Two goals from Caitlin Foord and one apiece from Stina Blackstenius, Beth Mead and Victoria Pelova ensured Arsenal earned a 5-1 win over ­Leicester and moved within three points of the Women’s Super League leaders, Chelsea, albeit ­having played a game more.

Renée Slegers’s side may have been firm favourites going into the game against the team 10th, but things have not been entirely smooth despite their ­formidable form. Arsenal were punished in the latest international break, with the forwards Chloe Kelly and Alessia Russo forced to withdraw from the England squad through injury; it was “a little early” for the duo to return to face ­Leicester, said Slegers. The ­goalkeeper Daphne van ­Domselaar is a more long-term absentee after she sustained an ankle injury in the Netherlands’ 1-0 win over Austria.

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County to cut budget by almost $90m as it tackles nearly $2bn in fire-related costs and cuts to federal funding

Los Angeles county is experiencing unprecedented financial challenges amid growing costs from the historic wildfires that ravaged the region earlier this year and a $4bn sex abuse case settlement, the county CEO said this week.

The region faces roughly $2bn in expenses related to January’s fires, which killed 30 people and destroyed nearly 17,000 structures. Earlier this month the county announced it had a $4bn agreement to settle thousands of claims of sexual abuse in juvenile facilities dating back 1959 – the largest such settlement in US history.

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• Talk of ‘ remontada ’ is rife despite 3-0 first-leg deficit
• Arteta wants Arsenal to try to ‘dominate’ in Europe

Real Madrid’s history has loomed large with its epic comebacks but now it is time for Arsenal to write their own, Mikel Arteta says. For all the noise and the narrative, for all that many have crumbled here against the European champions, the Arsenal manager insisted that there is no fear and that his team are ready to step into the Bernabéu. He reminded everyone of a simple fact lost at times over the last seven days: they do lead this tie, 3-0. “If I had to pick one of the scenarios that I want the most, it would be this one,” he said.

Asked if there was any fear, the Arsenal manager replied: “No, I wouldn’t use that word.” Instead, he talked of “respect, admiration and values, an inspiration for any team and any manager” and that was how he is framing this game. Not as something to be scared of, although he admitted that it would be “impossible” to completely block out the noise, and that the “narrative is fuel for them”, but something to aspire to: this is a night they must enjoy, he said, and one that he would like to play in himself.

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UBC and others report spike in interest from US citizens as Trump withholds funds and revokes foreign student visas

More students living in the United States are applying to Canadian universities or expressing interest in studying north of the border as Donald Trump cuts federal funding to universities and revokes foreign student visas.

Officials at the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Vancouver campus said the school reported a 27% jump in graduate applications as of 1 March from US citizens for programs starting in the 2025 academic year, compared with all of 2024.

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Court hands out sentences of five and a half years for extremism, accusing journalists of working for the late politician’s Anti-Corruption Foundation

A Russian court has convicted four journalists of extremism for working for an anti-corruption group founded by the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny and sentenced them to five and a half years in prison each.

Antonina Favorskaya, Konstantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin and Artyom Kriger were found guilty of involvement with a group that had been labeled as extremist. All four had maintained their innocence, arguing they were being prosecuted for doing their jobs as journalists.

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Sentenced with wife Nadine Heredia, Humala is third president of Peru imprisoned for corruption in past 20 years

A Peruvian court has sentenced former president Ollanta Humala and his wife, Nadine Heredia, to 15 years in prison for laundering funds received from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht to finance Humala’s 2006 and 2011 campaigns.

The judges of the national superior court found that Humala and Heredia received several million dollars in illegal contributions for these campaigns from Odebrecht and the government of the then Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez.

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Amy Schumer, Olivia Wilde and Olivia Munn are among the famous names calling out the much-publicised space trip

The all-female Blue Origin rocket launch may have received plenty of glowing media coverage – but not everyone is impressed.

The stunt has drawn criticism from a number of female celebrities who were not keen on the Jeff Bezos -owned Blue Origin NS-31 mission, which included Katy Perry, Bezos’s fiancee Lauren Sanchez, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, film producer Kerianne Flynn and, in a twist straight out of Apple TV’s The Morning Show, CBS Mornings host Gayle King.

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Move follows Algiers’ expulsion of diplomats, after France’s arrest of man linked to abduction of influencer Amir DZ

France has expelled 12 Algerian consular and diplomatic officials and recalled its ambassador in Algiers, the French presidency said on Tuesday, in a retaliatory measure as a spat escalates between the two countries.

“The Algerian authorities are responsible for the sudden degradation of our bilateral relations,” President Emmanuel Macron’s office said.

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The trip leaned on a vision of women’s empowerment that is light on substance and heavy on a childlike, girlish silliness

There are some spectacles of US decadence and decline that almost seem too on the nose – the sort of orgies of vulgar provocation or fantastic lack of self-awareness that exceed the limits of parody, so that if they were in a novel, you’d think the writer was laying it on a little thick. Among these is the all-women flight by Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-owned rocket tourism company, which on Monday launched a phallically shaped pod full of women – including the pop star Katy Perry and Bezos’s partner, Lauren Sánchez – on a brief trip into space .

The flight, which was promoted for months in advance, was touted as a triumph of feminism, a win for science and an embrace of the kind of expansive, curious human spirit of striving and possibility that once animated both. Instead, the flight served as a kind of perverse funeral for the America that once enabled both scientific advancement and feminist progress – a spectacle that mocked these aspirations by appropriating them for such an indulgent and morally hollow purpose.

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