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

Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade strikes as Trump tells US media he has asked Netanyahu to be more ‘low-key’ in Lebanon

• 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

Prime minister says conversation with US president on Thursday night focused on need for ‘practical plan’ to open strait of Hormuz

Ministers will legislate so that tech bosses who fail to remove nonconsensual intimate images posted online will be held personally liable and risk fines or even jail.

The Ministry of Justice has announced that it is going to include the sanctions in the form of an amendment to the crime and policing bill, which has nearly finished is passage through parliament.

The first of these vital measures will ban anyone from possessing or publishing harmful pornography that shows incest between family members, and sex between step or foster relations where one person is pretending to be under 18.

A further amendment will criminalise the publication and possession of pornography where an adult is roleplaying as a child.

This government is uncompromising in our mission to protect women and girls online, and we have taken action to stop tech firms from publishing this abusive content.

In February, we told platforms that they must remove reported non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours.

I greatly welcome the government’s plans to fully address harmful pornographic content such as incest, step-incest and the mimicking of child sexual abuse. This content that is freely and widely available online is deeply harmful, normalising child sexual abuse and abusive relationships within families …

Today the government has answered our calls for change, and I am delighted that once again the UK is leading the way on regulating this high harm industry.

Starmer implied that he declined the opportunity to tell Donald Trump in person how “fed up” he is about the president’s impact on UK energy bills (see 9.01am) when they spoke last night. He said their focus in the call was on the need for a “practical plan” to open the strait of Hormuz. He also said he had told the president that leaders of the Gulf countries stressed to him that, if the ceasefire is to hold, they should be involved in the plan for the region’s future. Starmer was being interviewed by Robert Peston, who conducted the interview yesterday in which the PM said he was “fed up” with energy prices going up in the UK because of wars started by Trump and Vladimir Putin. Peston asked if Starmer raised this in his call with Trump, but the PM did not address that point and said they spent “most of the time on the call talking about the practical plan”. (He did not say what that practical plan was.)

Starmer said there among the Gulf states there is “a very strong sense there can’t be tolling or restrictions” on the stait of Hormuz as part of the final settlement.

He said the “overarching impression” from his tour was how much value Gulf countries placed on having the UK as an ally. He said:

The overarching impression here is the importance, as they see it, of us standing with them as an ally, as a friend of theirs at a point of need.

And there’s been reflection on the work that we’ve done with them over the last six to seven weeks, on collective self-defence.

He restated his belief that European members of Nato need to spend more on defence. He made this point when asked about Trump’s threats to withdraw from Nato. Asked if raised these threats in the call, Starmer did not answer directly, but said he was continually saying that Europe needed to do more for Nato.

Whatever outcome of ceasefire talks, the region will have to live with a continuing threat from the regime in Tehran

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Gulf nations will seek to add security partners as they rebuild battered economies after the US and Israel’s war on Iran and deal with an emboldened Tehran.

The Gulf will have to live with a continuing threat from the regime in Iran and its remaining missile arsenal. American bases on their soil turned them into targets for Iran, as it retaliated against a joint attack by the US and Israel.

Lee Milne sentenced to eight years in landmark case after being found guilty of culpable homicide of Kimberly Milne

A man convicted of killing his wife, who took her own life after repeated domestic abuse, has been jailed for eight years in a case seen as a significant legal milestone.

Kimberly Milne, 28, died when she jumped from a bridge in July 2023. Her estranged husband, Lee Milne, was found guilty of culpable homicide last month after a trial at the high court in Glasgow.

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 988 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org