As the razor-sharp lawyer in the 90s hit drama, Nardini’s character epitomised the work-hard, play-hard attitudes of the era. But after going through cancer, divorce and bereavement, the actor decided to retrain

Almost 30 years ago, not long after the final episode of This Life, the BBC series that launched Daniela Nardini’s career, I interviewed her at a swanky hotel in Covent Garden, London. I had expected her to be exactly like her This Life character, Anna Forbes, the provocatively sharp and messy woman now being credited by critics as the prototype for Fleabag. She did not disappoint. My memory of that encounter remains vivid: a giddy hour covering love, ambition, sex and fame. She wore a pink lily in her hair, and wine might have been consumed.

Nardini now lives and works as a therapist in the West End of Glasgow. As I stroll through the tenement-lined streets to interview her, there are other reasons I’m ruminating on the past. In the short walk from the subway, I pass my first home, my nursery and my primary school (now inevitably repurposed as luxury flats). I am getting timewarp vibes at every turn, but the sensation evaporates when Nardini comes to the door. The woman on the threshold has a very different demeanour from the one inhabiting my memory. She remains striking, with the same soft, dark gaze. But what is most compelling is her unsmiling stillness.

Ten years after the referendum, its role as domestic football is still the order of day – and the ex-health secretary is happy to use it in his leadership bid

• Anand Menon is director of The UK in a Changing Europe

Brexit, it seems, is back. Or at least back within the Labour party. Wes wants to be back in (at some point). Andy once said there’s a case, but seems to have changed his mind. Nigel, meanwhile, warns of betrayal.

On one hand, this is all terribly predictable. Winning any Labour leadership race was never going to be possible without staking out a clear and ambitious position on the EU. Most Labour members are remain backers who regret leaving Europe. Even before the beginning of a formal contest, we were always going to see those vying for the top job try to outbid each other.

Data lays bare the extent and geographical spread of attacks in Africa’s most populous country

Data from Acled and the Global Terrorism Index shows that after a few years of improvement, insecurity in Nigeria has worsened. With general elections less than a year away, the crisis has come under increasing scrutiny – both abroad and at home.

Experts say the primary long-term driver of insecurity is a governance vacuum across much of the country. On paper Nigeria is a federation comprising 36 states and 774 local government council areas, but in practice power is heavily centralised at the federal level. Resources trickle down to states in limited quantities and are distributed in far smaller amounts to local government councils, largely at the discretion of governors.

As new settlers clear their forest habitat, the apes are coming into conflict with humans. But simply moving them to another part of the forest may not be the answer

The banana skins were an ominous sign. As was the branch that had been broken off to get to the fruit. Had Edi Ramli walked into the forest, he might have seen scattered balls of bark that had been ripped off trees, chewed like gum, then spat out. It takes a powerful jaw to do that. Closer to Edi’s home, there was an intricate construction of bent and broken branches high in a tree. The nest.

It was October, the fruiting season. The pile of half-eaten bananas was less than a minute’s walk from where Edi and his family slept. He felt nervous. He got on with his day. He picked sweetcorn and sold it at the market. He bought a carton of chocolate milk and biscuits for his grandson. He and his wife, Siti Munawaroh, ran the farm with their three adult children. They prepped the land, sowed seeds, tended crops. Survival depended on what they could grow.

Suifenhe, a small city in China’s economically depressed rust belt, is a microcosm of an evolving Chinese-Russian trading relationship

Suited and booted in a navy twinset tracksuit and colourful high-top trainers, Wang Runguo is hustling. Darting across the gleaming floors of his cavernous car showroom, the 45-year-old from one of China’s poorest provinces is closing on yet another deal. It is all in a day’s work for the man whose salary has more than doubled in the past year thanks to a well-timed pivot: from corn to cars; from China to Russia.

This time last year Wang was working for an agricultural company that grew corn and soya beans for the domestic market. Now he is a manager at Xingyun International Automobile Export, a company founded in August 2025 to cater to the booming new car export industry in Suifenhe, a small city in China’s north-east that borders Russia. “Recently, China and Russia have been moving closer together,” Wang says. “As we move closer, more and more cars are going there.”

With the Greens now a viable alternative, a Labour leader will not win power again without the progressive vote. But they will need to earn it

Labour’s failures have made a rightwing authoritarian government not just a nightmare, but a plausible next chapter. Having enraged its natural voters – many of whom have flocked to the Greens – Labour MPs have clambered on to a lifeboat named Andy Burnham.

Do the rest of us blindly hop on board? Burnham is, indisputably, Labour’s best bet. He is the party’s most popular politician, and surely the figure best placed to win back voters lost to both the Greens and Reform. He has an easy northern charm, and some genuine progressive achievements to his name, secured with the limited powers he has as Greater Manchester’s mayor. But he has also benefited from not being at the centre of the great national political controversies of our age.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

Darren Jones says release will be ‘one of the largest government publications ever laid in this house’

On Friday parliament’s intelligence and security committee issued a damning statement about the government’s response to the humble address requiring the release of documents relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US. It said the government was not fully complying with what is in effect an instruction from the Commons. For good measure, the committee also accuses the government of not keeping proper record of its decisions and of doing far too much business by WhatsApp. Here is our story, by Henry Dyer and Paul Lewis.

At 12.30pm Jeremy Wright, deputy chair of the committee and a former Tory attorney general, will ask a Commons urgent question about this. He is asking Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, to reply.

Scotland Yard to send files to CPS with ‘strong evidence’ of potential wrongdoing – but any trials could be years away

Scotland Yard has said it hopes to bring criminal charges against 77 companies and individuals for the 2017 Grenfell tower fire, in which 72 people died.

The lead investigator, Garry Moncrieff, said his team of 220 detectives had gathered “strong evidence” of potential wrongdoing.

Alex Mahon backs investigations into MAFS UK as Channel 4 removes all seasons of show from streaming platform

Rape allegations made by women who appeared on Married at First Sight (MAFS) UK are “very serious and concerning”, a former Channel 4 chief executive has said.

Alex Mahon said launching an investigation was “the right thing” to do and the seriousness of the allegations meant current protocols around ensuring reality TV programmes met their duty of care to participants would need to be reviewed to ensure “enough is being done”.

The US president said he called off a planned attack on Iran on Tuesday so that peace talks could continue

• Full report: Trump claims planned attack on Iran postponed after Tehran makes new proposal to end war

Iran’s army has warned it would “open new fronts” against the US if it resumes attacks on the country amid reports that Donald Trump is weighing up restarting military operations in Iran amid an impasse in negotiations.

“If the enemy is foolish enough to fall into the Zionist trap again and launches new aggression against our beloved Iran, we will open new fronts against it, with new equipment and new methods,” army spokesperson Mohammad Akraminia said, according to Iran’s ISNA news agency.