mountain or a river – developed totally distinct customs and languages. Those tribes lived untouched by the outside world, including the Ethiopian government, until recent decades.

The tribes have since been discovered, though, and now face intense pressure to adapt to the times.

Last year, Roca’s editor and writer visited five of these tribes, beginning with the Mursi.

We left the regional capital before dawn and drove on a dirt road into the savannah. Rain turned the road to mud, and part of the way to our destination, our truck spun out and got stuck in the mud.

Once we had freed our jeep we continued on to the village.

A few miles short of it, we came to a roadblock, where a man in a toga-esque outfit holding an AK-47 waved us down. A woman with a sheet over her then approached the car, staring at us through the window.

We couldn’t help but stare back: She had a deformed lower lip that drooped to her chin, exposing all her teeth. A woman with a similar deformity approached from the other side.

They all said something in a language we didn’t recognize then waved us through.

These were the Mursi people, an Omo tribe famous for their lip plates.

Traditionally, when a Mursi girl reaches puberty, a woman in the tribe uses a knife or stick to cut a hole in the girl’s lip. A clay disc is then inserted into the hole, stretching the lip . At one time, the tradition was mandatory and all women had to regularly wear the discs.

Today, the practice is optional. Women now typically only wear the discs when feeding their husbands or on special occasions, but even when the disc isn’t inserted, the lips dangle.

We had hired a guide to help us converse with the Mursi, yet as soon as we arrived, they surrounded us not to talk but to sell trinkets.

A man came and asked for some money and told us that if we paid him, we could take as many pictures as we wanted. He assured us that even if the people didn’t want their photos taken, we could still take them.

There was one Mursi woman with whom we were able to have a proper conversation. She had lived in a city and spoke some English. When asked if she preferred village life or the city, she didn’t pause: The city, because it’s easier to get water and hygiene is better.

In the Mursi villages, water comes from a river and people live in huts made of sticks covered with grass. They farm and raise cattle, and life revolves around securing grazing and water access for them.

Around 4,000 Mursi people live like this near Ethiopia’s border with South Sudan.

There’s no doubt that this lifestyle is changing: In recent history, the idea of a woman moving to a city would have been unthinkable, the government had no say in local customs, and outsiders never visited.

Like most nearby tribes, the Mursi didn’t even use money. Now, foreigners are paying them for photos.

Is that a good thing?


Let us know what you think at [email protected]!

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🗣 Community

The Clubhouse

Question of the Day: Pick one: Are you for or against the world’s largest cruise ship, the Icon of the Seas? Why?

Yesterday’s Question: Just 20 Questions!

🧠 Editor’s Note

Final Thoughts

It’s 2020 all over again: The 49ers and Chiefs are playing in the Super Bowl, and Biden and Trump are going head-to-head for the White House. With Taylor Swift in the mix, the outcome of the former may have more of a bearing on the public’s sanity than the latter.

Also, loved reading your answers to Friday’s “Nostalgia” edition of 20 Questions. Somehow we started feeling nostalgic for childhoods we didn’t have. Here it is in case you missed it.

—Max and Max