All her future films will be credited with Thandiwe Newton. "That's my name. It's always been my name," she said.
Thandiwe Newton wants her name back.
The "Westworld" actor, who had been going by Thandie Newton, told British Vogue, "I'm taking back what's mine."
Newton's parents, a Zimbabewan princess and a lab technician from Cornwall, England, named her Thandiwe, which means beloved in Shona.
However, as a Black girl in a Catholic school in Cornwall, her name was anglicized. "The W of her name drifted inward, out of sight and earshot, in a futile hope to make her feel less different," British Vogue wrote.
Newton, who is featured on the cover of this year's May issue of the magazine, talked about how racism was present throughout her life. She experienced it in her extracurricular dance classes growing up, when the teacher "annually bypassed the brilliant brown ballerina at trophy time."
It played a role in her auditions. "I've been too Black, not Black enough," Newton said.
Newton added she lost roles when she refused to play to racial and sexual stereotyping. When she won a BAFTA, a British newspaper pointed out that Newton was not really British because one of her parents was Black. "I remember thinking, 'But it's a British win! Why don't you wanna take that?'" Newton said.
Newton used her experiences as fuel for activism, which has become a big part of her life.
Wearing clothes representing her dual heritage on the cover of British Vogue, Newton is not hiding where she comes from, and that includes her name. All her future films will be credited with Thandiwe Newton. "That's my name. It's always been my name," she said.
Ravens steal groceries at Alaska Costco, and more of this week's weirdest news
Ancient mummies to parade through streets of Cairo
Ancient mummies of Egypt's royal pharaohs will emerge from their resting places this weekend and parade through the streets of Cairo in search of a new home. The Ramses II complex is seen.
Ancient mummies of Egypt's royal pharaohs will emerge from their resting places this weekend and parade through the streets of Cairo in search of a new home.
What sounds like the plot of a movie is in fact part of a lavish celebration of Egypt's history and a project to relocate some of its greatest treasures to a new high tech facility.
On Saturday, the mummies of Ramses the Great and 21 of his fellow pharaohs will take part in what is being billed as "The Pharaoh's Golden Parade," a highly anticipated event organized by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
It's reported that the celebrations will include horse-drawn chariots, choirs singing in ancient languages and a plethora of movie stars and dignitaries, but Egyptian authorities have kept official details of the event under lock and key.
"It is a surprise," Ahmed Ghoneim, executive director of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, the institution which will be the final resting place for the mummies, tells CNN.
Nevertheless, it's hard to keep an event of this magnitude a surprise, especially when dress rehearsals recently took place in the center of Cairo. Excited Egyptians snapped photos of custom-made mummy vehicles adorned with golden ancient motifs and hastily uploaded them to social media.
The final move
The aim of the parade is to move the 18 kings and four queens of Egypt, along with their coffins and belongings, from their old home at The Egyptian Museum.
They'll be transported five kilometers (three miles) south, to their new high-tech resting place at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC).
No, not the vast Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza which is also due to open to the public later this year. The NMEC is a completely different museum in Cairo's Fustat neighborhood that will complete a trio of must-see Egyptian-themed museums in and around Cairo.
Although the NMEC had a partial opening in 2017, the parade will signify the grand opening.
"It's a presidential opening," says Ghoneim. And the completion of the Hall of Royal Mummies which looks to be a unique museum experience.
"The whole idea is not the mummies, the whole idea is how you display the mummies... It's how you tell the story, it's the environment, it's the ambiance that you feel when you're getting in," he adds.
Ghoneim says visitors entering the Hall of Royal Mummies will experience something akin to entering a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
All 22 royal mummies are from the New Kingdom, an era where tombs were built underground with hidden entrances to ward off grave robbers. A world apart, and about 600 years, from their flamboyant Old Kingdom royal counterparts who built colossal pyramid tombs.
Kentucky town rallies to restore beheaded Mother Goose
Debris covers the ground after part of the Mother Goose house collapsed on March 24, 2021 in Hazard, Ky. The Kentucky town is rallying to help restore the 80-year-old landmark — an oval shaped building that has a domed roof with the neck and head of a goose sticking out the front. Until last week, that is, when the goose was beheaded by strong winds. But community support for the Mother Goose house is pouring in.
HAZARD, Ky. (AP) — A community in Kentucky is rallying to help restore an 80-year-old landmark — an oval shaped building that has a domed roof with the neck and head of a goose sticking out the front. Until last week, that is, when the goose was beheaded by strong winds.
The owners had put up a Go Fund Me page on March 20, saying the head had moved off its foundation and couldn't be stabilized. They were raising funds to reconstruct it. Then on Wednesday, they posted an update. The head had fallen.
The building has served as a home, a service station, a market and an inn over the years, WYMT-TV reported. Now community support in Hazard is pouring in. As of Saturday afternoon, the Go Fund Me page had raised more than $7,000. The Kentucky Heritage Council in Frankfort has also pledged to help out.
So has Joey McKenney, owner of the Appalachian Apparel Company.
“Last week when they were trying to raise money — they said they were having some problems with the roof and the structure and things like that — and so I just kind of started thinking at that point what we could do to kind of help raise money," he told the station.
He came up with a T-shirt designed to look like an old newspaper clipping with the headline, “Beloved Landmark, Beheaded!” McKenny said they will split with profit on the shirt, which should mean around $6-$8 per shirt going to the fund to rebuild the goose. On Friday, he said he already had orders from people in 11 different states.
Phil Neace, son of former Perry County Judge-Executive Sherman Neace, called the goose's beheading “heartbreaking.”
“People from all over the world have come here and taken pictures of it," Neace said. It’s one of the most photographed places in East Kentucky.”
A man returned from shopping and found 15,000 bees in his car
The bees entered the car when the man was in a grocery store.
A man who went shopping in New Mexico came back to find his car was full of bees. Thousands and thousands of them.
He called 911, as anyone would do if they returned to a car full of insects.
Fortunately for him, the firefighter who responded also happened to be a beekeeper.
Off-duty Las Cruces firefighter Jesse Johnson used his experience as a beekeeper to safely relocate a swarm that invaded a parked car Sunday afternoon.
The man's car was overrun by the swarm of bees after he left his window down at an Albertson's grocery store on Sunday in Las Cruces, the fire department said on Facebook.
"Firefighters learned the owner of the car returned from shopping, placed groceries in his vehicle and started to drive off before noticing the swarm in the backseat," the post said.
As luck would have it, one of their firemen, Jesse Johnson, is a beekeeper in his spare time, and was called upon to come to the rescue, on his day off.
The Las Cruces Fire Department estimates more than 15,000 bees were in the swarm.
Johnson was able to bring the proper equipment to deal with the bees. It took more than two hours for the bees to be removed.
The crew estimated there were more than 15,000 bees, which were relocated to Johnson's property outside city limits.
The department said it doesn't usually deal with bees, but it needed to act quickly for everyone's safety.
"A security guard at Albertson's was stung and it is possible a few patrons may have had close encounters, but no major injuries were reported," the department said.
These Florida troopers thought they were making a traffic stop. Then, they helped deliver a baby
Florida troopers helped deliver a baby after pulling over a speeding car on March 30.
Two Florida Highway Patrol troopers thought they'd be conducting a routine traffic stop early Tuesday morning. But that turned into much more.
A little after 2 a.m. Tuesday, Troopers Michael Allen and Pete Christie saw an SUV speeding on a highway in Seminole County, Florida, according to an incident report.
The troopers pulled over the vehicle and the driver immediately starting waving his hands out of the front window, asking them to approach.
The driver told them his wife was having a baby.
The female passenger in the vehicle was having contractions that were about five minutes apart, the report said, but as the officers talked to the two and waited for an ambulance, her condition worsened.
Allen mentioned there were some communication problems with the radio as they were trying to confirm an ambulance was on the way, the report said.
That's when he sprang into action.
"I approached the female and clearly observed the head of a baby emerging from the female's birth canal," he said in the report. "I was watching for the baby's color and possible issues with the umbilical cord as the baby rapidly emerged and completely exited the canal."
Allen said the father caught the baby and handed it to him, and he patted the baby's back to assist with clearing the lungs.
Both the mother and the baby were taken to a nearby hospital and the father and older sister followed behind them.
Florida Highway Patrol says the family is doing well and confirmed no ticket was issued to the driver. CNN has reached out to the baby's father who did not immediately provide comment.
CNN's Gregory Lemos contributed to this report.
Royal box of chocolates from 1900 discovered in war helmet
A tin of chocolate commissioned by Queen Victoria 121 years ago has been found in eastern England.
From sugary-sweet eggs to luxury chocolate truffles, Easter is a time many will be exchanging treats with their loved ones.
But maybe check the expiration date on the box, just to make sure it was made in this century.
Chocolate commissioned by Queen Victoria 121 years ago has been found in its original packaging in a Boer War helmet case in Norfolk, eastern England.
British confectionery giants Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree manufactured chocolate batches in 1900 to boost morale for soldiers fighting in the Second Boer War in South Africa, although it's not certain which company made this particular tin.
A look inside the 121-year-old chocolate tin showing the chocolate in its original wrapper which has started to deteriorate.
The bar and helmet belonged to the 8th Baronet Henry Edward Paston-Bedingfeld, who fought in the war, said the National Trust in a press release this week.
Staff and members of Paston-Bedingfeld's family found the tin of chocolate in the attic of the conservation charity's Oxburgh Hall among the possessions of his daughter, Frances Greathead, who died last year aged 100.
She was "instrumental" in rescuing the moated 539-year-old building from being sold at auction in 1951 before donating it to the National Trust along with her mother Sybil and cousin Violet.
"It's fully intact but deteriorated a bit now. You can still see a brownish color, but it's not very appetizing for Easter," the property's curator, Lynsey Coombs, told CNN Thursday.
"He may have wanted to keep it as a memento from the Queen or just forgot about it... Or he may have just not liked chocolate," she added.
Coombs said Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree initially refused to brand the chocolate because they were pacifist Quakers who opposed the war in South Africa.
Eventually they caved to Queen Victoria's request and produced 100,000 tins, many of which the soldiers preserved, she added.
The tins, inscribed with messages from the monarch who ruled between 1837 and 1901, each held half a pound of chocolate, said the National Trust.
The British Empire and independent Boer states fought two wars in South Africa, the second of which is commonly known as the Boer War, according to the National Archives. It lasted from 1899 to 1902 and famous fighters include former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle.
Founded in 1895, the National Trust looks after more than 500 historic sites spanning 248,000 hectares. The chocolate and helmet have not been put on display yet, but the charity plans to do so in the future.
For now, curators have wrapped the chocolate in acid-free tissue and stored it in a space with a stable temperature and humidity so that it might last another 100 years, said Coombs.
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