Doritos has all-new Doritos Dips. The dips debut in two flavors: Spicy Nacho and Cool Ranch Jalapeno. Both are rolling out this month at stores nationwide.

Burger King has been serving up new Fiery Nuggets in the Chicago, Illinois, area. The menu item features the brand’s white meat chicken nuggets topped with a “triple pepper spicy glaze.”

And make sure you wear your mask, because were concerned about your “health”.

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Wendy’s is celebrating the 2022 Holidays Season with the all-new Peppermint Frosty. The new flavor features the brand’s signature vanilla Frosty with peppermint flavoring. You can find it at participating Wendy’s locations nationwide for a limited time.

Shake ‘N Bake has announced that boxes of Shake ‘N Bake will no longer include a plastic shaker bag. The decision to cut the bags will save a staggering 900,000 pounds of plastic waste annually. Shake ‘N Bake will now suggest customers use a reusable container to mix up their favorite recipes.

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An asteroid the size that could be taller than the Empire State Building in New York is approaching Earth at more than 18,000 miles per hour and will arrive at its closest to Earth this weekend.

The asteroid, dubbed 388945 (2008 TZ3) is the largest of five asteroids to approach Earth between Friday and Monday, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) estimates the asteroid is between 220 and 490 meters long. For reference, the Empire State Building is about 443 meters (1,453 feet) tall.

Asteroid 2008 TZ3 is also covering 8.22 kilometers of space every second, a speed of about 18,388 miles per hour.

Luckily, the asteroid is expected to miss Earth by about 3.6 million miles when it passes at around 5:18 p.m. EST on Sunday.

“2008 TZ3 will fly by at about 15 times the distance of the Moon; we know the orbit of this asteroid very accurately, and we can predict with confidence that it cannot get closer than about 15 lunar distances on May 15, which means it won’t get closer than about 3.6 million miles,” CNEOS director Paul Chodas, told Newsweek.

According to JPL, NASA considers any object measuring larger than 150 meters that passes within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers or 19.5 times the distance to the moon) “a potentially hazardous object.”

Asteroid 2008 TZ3 could have a devastating effect if it ever did impact the earth. The Independent reported the meteor that likely caused the 1908 Tunguska event — an approximately 12 megaton (12 million tons of TNT) blast that flattened forested area’s around Russia’s Tunguska river — measured between 100 and 200 meters wide, less than half the size of 2008 TZ3. The atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki was the equivalent a 16 kiloton blast (16,000 tons of TNT).

Researchers calculate that asteroids measuring 100 meters in diameter impacting the Earth can cause about 10 megatons worth of destruction.

Researchers believe the asteroid that likely wiped out the dinosaurs was between about 10 and 15 kilometers wide, which is as much as 30 times larger than 2008 TZ3.

Sunday is not the first time asteroid 2008 TZ3 will have passed close to Earth. Asteroid 2008 TZ3 was first spotted by Mt. Lemmon Survey near Tuscon, Arizona in 2008 and passes by Earth once every 732 days (almost exactly two years) as it orbits the sun, according to The Telegraph.

In May 2020, asteroid 2008 TZ3 passed within about 1.7 million miles of Earth. NASA estimates it won’t come back that close to Earth until around May of 2163.

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Federal prosecutors have opened another investigation into former President Donald Trump, this time over classified White House documents that wound up at Trump’s home in Florida, two people familiar with the matter said, according to The New York Times on Thursday.

Investigators are working to determine if the classified files were mishandled, and have issued a subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration to obtain the files, people familiar with the situation said.

Officials also requested interviews with multiple people who worked in Trump’s White House during the end of his first term, one of the individuals added.

The probe comes after the National Archives discovered that Trump had taken 15 boxes of files from the White House to his home at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in January 2021. The boxes contained government documents, keepsakes, gifts and letters.

When the boxes were returned to the Archives, researchers found files “marked as classified national security information,” the agency told Congress earlier this year.

Investigators want to know how the documents ended up at Mar-a-Lago, who put the boxes together, how they were stored at Trump’s Florida home, and if anyone knew that the classified files were handled inappropriately, a person familiar with the matter said.

Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for former President Trump, said, “President Trump consistently handled all documents in accordance with applicable law and regulations. Belated attempts to second-guess that clear fact are politically motivated and misguided.”

This isn’t the first time former President Donald Trump has been investigated by federal authorities who sought to gain access to Trump administration documents at the National Archives. Earlier this year, President Joe Biden ordered Trump’s White House visitor logs to be turned over to the House committee investigating the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, again rejecting Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

According to a letter sent to the National Archives, White House counsel Dana Remus addressed the committee’s request that the National Archives release Trump administration data to Congress. Remus said Biden considered Trump’s claims of executive privilege, but determined that Trump’s assertion “is not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified, as to these records and portions of records.”

Remus’ letter stated that the “majority of the entries over which the former President has asserted executive privilege would be publicly released under current policy.” Remus further asserted that “preserving the confidentiality of this type of record generally is not necessary to protect long-term institutional interests of the Executive Branch.”

The White House counsel also claimed that the riot was the “most serious attack” on federal government operations “since the Civil War.”

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This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

North Korea acknowledged its first confirmed COVID-19 cases and at least one death from the disease on Thursday, after more than two years of claiming the country was “virus free.”

The state-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that 187,800 people are undergoing treatment in quarantine for a fever of unknown origin that has spread throughout the country since the end of last month.

The report did not specify how many people had tested positive for COVID-19.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presided over a meeting of the Politburo where he ordered a nationwide lockdown and declared a “maximum emergency epidemic prevention system,” KCNA said Thursday.

A resident of Pyongyang told RFA’s Korean Service that the capital Pyongyang was on lockdown after health authorities in the city confirmed a case of the virus two days before.

“At 5 p.m. [Tuesday], an emergency directive from the national emergency quarantine command of the Central Party’s Political Bureau was issued to all parts of Pyongyang. Specific project details were delivered to the city’s various levels of units, enterprises and the neighborhood watch units in implementing the quarantine project to the maximum emergency quarantine system,” the source said on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The instructions are to prohibit group gatherings, strictly observe personal hygiene, social distance, wash our hands frequently, boil water before drinking it, gargling with salt water frequently to disinfect, and properly ventilate the indoor air to prevent coronavirus,” the source said.

There have been many instances of hospital patients exhibiting signs of COVID-19, but quarantine authorities had been diagnosing cases as pneumonia or the flu, the source said.

“Residents are confused why the quarantine authorities are suddenly acknowledging coronavirus. Shops, restaurants and marketplaces are all closed. If the lockdown is prolonged, it will disrupt the lives of the residents,” said the source.

In the city of Sinuiju in North Pyongan province, across the Yalu River from China, a complete lockdown was underway on Wednesday, a resident there told RFA.

“All sectors, including the party, administrative organizations, economic organizations, the police, state security and the armed forces, emphasized the thorough implementation of the instructions of the national emergency quarantine command,” said the second source on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“It is the first time that we have acknowledged the influx of COVID-19 and it is the stealth Omicron variant. Authorities are reassuring residents that it is a virus similar to pneumonia or flu and can be overcome with domestically produced drugs,” the second source said.

This source said that a relative in Pyongyang had said that that starting tomorrow an intensive medical screening for all city residents will start. Already citizens are prohibited from going to work, increasing the level of economic anxiety in the country at a time when many are already struggling to get by.

“The people are about to fall into a period of chaos, as they cannot even make ends meet prior to the emergency,” the second source said.

Vaccine status

The World Health Organization (WHO) told RFA on Thursday that it has not yet received information from North Korea’s Ministry of Health regarding the confirmed COVID-19 case as reported by KCNA.

North Korea is eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX global vaccine sharing project, the WHO said. Pyongyang refused to accept vaccines from COVAX earlier in the pandemic when it was still claiming to be “virus-free.”

Reuters reported that Washington has no immediate plans to share vaccines with Pyongyang, quoting a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council.

Amnesty International called on the North Korean government to ensure that its people were immunized against the disease, which is now estimated to have killed more than 6 million people across the globe.

“There is no evidence to show that North Korea has access to enough vaccines to protect its population from COVID-19,” Boram Jang, Amnesty International’s East Asia researcher, said.

“With the first official news of a Covid-19 outbreak in the country, continuing on this path could cost many lives and would be an unconscionable dereliction of upholding the right to health,” she said. “The North Korean government should immediately establish plans to secure COVID-19 vaccines for its population by cooperating with the international community.”

Strategy

North Korea’s timing in acknowledging that the virus has entered its borders is “noteworthy,” Soo Kim, a former CIA analyst now with the RAND corporation, told RFA.

“The international community never turned a blind eye toward North Korea’s coronavirus situation; it was the Kim regime that consistently rejected offers of PPE and vaccines on unjustifiable grounds,” she said.

“It’s possible that the situation with the coronavirus in North Korea has significantly worsened to a point where the regime can no longer suppress it or cope on its own. But then the question remains — the situation could have been contained had the Kim regime accepted international assistance from the beginning. So why now?” she said.

Soo Kim said that economic anxiety, rather than public health concerns, may have motivated North Korea to stray from its claims of having zero confirmed cases.

“Extensive lockdown, border closures, and Kim’s already incompetent state management can only take him so far in suppressing the realities of the pandemic,” she said.

Harry Kazianis, the president and CEO at the Rogue States project, told RFA that COVID-19 has been present in North Korea since the beginning of the pandemic.

“However, over the last few months as Omicron has crept into the country, North Korean officials cannot use the same brute force tactics of locking people in their homes or isolating entire villages as spread happens so fast. So now, Pyongyang must admit to their being a problem as there is no way no they can hide it,” he said.

“Unless North Korea suffers tens of thousands of casualties, I doubt the DPRK will ask for help at this point. They do not want to show any weakness at all and want to always project an image of strength and control of their population. Asking for help would be, in the DPRK’s eyes, an admission of failure,” Kazianis said.

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Billionaire Elon Musk announced on Friday he had temporarily placed his highly anticipated $44 billion deal to buy Twitter on hold until he can get verify the true number of spam and bot accounts on the social media platform.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted.

Twitter stock initially fell after news that Musk’s Twitter purchase deal was on hold. In a follow-up tweet two hours after his first, Musk said, “Still committed to acquisition.”

In April, Twitter submitted its latest quarterly Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) report. The company’s metrics are based on monetizable daily active usage or users (mDAU), which are the number of people, organizations, or other accounts that use Twitter on a day-to-day basis.

“We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter,” the company’s April SEC report said.

Twitter warned that the true number of bot accounts may differ from their estimated.

“In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated,” the company said.

Musk has said he wants to do away with fake or spam Twitter accounts when his purchase of the company goes through. On Tuesday, Musk said he would favor reinstating former President Donald Trump on the platform after he was permanently banned in 2021. Musk said, “Permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts.”

Susannah Streeter, an investment analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, told the Wall Street Journal that Musk may be using the delay to bring down the price of his Twitter buyout.

“The $44 billion price tag is huge, and it may be a strategy to row back on the amount he is prepared to pay to acquire the platform,” Streeter said.

Daniel Ives, a technology analyst at Wedbush Securities, also told the Wall Street Journal Musk may be trying to renegotiate or get out of the deal altogether. Ives suggested one reason Musk may try to get out of the deal is because of the 29 percent drop in Tesla stock prices in the past month. Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla, has been using his Tesla holdings to help fund the Twitter purchase deal.

“Leveraging his stock and potential sales of Tesla is a huge overhang on the stock,” Ives said.

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On Thursday, Adm. Linda L. Fagan was confirmed as the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, making her the service’s first woman chief — and the first service chief of the entire U.S. military.

“It is with deep pride that I congratulate Admiral Linda L. Fagan on her confirmation by the Senate as Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. Admiral Fagan is the Coast Guard’s first woman to hold the rank of four-star admiral,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “Today, she again makes history not only as the first woman to lead the Coast Guard—but also as the first woman Service Chief of any U.S. military service. Admiral Fagan’s leadership, experience, and integrity are second to none, and I know she will advance the Coast Guard’s mission to ensure our nation’s maritime safety and security.”

Fagan is the current Vice Commandant of the Coast Guard. She will be replacing Adm. Karl Schultz, who is retiring later this month after having been in the role since 2018.

“My administration is committed to seeing more qualified women in senior leadership and command roles; making sure women can succeed and thrive throughout their military careers,” his statement continued. “Today, Admiral Fagan’s confirmation as Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard signals to women and girls across our nation they have a place in protecting their country at the highest level.”

Biden had nominated Fagan to serve as Vice Commandant of the Coast Guard in April 2021. She was confirmed and assumed those duties in June 2021. The nomination and subsequent promotion to four-star admiral also made her the first woman to achieve the rank and position.

Prior to serving as Vice Commandant, Fagan was serving as the commander of the Coast Guard Pacific Area, which oversees all Coast Guard missions from the Rocky Mountains to the waters off the East Coast of Africa. She concurrently served as the commander of Defense Force West, which provides Coast Guard mission support to the Department of Defense and other Combatant Commanders.

Fagan graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 1985 and received the Coast Guard’s first-ever Gold Ancient Trident, for the officer with the longest service record in the Marine Safety field.

“A great day for the Coast Guard! Congratulations @VComdtUSCG on your confirmation to serve as our Service’s 27th Commandant. You will lead our incredible Coast Guard Team into the future, protecting our homeland and advancing our prosperity and National Security interests,” Adm. Schultz tweeted.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also offered his congratulations to Admiral Fagan.

“I am immensely proud to congratulate Admiral Linda L. Fagan on her historic confirmation as Commandant of the United States Coast Guard @USCG. Admiral Fagan is an extraordinary leader, trailblazer, and public servant,” Mayorkas wrote on Twitter.

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blocked the Senate from quickly passing a $40 billion aid package to Ukraine after demanding language be added to the package to provide oversight for how the money is spent.

Paul provided his proposed change to the aid package’s language, which would set up an Inspector General to oversee how the funds are spent. The Hill reported Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proposed a Thursday vote on the aid package and a separate vote on Paul’s amendment language, but Paul rejected that proposal. Paul instead wanted his language added to the aid package itself, instead of taking the chance that the aid package will pass but his oversight amendment will fail in a separate vote.

Paul explained his demand for the oversight and his opposition to quickly passing the bill in a series of tweets on Thursday.

“My oath of office is to the U.S. Constitution, not to any foreign nation. Congress is trying yet again to ram through a spending bill – one that I doubt anyone has actually read – and there’s no oversight included into how the money is being spent,” Paul tweeted. “All I requested is an amendment to be included in the final bill that allows for the Inspector General to oversee how funds are spent. Anyone who is opposed to this is irresponsible.”

“While I sympathize with the people of Ukraine, and commend their fight against Putin, we cannot continue to spend money we don’t have. Passing this bill brings the total we’ve sent to Ukraine to nearly $54 billion over the course of two months,” Paul continued. “It’s threatening our own national security, and it’s frankly a slap in the face to millions of taxpayers who are struggling to buy gas, groceries, and find baby formula.”

The Senate was set to take up the Ukraine aid package about two weeks after President Joe Biden called for an additional $33 billion in military, humanitarian and financial aid for Ukraine. Lawmakers expanded Biden’s $33 billion request, adding $7 billion more military and humanitarian spending.

“This is the second spending bill for Ukraine in two months. And this bill is three times larger than the first,” Paul said before formally blocking the bill Thursday, The Guardian reported. “Congress just wants to keep on spending, and spending.”

Senators were hoping to quickly pass the Ukraine aid package on Thursday before they wrapped up their work for the week. As senators began to leave early on Thursday, Schumer and McConnell tried to set up a quick vote on the bill, but under the senate rules for such a vote, it only takes one senator to object, according to The Hill.

Paul’s opposition to the quick vote blocked the Senate from being able to vote on the Ukraine aid package on Thursday. The Hill reported Paul’s decision will now delay a final vote on the bill by at least a week.

“I think they’re going to have to go through the long way,” Paul told The Hill.

The Ukraine aid package already passed in the House with 368 votes for the bill, and 57 Republicans opposed it.

Senators supporting the Ukraine aid package were hoping to pass the measures without making changes to the bill, which would require the House to vote once more on the changed bill.

Schumer criticized Paul’s move to block the aid package.

“He is not even asking for an amendment. He is simply saying my way or the highway,” Schumer said.

“I’m offering to hold a vote on his amendment, even though I disagree with it,” Schumer said. “Let the chamber speak its will. Let both sides of the aisle have input and for heaven’s sake, let Ukraine funding get done ASAP.”

Before Paul formally blocked the bill, McConnell issued a statement urging support for the Ukraine aid.

“Ukraine is not asking anybody else to do their fighting for them. They ask only for the resources they need to defend themselves against this lawless aggression,” McConnell said.

“I hope the Senate can reach an agreement to consider and pass this legislation today,” McConnell said Thursday.

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Ukraine officials claimed this week that Russian soldiers fleeing the country left behind important military files which suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin was planning to take over the entire country of Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Oleksiy Sukhachev, director of Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation (DBR) said in a translated statement on Telegram that “DBR investigators have found important documents of the Russian military, which clearly give the understanding that Russia was preparing to seize the entire territory of Ukraine. All this information will be studied and attached to the case file.”

Investigators reportedly discovered the documents while searching the northeastern town of Trostyanets in Sumy Oblast.

“Investigators from the Bureau inspected more than 2,000 hectares of the city actually destroyed by the invaders. The locations of the aggressor’s combat units and the firing positions from which the shelling was carried out have been established. Seized documents and personal belongings of the Russian military,” the statement continued. “Investigating the consequences of artillery and mortar shelling of the city’s infrastructure in the Russian Federation, DBR investigators found intentionally damaged 322 residential buildings and civilian objects in Trostyanets.”

Ukrainian officials also claimed the investigation uncovered locations where Russian forces “tortured civilians.”

“At least 34 cases of unlawful deprivation of liberty and torture of civilians have been reported. Batons, handcuffs, metal ticks and clothes of the victims with traces of blood were found at the crime scene,” the statement read. “Among other things, 29 site inspections were conducted, the bodies of 23 victims, including two children, were exhumed.”

Investigators deactivated multiple explosive devices in Trostyanets, and turned over unused weapons and ammunition to the Ukrainian military.

“The work continues. To ensure proper efficiency, we have recruited the best investigators from among the central office and employees of the Territorial Administration of Poltava and Kramatorsk,” Sukhachev added in a statement.

Meanwhile, the first president of independent Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, died at 88-years-old this week.

Kravchuk was president of Ukraine from 1991-94, and Ukrainian media reported that he died following a long illness. In June 2021, the former president had been placed in an intensive care unit due to complications after undergoing heart surgery.

“He was a person always able to find wise words and express them in such a way that they were heard by all Ukrainians,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “Particularly in times of crisis. When the future of an entire country can depend on the wisdom of one person.”

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This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.

Ukrainian authorities are moving ahead with the first murder trial of a Russian soldier suspected of killing a Ukrainian civilian during Russia’s unprovoked invasion.

Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Iryna Venediktova said on Facebook on May 11 that the suspect was charged with the killing of a 62-year-old civilian who was riding a bicycle in the village of Chupakhivka in the northeastern region of Sumy.

“The Prosecutor-General’s Office sent to a court the case against Vadim Shishimarin, the commander of a unit of military brigade 32010, known as the Fourth Tank Kantemirov Division of the Moscow region,” Venediktova wrote.

According to Venediktova, the 21-year-old suspect, who is currently in Ukrainian custody, may face up to life in prison if convicted of murder.

Last week, Venediktova announced the name of the first Russian soldier suspected of torturing and murdering civilians in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv, during weeks of occupation.

Venediktova identified this soldier as the commander of a unit of Russia’s National Guard, Sergei Kolotsei, who was officially informed that he is a suspect.

Last month, Venediktova identified 10 soldiers of the 64th Mechanized Infantry Brigade of the Russian armed forces, saying that they are suspected of “cruelty toward civilians and other war crimes,” adding that Ukrainian investigators continue to gather evidence and those named were just the first.

She also said at the time that investigations were under way to find out if the 10 Russians took part in the killing of civilians in Bucha.

The retreat of Russian forces from Bucha and other towns near Kyiv revealed harrowing evidence of brutal killings, torture, mass graves, and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in the fighting, prompting calls from several countries, as well as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC), for investigations to determine whether war crimes were committed.

Ukraine’s National Police said on May 5 that, since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on February 24, more than 10,000 probes have been launched into war crimes allegedly committed by Russian troops in Ukraine.

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