My daughter complained of monsters in her closet – at night she could hear a hum in the wall

It started in September 2023, when my daughter Saylor was three years old. She began having trouble sleeping, and said there were monsters in her closet. She could hear a hum in the wall. We thought it was because she loved the movie Monsters, Inc, given it’s about monsters who visit children’s bedrooms at night. We calmed her down by giving her a bottle of water, which we called monster spray.

But soon she was scared again. By February, she was back in our room. Later that month, I saw a giant cluster of bees buzzing by the attic laundry vent outside the house. I was pregnant with our third child, exhausted, and thought I was hallucinating.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

With the BMA making ‘impossible’ demands and Labour responding with Trumpian threats, negotiations are stuck – and it’s the NHS that will suffer

What’s the off-ramp? When I ask one of the negotiating team close to the health secretary, the bleak answer is, “I don’t know.” Resident doctors in England are on another strike, for six days this time. Labour arrived in office bearing a 22.3% pay rise to end the strike it inherited – and it thought it was all over. But within a year, doctors were out again.

This time, negotiations over many weeks seemed to go well, but fell at the last fence: the doctors claimed there was a last-minute watering down and they returned to their fixed stand – restore their pay to its 2008 level, another 26%. “Impossible” is Wes Streeting’s line. He says resident doctors are “by a country mile the standout winners of the entire public sector workforce when it comes to pay rises”. Everything looks stuck, no pasaran on both sides. Why?

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

As The Super Mario Galaxy Movie storms the box office, we look back at the best forgotten games inspired by Tetris, Lemmings and … vitamins?

It should be no surprise that the latest Super Mario movie is smashing box office records – despite the, let’s say mixed, reviews. Nintendo’s iconic plumber has been a pop culture staple for 45 years, starring in some of the bestselling video games ever made, from the original Donkey Kong through to the joyous Super Mario Bros Wonder and the chaotic Mario Kart World.

But as with any storied showbiz career, there have been some lesser works. Who can forget – or actually remember – Hotel Mario, a door-shutting puzzle game for the doomed Philips CD-i console? Or what about Mario Teaches Typing, a 1992 educational game for the PC in which players navigate the Mushroom Kingdom by … correctly inputting words. Yet there have also been genuine treasures lost along the way. Here, then, are seven of our favourite much-overlooked Mario odysseys.

Former Viktor Orbán loyalist and his Tisza party have enjoyed meteoric rise as opposition movement grows

As a child growing up in Budapest, Péter Magyar had a poster of Viktor Orbán – at the time a leading figure in the country’s pro-democracy movement – hanging above his bed. Orbán was one of several political figures that adorned his bedroom, Magyar told a podcast last year, hinting at his excitement over the changes sweeping the country after the collapse of communism.

Now Magyar, 45, is the driving force behind what could be another momentous political change in Hungary: the ousting of Orbán, whose 16 years in power has transformed the country into a “petri dish for illiberalism”.

This week, despite securing a temporary ceasefire with Iran, there were calls from both the left and the right to invoke the 25th amendment of the US constitution to remove Donald Trump from office.

Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith, about the various ways Congress could remove Trump from the White House

Archive: ABC News, Fox News, Tucker Carlson, France 24

US president says that warships are being reloaded with weaponry to strike Iran if Saturday’s Islamabad talks fail to produce a deal

• Netanyahu says there is no ceasefire in Lebanon as Israel launches fresh strikes

The streets of Islamabad are on strict lockdown as Pakistan’s capital prepares to play host to historic negotiations between Iran and the US that have dangled the promise of an end to war that has devastated the Middle East.

Even as the US-Iran ceasefire looked increasingly precarious, amid Israel’s continued bombardment of Lebanon and disputes over the terms of the talks, Pakistani officials insist that the make-or-break peace negotiations will be going ahead over the weekend as planned

The Bible-thumping US defense secretary is overseeing another strategic disaster in the Middle East. Is this a war or a crusade?

Nine months and six days before a Tomahawk missile tore through the gaily decorated classrooms of the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, ripping apart the bodies of schoolchildren, teachers and parents, the personal pastor of the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, delivered a sermon at the Pentagon.

“There’s a temptation to think that you’re actually in control and responsible for final outcomes, especially for those who issue the commands and do the aiming and the shooting,” preached Brooks Potteiger, Hegseth’s closest spiritual adviser, at the first of what have become monthly Christian worship services at the Department of Defense. “But you are not ultimately in charge of the world.”

Summer holidays could be hit unless oil flows through strait of Hormuz recommence within three weeks

Airports have warned that jet fuel could run short within three weeks in Europe if oil supplies do not start to flow through the strait of Hormuz, raising concerns over flight cancellations in the UK and EU going into the summer holiday season.

Jet fuel shortages will become so acute without the resumption of supplies from the Middle East that cancellations across Europe will be inevitable, disrupting travel plans for potentially millions of passengers.

Vehicle veered into a ravine on island of La Gomera while transporting a tour group for a boat excursion

A man has died and 27 people are in hospital after a bus carrying British passengers crashed in the Canary Islands, local officials have said.

The incident happened at 1.15pm local time on Friday when the vehicle veered into a ravine on the GM-2 highway near the town of San Sebastián de La Gomera.