Love is in the air on the Colorado plains – the kind that makes your heart beat a bit faster, quickens your step and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

It’s tarantula mating season, when male spiders scurry out of their burrows in search of a mate, and hundreds of arachnophiles flock to the small farming town of La Junta to watch them emerge in droves.

Scientists, spider enthusiasts and curious Colorado families piled into buses just before dusk last weekend as tarantulas began to roam the dry, rolling plains. Some used flashlights and car headlights to spot the arachnids once the sun set.

Back in town, festival-goers flaunted their tarantula-like traits in a hairy leg contest – a woman claimed the title this year – and paraded around in vintage cars with giant spiders on the hoods. The 1990 cult classic film Arachnophobia, which follows a small town similarly overrun with spiders, screened downtown at the historic Fox Theatre.

For residents of La Junta, tarantulas aren’t the nightmarish creatures often depicted on the silver screen. They’re an important part of the local ecosystem and a draw for people around the US who might have otherwise never visited the tight-knit town in south-eastern Colorado.

Word spread quickly among neighbors about all the people they had met from out of town during the third year of the tarantula festival.

Among them was Nathan Villareal, a tarantula breeder from Santa Monica, California, who said he heard about the mating season and knew it was a spectacle he needed to witness. Villareal sells tarantulas as pets to people around the US and said he has been fascinated with them since childhood.

Colorado Brown tarantulas are the most common in the La Junta area, and they form their burrows in the largely undisturbed prairies of the Comanche national grassland.

In September and October, the mature males wander in search of a female’s burrow, which she typically marks with silk webbing. Peak viewing time is an hour before dusk when the heat of the day dies down.

“We saw at least a dozen tarantulas on the road, and then we went back afterwards and saw another dozen more,” Villareal said.

Male tarantulas take around seven years to reach reproductive readiness, then spend the rest of their lifespan searching for a mate, said Cara Shillington, a biology professor at Eastern Michigan University who studies arachnids. They typically live for about a year after reaching sexual maturity, while females can live for 20 years or more.

The males grow to be about 5in long and develop a pair of appendages on their heads that they use to drum outside a female’s burrow. She will crawl to the surface if she is a willing mate, and the male will hook its legs onto her fangs.

Their coupling is quick, as the male tries to get away before he is eaten by the female, who tends to be slightly larger and needs extra nutrients to sustain her pregnancy.

Like many who attended the festival, Shillington is passionate about teaching people not to fear tarantulas and other spiders. Tarantulas found in North America tend to be docile creatures, she explained. Their venom is not considered dangerous to humans but can cause pain and irritation.

“When you encounter them, they’re more afraid of you,” Shillington said. “Tarantulas only bite out of fear. This is the only way that they have to protect themselves, and if you don’t put them in a situation where they feel like they have to bite, then there is no reason to fear them.”

Many children who attended the festival with their families learned that spiders are not as scary as they might seem. Roslyn Gonzales, 13, said she couldn’t wait to go searching for spiders come sunset.

For the graduate student Goran Shikak, whose arm was crawling with spider tattoos, the yearly festival represents an opportunity to celebrate tarantulas with others who share his fascination.

“They’re beautiful creatures,” said Shikak, an arachnology student at the University of Colorado Denver. “And getting to watch them do what they do … is a joy and experience that’s worth watching in the wild.”

On a clear August morning, Skookum John manoeuvres his fishing boat, Sweet Marie, out of the Tofino harbour and into the deep blue waters of Clayoquot Sound on Canada’s west coast.

On shore, the late summer sun shines on visitors from all over the world who have flocked to the bustling fishing town on Vancouver Island, where they wander in and out of surf shops, art galleries and restaurants and pile into small boats in the hope of glimpsing orca, humpback and grey whales.

“You’ll never find this anywhere in the world,” John says, gesturing through the Sweet Marie’s window at the mosaic of islands and mountains, cloaked in thick green rainforests, that form part of the Clayoquot Sound Unesco biosphere reserve.

The Sweet Marie motors deeper into Clayoquot Sound, past a web of inviting channels and inlets, and cruises past a raft of sea otters resting in the gentle swells. Hunted nearly to extinction, sea otters are one of the celebrated species found in the reserve, along with sea lions, seals, wild salmon and bald eagles.

John, a member of Ahousaht First Nation, makes his living on the water, where he helps train coast guard members in marine rescue, ferries passengers to islands and hot springs and takes visitors on whale watching tours. Today, he is taking members of Clayoquot Action, a conservation group focused on protecting wild salmon, to the site of one of the area’s more controversial industries: open-net pen salmon farms.

Dan Lewis, the co-founder and executive director of Clayoquot Action, is incredulous that industrial salmon farming is allowed to take place in a globally recognised protected area. “Why are we doing this here?” he says, gesturing at the rich waters, home to a colourful array of sea life that includes giant rock scallops, tufted anemones in green, pink and white, dark green kelp forests, red sea urchins and purple-tinged Dungeness crabs.

Clayoquot Sound is also home to some of the last 60 salmon farms left on North America’s west coast. For decades, as many as 100 farms in Canadian waters have raised mostly non-native Atlantic salmon in pens in the Pacific Ocean.

But now the salmon farming industry, blamed for contributing to the collapse of wild salmon stocks, faces an uncertain future. In June, the Canadian government announced a ban on open-net pen salmon farming from coastal waters in July 2029, as part of a commitment “to protecting wild salmon and promoting more sustainable aquaculture practices”.

Concerns about the industry’s impact on wild salmon played a leading role in the closure of about three dozen farms in British Columbia over the past seven years, after Clayoquot Action and other groups documented sea lice outbreaks and other diseases in farmed fish, including at farms along migration routes for wild salmon.

The decision to ban all remaining British Columbia farms, lauded by conservation groups and wild salmon advocates, has been soundly criticised by Canada’s salmon farming industry, which largely consists of multinational corporations that farm salmon around the world, including in the UK. The industry says moving salmon farming to closed containment systems on land or in the water, as the government suggests, is not logistically feasible and would be prohibitively expensive.

For John, who has been campaigning against salmon farms since 2015, the Canadian government’s new 2029 deadline may just be an empty promise, after its earlier, unfulfilled commitment to remove open-net pen salmon farms by 2025. “I won’t believe anything that the government says until I see it happen,” he says, as the Sweet Marie slowly circles a floating salmon farm in a small bay, barely a stone’s throw from the seaweed-strewn shore.

John’s scepticism is shared by Hasheukumiss, hereditary chief of the Ahousaht Nation and president of the Maaqutusiis Hahoulthee Stewardship Society, which manages economic development for the nation. But the two men have very different perspectives on the salmon farming industry, mirroring broader divisions about whether open-net pen farms should be allowed to operate in Canadian waters.

In 2010, the Ahousaht Nation signed an agreement allowing Cermaq Global, a Mitsubishi subsidiary that also farms salmon and trout in Norway and Chile, to operate in its territorial waters. The agreement was subsequently renewed with changes, according to Hasheukumiss, also known as Richard George.

“One of the things that I wanted to address was the environmental concerns because we are the true stewards of our back yard,” he says. “It was the sea lice and the pathogens that were the biggest concerns we had.”

According to Hasheukumiss, Cermaq was responsive and worked with the nation to address that concern.

Hasheukumiss’ assessment of the Canadian government’s handling of fish farms is less rosy. Since he inherited his title in 2020, he says he has discussed the issue with three different cabinet ministers, yet has seen little in the way of consultation with his nation.

A five-year transition away from open-net pen farms is not a realistic timeframe for the industry, he says. “In five years, there is no way this industry – or any industry – can go to fully contained systems.”

As the Sweet Marie noses slowly towards a rectangle of floating walkways bordered by black net fencing, John stands and slips the engine into neutral. He calls out to one of the salmon-farm workers, jokingly asking why he’s pretending to be busy. It’s his nephew, who recently started working at the Cermaq farm, one of 13 facilities in Clayoquot Sound that employ about 20 Ahousaht members.

The two chat while Lewis stands at the Sweet Marie’s bow, peering through the nets to get a view into the pens, as part of the group’s regular monitoring of the industry’s operations.

At an unstocked salmon farm nearby, the Cermaq’s delousing boat, Aqua Service, towers over the Sweet Marie from its berth. The vessel has a large rear deck fitted with a patented delousing system, which pulls fish from the pens and uses seawater to flush off the lice. The treatment process takes just two tenths of a second, aiming to reduce stress and fish deaths.

In Ahousaht territory, Cermaq has been experimenting with technology to reduce the industry’s impact on wild salmon. A semi-closed containment system – consisting of a semi-permeable bag that stretches 25 metres below the water – is used to raise young salmon smolts while reducing their exposure to sea lice. The bag draws water from deep in the water column where sea lice can’t survive.

Fewer sea lice on the farmed smolts make it less likely wild salmon swimming past the farms will pick up the parasites. After a year, the young salmon are moved to open-net pens to grow to marketable size.

The semi-closed containment system Cermaq is trialling is expensive – costing C$20,000 (£11,000) a month in diesel alone. Brian Kingzett, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association, representing Cermaq and other companies, says there is little appetite to make big investments and navigate the time-consuming licensing process for new technology, especially with the future of the industry in question.

“There are lots of reasons why farmers want to go to closed containment for that first year; Cermaq has been trying to do it,” he says. “It took them six years to get a licence. We only have a five-year window.”

Kingzett says the industry was “completely gobsmacked” by the Canadian government’s decision to remove open-net pen salmon farms by 2029, calling closed containment “an unfeasible option”.

Setting up a medium-sized land-based salmon farm, capable of producing 5,000 tonnes of fish a year, could cost C$1.8bn (£1bn), according to a 2022 report commissioned by the British Columbia government. The report’s authors said it was difficult to estimate the costs of setting up large-scale farms because there are no land-based salmon farms in the world that are reliably producing large amounts of fish.

BC’s first land-based salmon farm, Kuterra, is now raising steelhead trout, after achieving barely one-third of its production target, according to the BC government report. Another land-based venture, West Creek, has stopped farming salmon altogether. And on the other side of the country on the Atlantic coast, a land-based salmon farm, Sustainable Blue, suffered a mass die-off, reportedly because of an equipment malfunction, and is now in receivership.

But Lewis says closed containment systems on land are the only option if the Canadian government is serious about protecting wild salmon stocks.

“To our understanding, there is nothing that can actually have zero discharge that’s in the water,” Lewis says. “What we want to see in the next five years is all the farms come out of the water. We don’t believe there are any in-water solutions.”

Kingzett says closing down open-net pen salmon farms will harm small coastal communities. Any land-based containment systems will need to be close to plentiful power and water supplies, not to mention customers, he says.

If BC’s salmon farms disappear, Kingzett is confident farmed salmon will still be sold in the country’s supermarkets – but it will come from places such as Chile and Norway.

Inside the Sweet Marie’s cabin, John has placed a sticker with the hashtag #FishFarmsOut near the helm. He is eager for the industry to leave Ahousaht territory, even if it means losing the money fish farming has brought to the community.

“Wealth isn’t money,” he says. “What we have in our territory, what we have in the ocean, what we have in the air, that’s wealth.”

• This report is a collaboration with The Narwhal, anonline magazine that that reports on environmental issues in Canada

The UK has agreed to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, ending years of bitter dispute over Britain’s last African colony.

The UK expelled the Chagossians in the 1960s and 1970s, in what has been described as a crime against humanity, when it retained possession of what it called the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT, after Mauritius gained independence in 1968.

The agreement follows rounds of negotiations that began in 2022 after Mauritian arguments for sovereignty were recognised by the international court of justice (ICJ), the UN general assembly and the international tribunal of the law of the sea (Itlos) in 2019 and 2021.

Britain was found to have unlawfully separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius before granting independence in 1968. The UK initially defied UN votes and court judgments demanding it return the islands, emphasising that the ICJ ruling was only an “advisory opinion”.

An attempt to halt the negotiations, on the basis that the Chagossians were not consulted or involved, failed.

They are not yet a century old but a collection of black and white photographs taken by a pioneering aerial photographer shows how very different aspects of everyday life are for Britons today.

The images, taken by Arthur William Hobart in the 1930s as he leant out of a biplane, capture people moving about on horse-drawn vehicles as well as in motorised ones, and rivers teeming with working boats.

There are striking images of industrial sites hemmed in by the terraces that housed their employees, and scenes of the British seaside that look a lot more genteel and less crowded than some of today’s brash resorts.

Historic England is releasing pictures from Hobart’s Air Pictures Portleven collection after organising and digitising them.

The collection features 242 images showing national landmarks, towns and cities, industrial sites, construction projects, cliffs and beaches, documenting the era between the two world wars.

Born in 1882 in London, Hobart worked as a baker, commercial traveller and draper’s clerk before turning to aerial photography around 1920.

He was commissioned by the construction industry, industrial sectors and the press, but also took pictures to be sold as postcards to people who were intrigued by a view of their country from a new perspective.

There are images in the collection of beloved buildings such as St Paul’s and Salisbury cathedrals, and pictures of the building of vital pieces of infrastructure such as Battersea power station and Twickenham Bridge in London. Most of the images show England but there are a few taken in Scotland and Wales.

Gary Winter, the engagement and content officer in the participation and learning team at Historic England, said he particularly liked the images that gave a glimpse of life for ordinary Britons, such as those showing the Potteries in Staffordshire with their extraordinary bottle-shaped kilns surrounded by the terrace homes of workers.

He said: “There are some fantastic views showing just how much some of the pottery sites were embedded within the cityscape itself. It shows how much these places of industry were embedded within the communities that actually worked them. There’s a huge contrast to the sort of deindustrialised landscape that we have around us now.”

Winter also likes the images of football grounds. “There’s a really good one of the Dell [Southampton FC’s former home ground]. Streets, houses and a church surround the stadium. The football ground is part of the community.”

The collection takes its name from a misspelling of Porthleven, a Cornish fishing village where Hobart lived in later life.

Duncan Wilson, the chief executive of Historic England, said: “Flicking through these photos lets you take flight over 1930s England, to see the changing face of the country in the interwar period.”

A former top environment official has said the EU’s credibility on its climate commitments has been damaged by plans for a one-year delay to a law to combat deforestation that followed intense lobbying from companies and governments around the world.

Virginijus Sinkevičius, a Lithuanian MEP who was the environment commissioner until mid-July, said postponing the deforestation regulation would be “a step backward in the fight against climate change”.

In a sharp rebuke to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, Sinkevičius, who drafted the legislation that was agreed in 2023, said the 12-month delay would put 80,000 acres (32,375 hectares) of forest at risk each day, fuel 15% of global carbon emissions, break trust with the EU’s global partners and damage its credibility on its climate commitments.

On Wednesday, the European Commission proposed a 12-month delay to the law, which has been hailed by its advocates as the most ambitious in the world to combat deforestation. The law will ban the sale in the EU of commodities linked to deforestation such as cocoa, coffee, soya, palm oil and rubber, as well as products including chocolate, leather and furniture. Companies are required to use satellite monitoring and other checks to ensure their products have not been produced on land deforested or degraded after 31 December 2020.

The delay must be approved by the EU ministers and the European parliament to take effect.

If approved, the law would come into force on 30 December 2025 for large companies and 30 June 2026 for micro and small enterprises.

The call for a delay followed intense lobbying from governments and companies around the world, which argued that the law unfairly penalised exports to Europe and would harm small farmers and businesses.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the commission said a 12-month delay “to phase in the system” was a balanced solution that would support operators around the world in “securing a smooth implementation from the start”.

Countries including Brazil and Australia had pushed for a delay, arguing that EU officials were using the wrong data to measure forests, while Indonesia and Ivory Coast have said it could penalise small farmers and harm their exports.

“Global partners have repeatedly expressed concerns about their state of preparedness,” most recently during the United Nations general assembly in New York last week, the commission said.

“The extension proposal in no way puts into question the objectives or the substance of the law,” it added.

The law was adopted by a large majority of MEPs and member states in April 2023, but since then there has been a growing backlash about the costs of environmental legislation that has led the commission, for example, to scrap plans for pesticides regulation.

Environmental campaigners said Von der Leyen, who is soon to begin a second five-year term as commission president, was undermining one of the key achievements of her term, the European green deal.

Anke Schulmeister-Oldenhove, a senior forest policy officer at WWF, said: “President Von der Leyen is effectively giving her green light for deforestation to continue for another 12 months at a time when urgent action is needed to stop it. By undermining one of the key achievements of the European green deal, this decision casts serious doubt on the commission president’s commitment to delivering on the EU’s environmental promises.”

Nicole Polsterer at the campaign group Fern said: “Ursula von der Leyen has bowed to constant pressure from companies and countries who knew the regulation was coming for years but haven’t prepared properly for it. This is unacceptable, especially when so many other companies have invested time and money to be ready.”

Von der Leyen also faced lobbying to postpone the law from her own centre-right European People’s party , which argued that the legislation created a “substantial” administrative burden for businesses and public authorities.

Peter Liese, a German MEP who speaks for the EPP on environmental policy, said he welcomed the proposed delay and was sure the European parliament would approve it. “The regulation entering into force on 30 December 2024 would have plunged us into irresponsible chaos. Many of the conditions for application are not clear and many third countries are rightly complaining,” he said.

Deforestation, Liese added, “is a disaster for the global climate as for other things, but we have to do it the right way and get those affected by the law more involved”.

The VDMA, which represents Europe’s mechanical engineering industry, described the law as “a prime example of well-intentioned but badly done regulation” that was likely to make all affected products scarcer and more expensive.

“Obtaining the required geolocation data may be easy for cattle and products made from them. For other rubber products covered by the regulation, the reality is much more complex. The consequences here would be major supply difficulties,” it said.

The revelation on Wednesday evening that Melania Trump’s forthcoming memoir includes a full-throated defense of abortion rights, an issue her husband Donald Trump has repeatedly flip-flopped on during his presidential campaign, left people on both sides of the issue less than impressed.

“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body,” Melania Trump wrote in her memoir. “I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”

Melania Trump also defended the right to abortion later on in pregnancy – a procedure that her husband has repeatedly demonized. (Less than 1% of abortions occur at or past 21 weeks of gestation.)

“Sadly for the women across America, Mrs. Trump’s husband firmly disagrees with her and is the reason that more than one in three American women live under a Trump abortion ban that threatens their health, their freedom and their lives,” Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in an email. “Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear: If he wins in November, he will ban abortion nationwide, punish women and restrict women’s access to reproductive health care.”

Melania Trump’s remarks also took anti-abortion activists by surprise.

“It’s hard to follow the logic of putting out the former First Lady’s book right before the election undercutting President Trump’s message to pro-life voters,” Kristan Hawkins, president of the powerful Students for Life of America, posted on Twitter/X on Wednesday night. “What a waste of momentum.”

Over the last several weeks, anti-abortion activists have grown increasingly fed up with the former president, who has struggled, alongside the rest of the Republican party, to redefine his messaging on abortion rights amid outrage over the overturning of Roe v Wade.

Earlier in his campaign, Trump bragged about appointing three of the US supreme court justices who voted to overturn Roe, branded himself the “most pro-life president ever”. After Kamala Harris became the presidential nominee, however, Trump has pledged that his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights” as well as vowed not to sign a national abortion ban – just weeks after refusing to say that he would veto one.

Melania Trump’s comments may feel like a further insult to the anti-abortion voters who feel abandoned by Trump, said Republican campaign strategist Liz Mair, adding anti-abortion advocates run potent get-out-the-vote operations. Those advocates were key to Trump’s 2016 victory.

“This might be just another thing that piles on to make pro-lifers think: ‘I just can’t with this guy.’ A lot of them were single-issue voters anyway,” Mair said. “He’s not really giving them much of an incentive to show up and do anything to his benefit.”

When Tresa Undem, a pollster who has surveyed people about abortion for more than two decades, heard the comments, she immediately thought: “Wow”. Then she thought: “It’s a campaign move.”

However, Undem is not sure who, exactly, the move is for – especially given the Trumps’ sometimes frosty relationship in public. Melania Trump has rarely aired her political views and has largely vanished from Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.

The odds of Melania Trump’s comments comforting moderate or conservative voters who support abortion rights are “fairly slim”, Undem said.

“These strong feelings – they did not suddenly appear this year, right? So she clearly has had no influence on him when it comes to policy related to abortion,” Undem said. “I don’t think she’s ever been positioned, or voters ever think of her, as having any kind of policy position or weight or influence on Trump.”

As returns to the biggest club stage go, Aston Villa’s went rather swimmingly, the substitute Jhon Durán nonchalantly putting Bayern Munich to bed with a stunning, off-the-cuff lob. This was a night that guaranteed a sense of mystique regardless of result and as the Champions League anthem filled the Villa Park air for the first time, the ground fell almost silent, the home supporters opening their ears in unison to drink it all in.

Despite well-documented prices this was the hottest ticket in town and the joyous scenes at the final whistle showed why. Emiliano Martínez, a couple of minutes after preventing Harry Kane from heading in a stoppage-time equaliser, thumped the ground with his gloves and as the first beats of Hi Ho Silver Lining kicked in, a beaming Unai Emery hotfooted it down the touchline applauding the supporters who worship him.

It was all in stark contrast to Bayern’s players who trudged off in long cream coats akin to sleeping bags and were at the mercy of another compelling Durán moment. He is building quite the showreel. Durán has now scored five goals off the bench this season – four winners – but given his screamer here against Everton his latest strike may have to settle for a podium finish. Pau Torres had a first-half goal disallowed for offside but Durán again stepped off the bench to earn Villa victory, prompting Prince William on to his feet from the swankier seats, and maintain their 100% start to this competition. After 41 years away, they seem intent on making up for lost time.

This was the second meeting between these sides, the first a notable one – of the same scoreline – in the 1982 European Cup final. Fittingly, pre-match the stadium speakers blared the Beautiful South’s Rotterdam, a not-so-subtle nod to Villa’s triumph, remembered so fondly in these parts. Monchi, Villa’s president of football operations, and Damian Vidagany, the director of football, spent Tuesday evening rolling back the years with many of the squad from ‘82. To christen Villa’s return to the European top table a new mural featuring Peter Withe, the late Gary Shaw, Emery, Martínez and Ollie Watkins was painted on an end-of-terrace house off Holte Road, which flanks the Trinity Road Stand.

This always promised to be an occasion that would evoke emotions and memories. Commentary of Withe’s winner was immortalised on a banner that until being moved directly opposite the dugouts this season as part of the Villa Park close-season upgrade had been part of the furniture in the Holte End. The locals gave those who travelled from Bavaria a warm Brummie welcome before Michael Olise took kick-off. “Who the fucking ‘ell are you?” they sang by way of an introduction.

Bayern, of course, are six-time winners, imperious opposition and a European superpower. Kane was deemed fit enough to lead the line after shaking off an ankle problem sustained against Bayer Leverkusen but cut a frustrated figure throughout, none more so than when Serge Gnabry blasted a wayward shot over from a tight angle rather than unselfishly squaring the ball, and he was fortunate to avoid a booking for a bump on Morgan Rogers approaching the half-time interval. Villa’s supporters roared with relief when Kane fired a free-kick wide in the 95th minute and then moments later he sent a header goalwards, only for a panicked Martínez to push the ball to safety.

With 22 minutes played the England captain was among the sullen visiting players marching back towards halfway. Villa’s supporters had gone berserk at Torres prodding past Manuel Neuer after picking up Jaden Philogene’s majestic killer touch from a recycled free-kick, only for Jacob Ramsey, forced off through injury a few minutes later, to be ruled offside by VAR. The free-kick itself, awarded for Dayot Upamecano upending Watkins, was emblematic of one of the themes of a lively first half. Upamecano looked deeply uncomfortable against Watkins.

It was Joshua Kimmich who fashioned Bayern’s first opening, floating a wonderful cross towards the back post for Gnabry, who on that occasion failed to release Kane. Olise triggered a fine save from Martínez after curling a shot at goal from 20 yards and for Villa, Rogers and Watkins had their moments. At one point Rogers collected the ball on the half-turn and steamrolled clear of three black Bayern shirts, before freeing Watkins to his left. Watkins squared the ball but Alphonso Davies intervened, clearing as far Amadou Onana, whose shot bobbled towards Neuer.

The half-time introduction of Jamal Musiala in place of the ineffective Kingsley Coman earned Bayern more control. More touches, more probing and Bayern’s first tangible opening of the second half on 65 minutes. Musiala powered clear of three claret and blue shirts and played a neat one-two with Kane before his snatched shot was blocked by Torres.

Emery, meanwhile, took the unusual step of substituting the substitute, Ian Maatsen replacing Leon Bailey. Then a more typical Villa change followed on 70 minutes, Durán replacing Watkins as Emery sought another timely intervention from his super sub. Of course, it arrived, and so effortlessly, too.

Torres zipped a pass towards the 20-year-old, who got close enough to Upamecano just to get his bearings before thumping a bouncing ball over an exposed Neuer. Durán’s record now reads six goals from nine matches this season. Just like Withe’s in ‘82, Villa supporters will not forget this unerring strike in a hurry.

JD Vance took a self-proclaimed victory lap after his vice-presidential debate against the Democrat Tim Walz, appearing on Wednesday at a campaign rally in the crucial battleground state of Michigan.

Vance told supporters in Auburn Hills that he thought the debate went “pretty well” on Tuesday, as snap polls showed viewers considered it to be a tie between the two vice-presidential candidates.

Departing from the generally civil tone of the debate, Vance mocked Walz over his biggest gaffe of the night, in which the Democratic governor said he was friends with school shooters. (Walz seemingly meant to say he was friends with victims of school shootings.)

“That was probably only the third or fourth dumbest comment Tim Walz made that night,” Vance said. “I’ve got to be honest, I feel a little bad for Governor Walz. And the reason I feel bad for him is because he has to defend the indefensible, and that is the record of Kamala Harris.”

In his prepared remarks, Vance did not touch on his weakest moment in the debate, when he refused to acknowledge Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential race. But when Vance took questions from the media after his speech, a reporter did ask him about the exchange, and he again sidestepped the question.

“The media is obsessed with talking about the election of four years ago. I’m focused on the election of 33 days from now because I want to throw Kamala Harris out of office and get back to commonsense economic policies,” Vance said.

Vance then pivoted to discussing the issue of non-citizen voting, which has become a rallying cry among Trump and his supporters. Research has uncovered little evidence to substantiate Republicans’ concerns, as voting in a federal election is already illegal for non-citizens.

“We’re going to talk about election integrity because I believe that every vote ought to count, but only the legally cast votes, and that’s why we fight for election integrity,” Vance said in Michigan.

Vance focused most of his remarks on attacking Harris over her economic policy proposals, blaming her for the high inflation seen earlier in Joe Biden’s presidency and accusing her of avoiding tough questions about her record. Echoing comments he made during the debate, Vance referenced his background growing up in a low-income family in Ohio to relate to Americans struggling to pay their bills.

“She’s afraid of interviews, so she doesn’t talk to people, and she doesn’t realize that her economic policies are making it harder on American families,” Vance said. “If you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to afford a good life for your family, and that’s what Donald Trump and I are going to fight for every single day for the next four years.”

Vance then linked Trump’s economic policies to his proposals on immigration, as the former president has called for the mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. An analysis released on Wednesday by the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group, concluded that Trump’s mass deportation program could cost the federal government as much as $88bn a year on average.

“The American media – and especially Kamala Harris and Tim Walz – they don’t want to talk about how this illegal immigration crisis is a theft of the American dream from American citizens,” Vance said. “Here’s the Donald Trump plan, and here’s the Donald Trump message to illegal aliens in this country: in six months, pack your bags because you’re going home.”

Despite rehashing some of Trump’s most divisive talking points, Vance made a point to reach out to Democrats who may still be undecided in the election. Trump will probably need some of those voters’ support to carry Michigan, a state that Biden won by 3 points in 2020.

“As a person who was raised by a couple of working-class, blue-collar Democrats, I want to say to every Democrat who’s watching at home [and] every Democrat who’s in this room: you are more than welcome in Donald Trump’s Republican party,” Vance said. “We’re the party of common sense. We’ve got a big tent, and you’re welcome in our movement.”

And yet, when asked by a reporter how he and Trump would work to unite Americans in the face of political division if they win the election in November, Vance again lashed out against Harris.

“Why do we have so much division, and why do we have so much rancor in this country’s political debate? It’s because Kamala Harris and her allies are trying to silence the American people rather than engage with them,” Vance said. “When you try to censor your fellow citizens, when you try to shut them up, you breed division and hatred.”

Given Trump’s tendency to deploy personal insults and degrading nicknames against his political opponents, that explanation may not sit well with voters. Trump now has just one month left to convince Americans that he deserves another four years in the White House.

Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” in a failed bid to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, federal prosecutors said in a newly unsealed court filing that argues that the former US president is not entitled to immunity from prosecution.

The filing was unsealed Wednesday. It was submitted by special counsel Jack Smith’s team following a supreme court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents and narrowed the scope of the prosecution.

Trump’s legal team have employed a delaying strategy in all the numerous legal cases that Trump faces that has mostly been successful.

The 165-page filing is probably the last opportunity for prosecutors to detail their case against Trump before the 5 November election given there will not be a trial before Trump faces the Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris.

Prosecutors laid out details including an allegation that a White House staffer heard Trump tell family members that it did not matter if he won or lost the election, “you still have to fight like hell”.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to four criminal charges accusing him of a conspiracy to obstruct the congressional certification of the election, defraud the US out of accurate results and interfere with Americans’ voting rights.

Prosecutors working with Smith divulged their evidence to make the case that the remaining allegations against Trump survive the US supreme court’s ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken as president.

Prosecutors have said the filing will discuss new evidence, including transcripts of witness interviews and grand jury testimony, but much of that material will not be made public until a trial.

Senior officials in Trump’s administration including former vice-president Mike Pence and White House chief-of-staff Mark Meadows appeared before the grand jury during the investigation.

Prosecutors submitted the court filing on Thursday, but US district judge Tanya Chutkan had to approve proposed redactions before it was made public.

Trump’s lawyers opposed allowing Smith to issue a sweeping court filing laying out their evidence, arguing it would be inappropriate to do so weeks before the election. They have argued the entire case should be tossed out based on the supreme court’s ruling.

The US presidential election is a neck-and-neck contest with Harris establishing a slight but solid lead over Trump in most national voting surveys. The picture in the all-important swing states is more complex, however, as tight races in key contests will decide the election.

If Trump wins the election, he is likely to direct the justice department to drop the charges.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting