From protecting women’s sport to the return of Russia and keeping the Olympics relevant, the former gold medallist has tough challenges ahead

As a seven-time Olympic swimming medallist, Kirsty Coventry knows a thing or two about navigating choppy waters. But the new International Olympic Committee president now faces the biggest set of challenges to global sport since the 1980s, when boycotts rocked the Moscow and Los Angeles Games. As the 41-year-old prepares to take over from Thomas Bach in June, what issues will she face?

• Gunners bounce back with 4-0 win at Emirates Stadium
• Palace remain bottom after 3-0 defeat at Everton

Arsenal bounced straight back from the disappointment of their midweek defeat away at Real Madrid by comprehensively beating Liverpool 4-0 in the Women’s Super League. Elsewhere, Everton ran out 3-0 winners against Crystal Palace .

Liverpool’s Jasmine Matthews scored two own goals in the game at the Emirates Stadium, as Arsenal proved too strong for Amber Whiteley’s team and her 100% winning start to life as the Merseyside club’s interim head coach came to an end.

Keir Starmer has been dealt a fresh blow to his living standards pledge in advance of the spring statement

Living standards for all UK families are set to fall by 2030, with those on the lowest incomes declining twice as fast as middle and high earners, according to new data that raises serious questions about Keir Starmer’s pledge to make working people better off .

The grim economic analysis, produced by the respected Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) , comes before the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, makes her spring statement on Wednesday in which she will announce new cuts to public spending rather than increase borrowing or raise taxes, so as to keep within the government’s “iron clad” fiscal rules.

As the town prepares for a byelection after Labour’s Mike Amesbury quits, locals say it is time for a change

Spring has finally arrived, and as customers enjoy a drink or two in the sunshine outside Runcorn’s branch of Wetherspoon’s on a Thursday afternoon, some are sympathetic to the local man in the news who has so dramatically fallen from grace.

“If somebody was mouthing off to me so much, I would have knocked him out myself,” says Jason Baldwin. “I don’t believe he should have lost his job.”

• Scotland 24-21 Wales
• Six tries and two red cards in Six Nations opener

Two red cards, six tries, a nip-and-tuck scoreboard and a traditional Scottish deluge falling from the sky. This had pretty much everything and Scotland were the team left standing with a win, but only just, in a pulsating encounter. These sides meet again in August, in Pool B of the Women’s Rugby World Cup, and judging by the skill, physicality and entertainment on show in Edinburgh, that appointment in Salford will be unmissable.

Sarah Bonar, Emma Orr and Leah Bartlett scored tries for Scotland while Helen Nelson kicked a penalty and three conversions – every kick proving important in the final reckoning. Carys Phillips, Abbie Fleming and Gwenllian Pyrs were try-scorers for Wales, who started and finished strongly, but ultimately paid for missing 35 tackles. Credit, too, for the silky attacking skills and forward muscle of Scotland, for whom the wing Fran McGhie was a constant threat.

Further reductions can only increase disability and child poverty, and further undermine public services

Rachel Reeves faces her toughest test yet as chancellor when she delivers the spring statement this Wednesday. In response to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest forecast, which will be published the same day, she is expected to announce further cuts to public spending in several areas, alongside the cuts to disability benefits that the government set out last week. Ministers have spent the past week arguing that these cuts do not technically constitute austerity because they will not be as deep as some of those made during the Conservative years. However, what label you put on these cuts matters far less than their impact. They would increase disability and child poverty and further undermine the provision of public services, an indefensible record for the first term of a Labour government.

Reeves faces the most difficult set of circumstances of any chancellor in recent decades. She has inherited an economy beset by long-term structural problems, exposed by the financial crisis, and that have gone unaddressed by governments of both colours: low levels of business investment, sluggish productivity growth, gaping regional inequalities and, since 2008, stagnant living standards. These were made worse by successive Conservative chancellors after 2010, who introduced tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the better off while slashing financial support for low-income parents – the poorest tenth of families with children lost £6,000 a year on average between 2010 and 2024 as a result of their changes – and who failed to take advantage of historically low interest rates to borrow to invest, instead taking the ideological decision to reduce the size of the state regardless of the consequences.

Scientists say widespread damage to both world heritage-listed reefs is ‘heartbreaking’ as WA reef accumulates highest amount of heat stress on record

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Australia’s two world heritage-listed reefs – Ningaloo on the west coast and the Great Barrier Reef on the east – have been hit simultaneously by coral bleaching that reef experts have called “heartbreaking” and “a profoundly distressing moment”.

Teams of scientists on both coasts have been monitoring and tracking the heat stress and bleaching extending across thousands of kilometres of marine habitat, which is likely to have been driven by global heating.

Cities lose thousands of mature trees a year. On Overbury Drive, neighbours were determined to protect a solitary giant dying red gum – stuck right in the middle of their road

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It’s a striking image; in a suburban landscape where nature has been largely pushed aside to make way for roads, houses and driveways, the thick craggy trunk of a towering river red gum tree stands defiantly in place, forcing the bitumen to squeeze and buckle around it. Bang in the middle of the street.

Barely a day goes by without the residents of Overbury Drive noticing a carload of tourists or curious locals pulling up in their quiet cul-de-sac, cameras at the ready.

• Updates from the 7.45pm GMT time kick-off
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One of the top-30 sides in the world host the team ranked 110th, a collective which has lost ten of its last 11 competitive matches, drawing the other 0-0. On paper, this is as close as it gets to a surefire thing, and thus a hard sell. But then football is football, so you never know … and in any case, Wales right now are just so much goddamn fun . For example, has a goalless draw ever been as enjoyable as this?

Not too often, is the correct answer to that one. So let’s settle down for some more top-drawer Saturday-night light entertainment courtesy of Bruce Forsyth Craig Bellamy and the lads. Kick-off is at 7.45pm GMT. It’s on!