Canada’s two-day summit with the European Union closed in Montreal on Friday with a pact its architects call the Alliance for the Future. Mark Carney, Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa announced deals on digital trade, critical minerals and access to European supercomputers, plus a Canadian contribution to a €90bn loan for Ukraine. Carney went further than ever before: Canada, he said, is working to become the bloc’s first associate member, with talks to conclude in June.

No such status exists, and there lies the difficulty. Germany reportedly called the phrase a red line, and it was struck from the joint statement, which promises instead “an ever-closer association … short of full membership itself”. Sceptics fear a hollow title that would baffle countries genuinely queueing to join. Carney insists the alliance is not retaliatory but a way of “reinforcing sovereignty”; Donald Trump has warned of fresh tariffs should he judge it unfriendly.

Several hundred people gathered outside the US embassy in south London on Saturday, holding cardboard signs reading “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”. The Metropolitan Police announced 139 arrests, most of them for expressing support for a proscribed organisation; a parallel vigil was held in Edinburgh. Commander Adam Slonecki said those attending were “essentially meeting to purposefully commit a crime”. Campaigners put the total at more than 4,000 arrests since the ban took effect.

The group was proscribed in July 2025 after activists broke into RAF Brize Norton and caused an estimated £7m of damage to two aircraft — conduct the government calls terrorism, whatever the cause behind it. Its critics, including clergy and pensioners among Saturday’s detainees, argue that counter-terrorism powers are swallowing peaceful protest. The courts are divided too: the High Court found the ban disproportionate in February, the Court of Appeal restored it in June, and the Supreme Court hears the final appeal on Wednesday.

At their first World Cup, Fiji’s Bulikula ran in eleven tries to beat France 54-6 at Cbus Super Stadium on the Gold Coast, sealing a place in the last four. Tahlia Marshall scored twice, taking her tournament tally to five; France replied through Stecy Bessiere early in the second half. Having pushed New Zealand’s Kiwi Ferns to an 18-12 finish in their opening match, Sereana Naitokatoka’s side now meet the world champions, Australia, in Sydney next Sunday.

The result caps a remarkable run for a country of fewer than a million people, and the women’s rise contrasts sharply with the same afternoon’s men’s fixture, in which the Fiji Bati were overwhelmed 78-0 by New Zealand. Critics of the tournament’s expansion point to precisely such lopsided scorelines; its defenders answer that the only way for emerging nations to close the gap is to keep facing the best. The Bulikula have just supplied the better argument.