Last week, the company announced a social media campaign with Hudson, a recording artist known for toying with “gender, sex, and free-expression paradigms” and who was named Best Spanish Act at last year’s MTV Europe Music Awards.

The partnership included a 50-second promo called “Crunch Talks,” which the influencer had briefly shared on her own social media accounts.

But on Tuesday, the PespiCo subsidiary announced their partnership was over, following growing backlash against resurfaced posts Hudson allegedly shared on social media in the past.

In a since-deleted message from nearly a decade ago, Hudson allegedly wrote about making fun of victims of sexual assault and wanting to do inappropriate things with a 12-year-old girl, according to Rolling Stone.

Hudson had reportedly apologized for the message after she became known in Spain, but over the weekend, screenshots of the alleged messages resurfaced online, prompting a massive call for a boycott of the snack.

Several other people online also joined the #BoycottDoritos campaign taking offense at the company’s hiring of a transgender woman to represent the brand — much like BudLight’s controversial and consequential choice of Dylan Mulvaney for a social media campaign last year.

In a statement to Rolling Stone, the company said that after becoming aware of Hudson’s deleted tweets from around 2015, “we have ended the relationship and stopped all related campaign activity due to the comments. We strongly condemn words or actions that promote violence or sexism of any kind.”

On Tuesday, Hudson addressed the controversy on X, once again admitting the comments were  “absolutely out of place, disgusting and offensive,” adding she wrote them as a younger person “in a context in which the general tone on social media was to use black humor in the grossest and most exorbitant way possible, as a way to generate attention.”

She also pointed out that the screenshot of a particularly disturbing tweet attributed to her, which has been circulating online is “totally false,” since it was written in 2014 and she said she only joined the platform the following year.

The largest such discovery in the country, and possibly in all of Europe, was made during a routine archaeological screening in preparation for building a retirement home, developer WBG said in a statement.

As many as 1,500 people could be buried there, which indicates they died in one of the plague outbreaks that occurred about every 10 years beginning in the 14th century, city archaeologist Melanie Langbein told CNN.

“Those people were not interred in a regular cemetery, although we have designated plague cemeteries in Nuremberg,” Langbein said. “This means a large number of dead people who needed to be buried in a short time frame without regard to Christian burial practices.”

Eight burial pits were discovered, each containing hundreds of bodies, with at least one of the pits dating back to the late 1400s or early 1600s, radiocarbon analysis revealed.

There was documentation too, in the form of a 1634 note chronicling an outbreak of the Black Death in which more than 15,000 people perished from 1632-33. The note also indicated that nearly 2,000 people had been interred near the newly discovered site, Langbein told CNN.

The bodies were packed in tightly, with adults sitting up or lying on their backs or sides, The Miami Herald reported. Babies and newborns were squeezed in between the adults.

This appears to be one of several cemeteries described in historical documents, Nuremberg Lord Mayor Marcus König said in a statement from site developer WBG.

“This discovery is of great significance far beyond the region,” König said. “The graves contain the mortal remains of children and old people, men and women; the plague did not stop at gender, age or social status. Now, for the first time, an empirically reliable analysis of a large population group from this period can be carried out for a city with the importance of Nuremberg.”

The bones are a treasure trove of information, experts said.

“We can now detail out all information that is kept in those bones, e.g. the prevalence of different kinds of cancer, genetic mutations that show in skulls, age and sex determination, status of the teeth and conclusions from that to the general health and life circumstances in this period,” Nuremberg chief anthropologist Florian Melzer said in a statement from In Terra Veritas, the archeological firm in charge of the excavation.

The embattled senator is newly accused of obstruction of justice and plotting to obstruct justice for allegedly claiming through his lawyers that he thought thousands of dollars in bribes given to his wife, Nadine Menendez, were loans.

Feds in the Southern District of New York say that Menendez relayed the bogus information to prosecutors in June and September of last year — right before he was indicted.

He allegedly claimed he’d initially been in the dark about thousands paid to his wife toward a new Mercedes-Benz and another payout of more than $23,000 issued by his co-defendant Wael Hana toward the company holding the mortgage on the couple’s New Jersey home.

“In truth and in fact, and as [Menendez] well knew, [Menendez] had learned of both the mortgage company payment and the car payments prior to 2022, and they were not loans, but bribe payments,” reads the indictment.

Menendez, 70, slammed the new charges as “a flagrant abuse of power” and doubled down on his claims his co-defendants had merely lent money to his wife, not bribed her.

“The government has long known that I learned of and helped repay loans — not bribes — that had been provided to my wife,” he said in a statement. “Not content — or capable — of meeting those facts fairly at trial, the government has now falsely alleged a coverup and obstruction. The latest charge reveals far more about the government than it says about me.”

Menendez has pleaded not guilty to a host of charges accusing him, among other allegations, of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government in his powerful role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He’s also accused of abusing his position to advance lucrative Qatari interests in exchange for gold bullion bars, flashy watches and Formula 1 tickets, along with other lavish gifts.

The new charges come days after Jose Uribe — a former Garden State insurance broker charged alongside Menendez, his wife and two others last fall — on Friday pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe the senator in exchange for the powerful Democrat’s help quashing criminal investigations into two associates, honest services wire fraud, tax evasion, obstruction of justice and related charges. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Uribe has agreed to cooperate against the senator and testify at his trial slated to begin May 6.

Details revealed during Uribe’s Friday plea hearing were included in the rewritten indictment filed against Menendez, his wife and businessmen Fred Daibes and Hana in Manhattan Federal Court, including a conversation Uribe allegedly had with the spouse the day he got a subpoena.

Uribe claimed Friday that he met Menendez’s wife at a Marriott Hotel to discuss a cover story in June 2022 after the feds requested information about large sums of cash he gave her.

Nadine Menendez asked “Uribe what he would say if law enforcement asked him about the payments he had made for the Mercedes-Benz Convertible. Uribe responded that he would say those payments had been a loan, and [Nadine Menendez] said that sounded good,” prosecutors wrote in Tuesday’s new filings.

Following his indictment, Menendez stepped down from his role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but has refused to resign from office. On Monday, a judge shot down his arguments challenging the lawfulness of search warrants executed on his home last year when the feds turned up almost half a million dollars in cash and gold bullion bars.

Lawyers for Nadine Menendez, Daibes and Hana did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.

Protesters identifying themselves as Volcano Group said Tesla was operating with “extreme exploitation conditions” and called for the “complete destruction of the gigafactory.”

The arsonists set fire to a high-voltage transmission line on a tower, causing a power outage across several towns, including Grünheide, which is home to the Berlin-Brandenburg Tesla factory.

Though the towns got power back within a few hours, Tesla leaders said it would take several days to restore production at the factory.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk called the attackers “either the dumbest eco-terrorists on Earth or they’re puppets of those who don’t have good environmental goals.”

The electric car maker has announced plans to expand its “gigafactory” in the east Berlin suburb. The expansion would involve cutting down nearly 250 acres of forest in the area. Environmental protesters have responded by setting up camp in the woods.

In a nonbinding vote in February, the residents of Grünheide rejected Tesla’s plans to expand the factory, which opened in 2022. However, the company only needs approval from local authorities, which are still considering the expansion.

German police promised to investigate the arson attack. No members of Volcano Group were immediately publicly identified.

“Stopping production of electric vehicles, rather than fossil fuel vehicles, ist extrem dumm,” Musk added on X, using the German for “extremely stupid.”

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Hostages were — and still are — being subject to sexual assault, the envoy said.

While the allegations are not new, this was the most definitive finding by the U.N. to corroborate the claims, CNN noted. Special Representative of the Secretary-General Pramila Patten drew the conclusions after leading a team of technical experts on a fact-finding mission to Israel and the West Bank from Jan. 29 to Feb. 14. She and her team were tasked with gathering, analyzing and verifying allegations of sexual violence related to conflict zones for inclusion in U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ annual report on sexual violence in conflict.

The fact finders visited several sites related to the massacres in which Hamas slaughtered about 1,200 people and took roughly 250 others hostage. In at least three locations, the experts found “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred,” Patten said in the 23-page report, “including rape and gang rape.”

Most of the incidents saw victims raped and then killed, and in at least two cases, women’s corpses were raped. They also found partially or completely nude, mostly female victims who had been bound and shot.

“Although circumstantial, such a pattern may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” Patten’s statement said.

They conducted 33 meetings with Israeli national institutions and visited the Israeli National Center of Forensic Medicine, the Shura military base, the morgue where victims’ bodies had been brought and four of the places where sexual violence reportedly took place. Combing through 5,000 photographs and nearly 50 hours of footage, the team also conducted confidential interviews with 34 survivors, witnesses, released hostages, first responders and health and service providers.

They were not able to speak with surviving victims of the violence, Patten said, but did meet with the families and relatives of hostages who were yet to be released.

Witnesses and survivors from the Nova festival site, where nearly 400 young people were killed or taken hostage, related seeing and hearing women being raped, gang raped, killed or all three. Along Road 232, the escape route away from the festival, witnesses detailed seeing two women being raped by “armed elements.”

Hamas, which the U.S. and other countries consider a terrorist group, has repeatedly denied that it committed sexual assault that day.

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The deadly violence Monday came as a senior U.S. envoy visited Beirut and warned that a Gaza truce wouldn’t necessarily apply to conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border. Amos Hochstein urged the parties to reach a lasting cease-fire at the border following meetings Monday with Lebanese leaders.

His comments came hours after the deputy leader of Lebanon’s terrorist group Hamas, Naim Kassem, said the only way to restore calm along the border is to end the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Since the Israel-Hamas war started, Hezbollah has been exchanging fire with Israel almost daily, displacing thousands of people and spiking fear that the conflict may spread through the region. In northern Israel, 60,000 people have evacuated, the Israeli government says.

“People won’t come back anytime soon, they’re scared, it’s dangerous,” Haim Menus, 70, said Monday while buying hardware at one of the few stores open in the nearly abandoned northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona. He is one of the few who have remained, working curtailed hours at a bakery.

“An anti-tank missile could come at any time,” Menus said.

Moments later, an anti-tank missile struck a field in the nearby community of Margaliot as sirens blared, killing one Indian worker and injuring seven other foreign workers from India and Thailand, according the Israel Rescue Services and the Israeli Army. Paramedics evacuated the injured — two of them in serious condition — to hospitals via ambulance and helicopter.

The Israeli military said they struck the source of the launches as well as additional Hezbollah military infrastructure in southern Lebanon.

In Lebanon, the state-run National News Agency said that one of the Israeli airstrikes killed three paramedics with Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Society in the border village of Oddaiseh.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah said its fighters aborted two infiltration attempts the night before by Israeli troops into a border area in southern Lebanon. It also said that its fighters carried out three attacks targeting Israeli posts along the border.

In Beirut, Hochstein, a senior adviser to President Biden, began his talks by meeting Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally. He later met with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the army commander, Gen. Joseph Aoun.

“The United States remains committed to advancing lasting security solutions achieved through diplomatic process,” Hochstein told reporters after he met Berri. He said such a move would allow tens of thousands of Lebanese and Israelis who were displaced by the conflict “to safely return” to their homes.

Hochstein’s visit came as the U.S., Qatar and Egypt have been trying for weeks to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and to convince the Palestinian terrorist group to release some of the scores of hostages it is still holding since the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began, more than 215 Hezbollah fighters and nearly 40 civilians were killed on the Lebanese side while in Israel, nine soldiers and 10 civilians were left dead in the attacks.

“I’m mindful that my arrival comes on the heels of a tense few weeks on both sides of the border,” Hochstein said. “An escalation will certainly not help Lebanon rebuild and advance forward at this critical time in Lebanon’s history,” he added in an apparent reference to Lebanon’s economic crisis since 2019.

“A temporary ceasefire is not enough. A limited war is not containable,” Hochstein said.

Asked if a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip would include Lebanon, he said it wouldn’t necessarily be the case “that when you have a ceasefire in Gaza, it automatically extends. That is why we are here today to be able to have a conversation and discussions” on the situation in Lebanon.

Israeli officials have threatened a wider war in Lebanon if Hezbollah does not withdraw its elite fighters north of the Litani River as stipulated in a 2006 truce that ended a 34-day Israel-Hezbollah war.

Western diplomats have brought forward a series of proposals for a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, most of which would hinge on Hezbollah moving its forces 4 to 6 miles away from the border.

Kassem, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, blasted the United States in a speech Monday during a conference held in the group’s stronghold south of Beirut attended by Muslim clerics from several regional states. He blamed Washington for using its veto power three times to prevent resolutions by the UN Security Council to end the war in Gaza.

“We have said it clearly that whoever wants to be a mediator should mediate to stop the aggression,” Kassem said in his speech. He added that those who don’t want the war to expand in the region should deal with the cause “which is the brutal and criminal aggression by America and Israel against Gaza.”

“Stop the aggression on Gaza, and the war will stop in the region,” he said.

____

Lidman reported from Kiryat Shmona, Israel.

Transport Minister Anthony Loke said Sunday he has invited U.S. technology firm Ocean Infinity to evaluate new evidence that could shed light on the plane’s disappearance. The company would operate under the same terms as in its 2018 search, expanding on the area covered back then and only seeking payment if the wreckage is found.

MH370 vanished on March 8, 2014, on its way from Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The Boeing 777 was carrying 239 people, most of them Chinese nationals, along with citizens of Malaysia, Australia, India and other nations.

The plane dropped off from radar shortly after takeoff and satellite data later showed it veering off course. From there it most likely crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, investigators surmised at the time. Terrorism was suspected and military radar indicated it may have been purposely turned around. Questions were also raised about the pilot’s mental health.

A years-long search was inconclusive, and although some debris washed up onto the east African coast and some Indian Ocean islands, nothing definitive was ever found. The incident led to more aviation-safety measures and has remained among the most confounding mysteries in flight history.

If the new evidence offered by Ocean Infinity seems solid enough to follow up on, Loke said he’d request approval from the Cabinet to sign a new contract with the company. Heartbroken families have never stopped longing for closure.

“The government is steadfast in our resolve to locate MH370,” Loke said at an event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the jet’s disappearance. “We really hope the search can find the plane and provide truth to the next-of-kin.”

“No matter if it is 10 years, 20 years or more, as long as we are still alive … we will not cease to press for the truth,” said Bai Zhong, who is from China and whose wife was a passenger. “We believe the truth will eventually come to light.”

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Fewer than 100 of the inmates held Friday in Port-au-Prince’s National Penitentiary remained behind bars Sunday, according to human rights attorney Arnel Remy, whose nonprofit works in the prison.

Among those who chose to stay were 18 former Colombian soldiers charged in the July 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise. The president’s killing kicked off the latest round of violence across Haiti, where gangs now control an estimated 80% of Port-au-Prince.

“Please, please help us,” one of the Colombians, Francisco Uribe, said in a video shared on social media. “They are massacring people indiscriminately inside the cells.”

The death toll from the prison attack remains unclear, but at least three people were seen lying dead from gunshot wounds at the prison’s entrance Sunday morning.

Gangs also attacked national government buildings, which sit near the prison, in a coordinated assault that began Saturday evening. Prime Minister Ariel Henry was not in the country at the time. He was in Kenya trying to finish a deal for a United Nations-backed Kenyan-led international police force to stabilize the chaos in Haiti.

Jimmy Cherizier, a former elite police officer known as Barbecue who now runs a gang organization, said the goal of the attack was to prevent Henry’s return. He said the gangs would attempt to capture government ministers and Haiti’s National Police chief.

However, the main achievement of Saturday’s assault was the takeover of the prison and the release of thousands of prisoners, including gang leaders.

“A significant number of prisoners released” were “important members of very powerful gangs,” according to Gazette Haiti.

Criminal gangs have gained more and more control of Haiti since Moise was assassinated on July 7, 2021. Haitian police have been overwhelmed and outgunned by the violent organizations.

In October 2023, the UN approved an international military force to be led by Kenya to help contain the violence. Haitian leaders including Henry had been begging for international help for months.

But in January, Kenya’s top court ruled the mission was unconstitutional. Henry had traveled to the East African nation with hopes of salvaging the deal. On Friday, he signed an agreement with Kenyan President William Ruto.

Henry did not comment when asked if he felt safe returning home following the mass prison break.

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International mediators have been working for weeks to broker a deal to pause the fighting before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10. A deal would likely allow aid to reach hundreds of thousands of desperate Palestinians in northern Gaza who aid officials worry are under threat of famine.

The Israelis “have more or less accepted” the proposal, which includes the six-week ceasefire as well as the release by Hamas of hostages considered vulnerable, which includes the sick, the wounded, the elderly and women, said the official.

“Right now, the ball is in the court of Hamas and we are continuing to push this as hard as we possibly can,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House to brief reporters.

Officials from Israel and from Hamas did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A senior Egyptian official said mediators in Egypt and Qatar are expected to receive a response from Hamas during the Cairo talks scheduled to start Sunday.

The talks come amid increasing criticism over the hundreds of thousands struggling to survive in northern Gaza, which has borne the brunt of the conflict that began when the Hamas terrorist group attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing around 250 hostages.

U.S. military planes began the first airdrops of thousands of meals into Gaza, and the militaries of Jordan and Egypt said they also conducted airdrops. Aid groups say airdrops should be only a last resort and instead urge the opening of other crossings into Gaza and the removal of obstacles at the few that are open.

The European Union’s diplomatic service said Saturday that many of the dozens of Palestinians killed or wounded in the chaos surrounding an aid convoy on Thursday were hit by Israeli army fire and urged an international investigation. It said responsibility for the crisis lay with “restrictions imposed by the Israeli army and obstructions by violent extremist(s) to the supply of humanitarian aid.”

Gaza’s Health Ministry raised the death toll from Thursday’s violence to 118 after two more bodies were recovered Saturday. It said the wounded remained at 760.

Israel’s chief military spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said Israel organized Thursday’s humanitarian convoy, “and claims that we attacked the convoy intentionally and that we harmed people intentionally are baseless.”

Residents in northern Gaza say they are searching rubble and garbage for anything to feed their children, who barely eat one meal a day. Many families have begun mixing animal and bird food with grain to bake bread.

At least 10 children have starved to death, according to hospital records in Gaza, the World Health Organization said.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from the war has climbed to 30,320. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures, but says women and children make up around two-thirds of those killed.

In Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of the territory’s people now seek refuge, an Israeli airstrike on Saturday struck tents outside the Emirati hospital, killing 11 people and wounding about 50, including health workers, the Health Ministry said. Israel’s military said it was targeting Islamic Jihad terrorists.

Israel’s air, sea and ground offensive has reduced much of densely populated northern Gaza to rubble.

Roughly one in six children under 2 in the north suffer from acute malnutrition and wasting, “the worst level of child malnutrition anywhere in the world,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program, said this week. “If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza.”

People have overwhelmed trucks delivering food and grabbed what they can, Skau said, forcing the WFP to suspend deliveries to the north.

In the violence Thursday, hundreds of people rushed about 30 trucks bringing a predawn delivery to the north. Palestinians said nearby Israeli troops shot into the crowds. Israel said they fired warning shots toward the crowd and insisted many of the dead were trampled. Doctors at hospitals in Gaza and a U.N. team that visited a hospital said large numbers of the wounded had been shot.

Acknowledging the extreme need for food, President Biden said the U.S. would look for other ways of delivery, “including possibly a marine corridor.” Aid workers say a ceasefire will help.

Israel and Hamas held a one-week ceasefire in late November. The truce brought about the release of about 100 hostages — mostly women, children and foreign nationals — in exchange for about 240 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, as well as a brief halt in the fighting.

Outrage is rising over the desperation of hundreds of thousands struggling to survive in northern Gaza after nearly five months of fighting between Israel and Hamas. United States military planes began the first airdrops of thousands of meals into Gaza, and the militaries of Jordan and Egypt said they also conducted airdrops.

The European External Action Service said responsibility for the crisis lay with “restrictions imposed by the Israeli army and obstructions by violent extremist(s) to the supply of humanitarian aid.”

Residents in northern Gaza say they have taken to searching piles of rubble and garbage for anything to feed their children, who barely eat one meal a day. Many families have begun mixing animal and bird food with grain to bake bread. International aid officials say they have encountered catastrophic hunger.

At least 10 children have starved to death, according to hospital records in Gaza, the World Health Organization said.

Northern Gaza has borne the brunt of the conflict that began when the Hamas terrorist group launched an attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing around 250 hostages.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from the war has climbed to 30,320. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures, but says women and children make up around two-thirds of those killed.

In Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of the territory’s people now seek refuge, an Israeli airstrike on Saturday struck tents outside the Emirati hospital, killing 11 people and wounding about 50, including health workers, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

Israel’s air, sea and ground offensive has reduced much of densely populated northern Gaza to rubble. The military told Palestinians to move south, but as many as 300,000 people are believed to have remained.

Roughly one in six children under the age of 2 in the north suffer from acute malnutrition and wasting, “the worst level of child malnutrition anywhere in the world,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program, said this week. “If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza.”

People have overwhelmed trucks delivering food aid to the region and grabbed what they can, Skau said, forcing the WFP to suspend aid deliveries to the north.

In the violence Thursday, hundreds of people rushed about 30 trucks bringing a predawn delivery of aid to the north. Palestinians said nearby Israeli troops shot into the crowds. Israel said they fired warning shots toward the crowd and insisted many of the dead were trampled.

Doctors at hospitals in Gaza and a U.N. team that visited a hospital there said large numbers of the wounded had been shot.

As people reached the trucks, “tanks started firing at us,” said Radwan Abdel-Hai, a father of four young children.

Abdel-Hai took shelter in a nearby building. When the shooting stopped, many dead people were on the ground with shots in their back, he said.

Acknowledging the difficulty of getting aid in and the extreme need for food, U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.S. would look for other ways to get shipments in, “including possibly a marine corridor.”

Jordan’s military said its own airdrops targeted sites in northern Gaza and the drops it coordinated with the U.S. occurred in the south.

But the EU statement said airdrops “should be the solution of last resort as their impact is minimal and not devoid of risks to civilians.” It called for the opening of further ground crossings into Gaza and the removal of obstacles from the rare ones open.

Aid workers hoped a possible cease-fire would help. A senior Egyptian official said cease-fire talks would resume Sunday in Cairo.

International mediators hope to reach agreement on a six-week pause in fighting, and an exchange of some Israeli hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10.