
Kite surfer's 30ft jump — and more news in pictures
Andrew Shield making beer at the family-owned World Top Brewery in Driffield, East Yorkshire
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOP
Steve Wheeler, 76, has the largest collection of milk bottles in the UK, having amassed more than 26,000 since the 1980s. He recently admitted he hates milk and hasn't had a glass in 65 years
EMMA TRIMBLE/SWNS
The Greek army's Apache helicopters send vegetation whirling during a US-led military exercise in Petrochori, northern Greece
THANASSIS STAVRAKIS/AP
Camels and sheep at a livestock market before the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha — the Feast of Sacrifice — in Tripoli, Libya
XINHUA/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
The Dalai Lama, 89, presides over an event in Dharamshala, India, during which exiled Tibetans gathered to pray for his long life
ASHWINI BHATIA/AP
The actor Hugh Jackman greeted fans and signed autographs outside Minetta Lane Theatre in New York before riding away on a bicycle
BAUER-GRIFFIN/GC IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES
Sun conures, also known as sun parakeets, huddle close together at Bird Gardens Scotland in Oxton
PHIL WILKINSON
Runners compete in the inaugural Annapurna Marathon in Myagdi, Nepal, marking 75 years since the first ascent of the world's tenth-highest peak
PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
ATTILA KOVACS/EPA
ZHOU SHEGEN/XINHUA/ALAMY
ROBERT HUGHES/DEVON SEA SAFARI/BNPS
Mexican women in traditional attire attend Pope Leo's weekly general audience in St Peter's Square, Vatican City
FABIO FRUSTACI/EPA
Inmates compete in a boxing tournament at the Central Prison in Sofia, Bulgaria
VASSIL DONEV/EPA
Dua Lipa performs at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
KRISTY SPAROW/ABA/GETTY IMAGES
A photographer is photographed in front of Where Am I Now?, by the Cypriot artist Maria Loizidou, in Liverpool Cathedral, part of the Liverpool Biennial, Britain's largest free contemporary arts festival

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Telegraph
15 minutes ago
- Telegraph
An extraordinary debut from a young British writer, plus the best novels of June
Saraswati ★★★★★ by Gurnaik Johal According to Hindu scripture, the Saraswati was one of the great rivers of ancient India. In this ambitious debut, named for that river, by the British Indian writer Gurnaik Johal, a young man of similar heritage from Wolverhampton travels to his ancestral village in the Punjab following his grandmother's death. On his last visit, as a child, the well on her farm had been dry for decades. But now Satnam finds water in it. Could, as the villagers claim, this be the return of the Saraswati? The politicians who get wind of it certainly think so. If Satnam will just sign over the land, they tell him, he could be part of an 'era-defining project' to resurrect the river and 'return our country back to its former greatness'. Satnam, who's unemployed, going through a breakup and looking for a sense of purpose, cannot sign fast enough, and is soon committing acts of thuggery to encourage other landowners to do the same. We're made to wait to find out what happens to him, as the novel then cuts to the Chagos Islands and the story of a Mauritanian pest exterminator; indeed, each of Saraswati's seven long sections concern a different main character. But we continue to hear about the Saraswati, the Narendra Modi-esque prime minister who's elected on the promise of resurrecting it, and the rising tensions between India and Pakistan over the project's contravention of a water treaty. Saraswati is a sobering parable: we corrupt what is miraculous. Yet Johal never loses sight of his characters. In one section, a Canadian eco-saboteur keeps watch for her comrades as they sabotage a lumber mill. She has heard that their next target is where her mother works and phones her, casually suggesting she take some time off. But she can't say what for. It's a brilliantly charged scene. Johal's other characters include an asexual Kenyan academic, a Bollywood stuntman, a 15-year-old Pakistani influencer and a nameless female journalist: all very different, all well realised. Then, there's Sejal, a 16-year-old girl when we first meet her in 1878, 'destined to live the life of her mother, who had lived the life of her mother'. She elopes to the Punjab with a man called Jugaad, but still ends up living the narrow, destitute life she's hoped to escape. It seems an incongruous tale to be telling, until we realise it's the same tale – that our seven present-day characters are all Sejal's descendants. The connection forms a beautiful counterpoint with the Saraswati storyline. There, like the proverbial flap of a butterfly's wings, a small thing escalates into something terrible; here, the reverse happens – that is, from someone seemingly insignificant comes an amazingly various diaspora. But then almost everything in Saraswati works beautifully. Johal has written a major novel, and at his very first attempt. GC Saraswati is published by Serpent's Tail at £16.99. To order your copy, call 0330 173 0523 or visit Telegraph Books So People Know It's Me ★★★★☆ by Francesca Maria Benvenuto On Nisida, an island off the coast of Naples and site of a notorious juvenile prison, one inmate called Zeno – a 15-year-old who has been detained for shooting and killing another boy – is given a simple task by his Italian teacher, Ms Martina: write down what you're thinking, and you'll get furlough for Christmas. Zeno duly complies. And so through a run of sprawling entries that make up Francesca Maria Benvenuto's engrossing debut novel, So People Know It's Me, we learn about Zeno's life both before prison and inside it. There's his impoverished upbringing, which forced his mother to resort to sex work; descriptions of friends he's made on the inside, among them a guard called Franco; his girlfriend, Natalina; and the story of his slow capture by a world of criminal drug gangs that has led him to where he is now. Almost instantly, we see that Benvenuto is presenting us with that most tempting of literary archetypes: the loveable rogue, who despite having committed some of the most awful acts imaginable, still wins our sympathy through charm, and – in the case of a young criminal such as Zeno – the glimpses of innocence he occasionally betrays. We see this, and we prepare ourselves not to be taken in by it. Only here, through the unusual twists and turns of Benvenuto's narrative, the trick of the archetype works on us all the same. Compelling though this is, So People Know It's Me has an equally strong sales pitch: Benvenuto is an accomplished criminal lawyer who has defended minors in court. Her book draws from the experiences of her mother who – just like Ms Martina – worked as a teacher on Nisida, home to a very real prison for young people. And yet Benvenuto avoids wielding that authority too heavily. She never bashes over our heads the very legitimate moral problems of housing minors in a prison complex as on Nisida; rather, intimate experience affords her an empathy that feels real without being sentimental. Zeno is under no illusions that what he has done is wrong – but that does not make him less human or beyond hope. With time, his simple writing exercise becomes a project of self-realisation; near the end of the novel, Zeno begins to envision a life for himself beyond prison, perhaps even as a writer. As befits her setting near Naples, Benvenuto's original prose blends Italian with Neapolitan. Inevitably, the translator Elizabeth Harris has replaced this interplay between two languages with just one: but the more diminished English, with Zeno's voice peppered with vague colloquialisms, feels as though it belongs everywhere and nowhere at once ('she don't got no problems'). And where Harris has let the occasional Neapolitan word or phrase stand on its own – strunz, scornacchiato, 'nnammurata – we're only reminded of a layer of meaning that has been lost. This dualism is important, though: in particular, I'm left wondering where Benvenuto might have originally slipped into Neapolitan to distinguish between other dualities, such as between social classes or children and adults. (That isn't to criticise Harris's work, however. Another translator might have cast the Neapolitan in another mutually intelligible dialect – imagine a back and forth between English and Scots – but the specificities of Italy would still be lost.) But perhaps this musing is all too hypothetical, and in any case, the unavoidable compromises of translation aren't enough to detract from Benvenuto's strength as a storyteller. Her messaging is similarly deft: everybody is simultaneously the product of structural problems and also not, as Zeno proves. Good people can arise even from difficult circumstances and vice versa. That's a philosophy that survives change and iteration – and is always worth retelling. DMA


Reuters
38 minutes ago
- Reuters
In pictures: Muslims around the world celebrate Eid al-Adha
[1/24] A Palestinian girl in traditional attire poses for a picture, on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha on the Al-Aqsa compound, also known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City June 6, 2025. REUTERS/Ammar Awad Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab


Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Hugh Jackman gives small Melbourne theatre huge celebrity endorsement
Hugh Jackman has given a huge shout out to a little local theatre in regional Victoria. The Aussie A-lister, 56, took to his Instagram Stories on Saturday to drum up support for his old drama school mate, Mark Constable, who is putting on an Australian comedy in Macdeon. 'I recommend you go and check out this gem of a play. It's an Aussie play. 'For people who are in Australia, or wherever you are in the world, if you want to go down to Mount Macedon just outside Melbourne - there is an incredible little theatre called the Mountview theatre,' Hugh said. 'And they are doing a production of the Appleton Ladies Potato Race. It's a gem of a play. It will move you. It will make you laugh. You will laugh your heads off. 'It's directed by a great mate of mine that I went to drama school with, Mark Constable, who is awesome. He told me to say he's a genius. He's great.' The Aussie A-lister, 56, took to his Instagram Stories on Saturday to drum up support for his old drama school mate, Mark Constable, who is putting on an Australian comedy 'The Appleton Ladies Potato Race' at the Mountview Theatre in Macedon from June 13 'It's at a regional theatre and it's going to be phenomenal,' the Wolverine star continued in his glowing endorsement. The Mountview theatre has a capacity of 100 and the play will run for three weekends from June 13 to June 29. 'Although I have a funny feeling it may get extended,' Hugh said. 'When Penny Anderson, the town's new GP, returns to her childhood home of Appleton, she's shocked to find the local potato race prize still sits at $1000 for men and just $200 for women,' a synopsis for the play reads. 'Determined to change this outdated tradition, she sets out on a mission to even the playing field. But not everyone is on board, especially the no-nonsense Bev, who sees Penny as another city slicker disrupting country ways.' Margot Knight, Shayne Francis, Sharnie Page, Sophie Cleary and Sheila Kumar star in the 'big-hearted Australian comedy.' Hugh, who is currently starring in his one-man live show at Radio City and his new off-Broadway play 'Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes', recently appeared on Good Morning America to talk about why he returned to the stage. 'I felt I wasn't doing the thing I loved to do enough,' he revealed. 'I wasn't acting enough. I love the theatre. I think it should be available for everyone.' 'Sometimes I feel more relaxed on stage than I do in life,' Hugh admitted during his sit down interview. 'I don't know what it is. I'm living the dream.' In Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, Hugh engages in multiple steamy make-out sessions with his 25-year-old co-star, Ella Beatty. The pair were seen larking around in rehearsals this week. Hugh had his arm wrapped around the budding actress, who is the daughter of Hollywood legend Warren Beatty, and he beamed from ear to ear as he gave the camera a thumbs up. It follows reports that Hugh is turning up the heat on stage - as he continues to date his new girlfriend, Broadway actress Sutton Foster. Foster, 50, even made a backstage appearance this week, trying to quiet whispers that their new relationship has been on shaky ground since going public in January. But the show's raunchy moments can't be easy to watch for Foster, who reportedly struck up an offstage relationship with the Greatest Showman star while playing his love interest onstage. Adding more fuel to the gossip mill, fresh photos of the pair holding hands during the curtain call have sent tongues wagging. Offstage, Hugh's own split from Deborra-Lee Furness seems to mirror the emotional storm The two beamed with pride, looking completely at ease with the intimate gesture. It's not just the steamy make-out scenes turning up the heat — Hugh also unleashes a barrage of expletives, including blunt, graphic lines about a college cheerleader 'sucking his c***' Offstage, Hugh's own split from Deborra-Lee Furness seems to mirror the emotional storm. The actor, who has only been married once, announced his split from Deborra-Lee Furness, 69, in September 2023 after 27 years of marriage. In a joint statement at the time, they said they were 'shifting' and had decided to 'separate to pursue our individual growth.' The couple share two adopted children, Oscar, 24, and Ava, 19. Hugh and Sutton's relationship reportedly overlapped with the end of his marriage.