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Sixty years after France and Germany signed a treaty to cement their friendship, the two countries will hold a bilateral summit in Paris on Sunday. President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Olaf Scholz will speak before scores of ministers and parliamentarians at the Sorbonne. They will then hold a joint cabinet meeting, and finish with dinner à deux.

The summit comes at a tricky time. Russia’s war on Ukraine has exposed longstanding differences between the two countries, notably over defence and energy. The two governments have struggled to find common ground; their leaders lack personal chemistry. Some countries closer to Russia’s borders argue that France and Germany have lost their leadership roles in Europe.

But such troubles will doubtless be put aside during the festivities in Paris. France and Germany often disagree, only to find a way to resolve their differences. The pair have little option but to keep trying, however difficult it seems right now.

A different mood will loom over Sunday’s public gatherings for Roe v Wade Day, the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. Seven justices backed Roe in 1973; last June, five voted to ditch it as “egregiously wrong from the start”. Organisers are pitching Sunday’s rallies as “bigger than Roe” and a fight “for a feminist future”.

In the past few months, pro-choicers have won several state-level skirmishes over reproductive rights. Six states—including Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan—have held referendum votes that either solidified abortion rights or repelled efforts to undermine them. A new rule from the Food and Drug Administration makes abortion pills easier to acquire in many pharmacies and by mail. Overall, though, the horizon for abortion rights is grim in post-Roe America. Women in at least 13 states who could legally end their pregnancies a year ago now lack that right.

This weekend the remaining eight teams in contention for the NFL championship on February 12th will be whittled down to four. For the first time in 13 years, neither the 45-year-old Tom Brady, whose Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost to the Dallas Cowboys last weekend, nor the 39-year-old Aaron Rodgers, whose Green Bay Packers missed the playoffs, are among the final octet. All eight remaining quarterbacks are in their 20s. Which ones prove as enduring as Mr Brady and Mr Rodgers remains to be seen.

The weekend’s most compelling storyline may be in Buffalo, where the Bills face the Cincinnati Bengals for the second time in three weeks. Their last meeting ended without a winner: the game was cancelled when Damar Hamlin collapsed with a stopped heart after taking a helmet to the chest. But with the Bills struggling against the Dolphins last weekend, the Kansas City Chiefs, who have appeared in two of the past three Super Bowls, are the bettors’ clear favourite to win the title.

Perhaps not since 1948 and “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson’s tale of ritualised cruelty in an American town, has one of the New Yorker’s short stories attracted so much attention. “Cat Person”, by Kristen Roupenian, became an internet sensation after its publication in 2017. It has now been adapted into a film, which premieres this weekend at the Sundance Film Festival.

“Cat Person” describes a brief, discomfiting liaison. Margot (Emilia Jones), a 20-year-old student, meets Robert (Nicholas Braun, of “Succession” fame), a 34-year-old man. They flirt, text and go on a date. That evening, despite Margot’s increasing revulsion, they have sex.

Female readers saw it as a distillation of the grim lengths to which women will go to avoid seeming, in Margot’s words, “spoiled and capricious”. Male readers argued that Robert merely followed his date’s lead. The new film will reignite the discussion about the power dynamics of contemporary relationships.

“Kind, very kind” was how a fellow patient remembered the man she knew as Andrea Bonafede. In a television interview, the woman described how he had befriended her while they were undergoing chemotherapy at the Maddalena hospital in Palermo, Sicily. “Andrea”, whose colon cancer was spreading to his liver, had swapped telephone numbers not just with her but with some of her girlfriends. Then on Monday he was arrested, identified as Italy’s most wanted man, Matteo Messina Denaro, and accused of some of the most appalling crimes in Italy’s recent history.

Nicknamed U Siccu (the skinny one) and more sinisterly as Diabolik, Mr Messina Denaro was among the Sicilian Mafia bosses who felt themselves so powerful in the early 1990s that they could take on the state. He was a leading ally of the Corleonesi clan, which originated in the market town of Corleone and which wrested control of Cosa Nostra with a campaign of unparalleled savagery. It was he and his friends who planted the bombs that killed the anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino and who mounted a campaign of terror attacks to try to bend the government of the day to their will.

Mr Messina Denaro had the reputation of a playboy—elegant and with a taste for fast cars and attractive women. Indeed. The police found that “Mr Bonafede’s” watch was worth €35,000 ($37,800). His fellow patient noted that, even in the torrid heat of a Sicilian summer, “Andrea” always arrived at the hospital in a formal, long-sleeved shirt.

For many years it was assumed that he had succeeded the Corleonesi’s leader, Salvatore Riina, as “Boss of Bosses”. But the latest view is that, while a symbol of the Mafia’s ability to defy the law, he was never more than the kingpin in his native province of Trapani. Still, the significance of Mr Messina Denaro’s arrest is that he was the last of those bosses still at large more than 30 years later. His capture sends a powerful message that the state always wins, eventually.