An executive representing ports where tens of thousands of workers went on strike this week made a series of critical and crude remarks about Joe Biden, tied Kamala Harris to concerns about over-taxation, and appeared to endorse a rightwing conspiracy theory.

David Adam, chairman and chief executive of the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), attacked prominent Democrats in a string of social media posts uncovered by the Guardian.

It comes after about 45,000 dockworkers at ports along the US east and Gulf coasts walked off the job – the first such strike since 1977 – as part of a dispute between the USMX and the International Longshoremen’s Association over pay and automation.

The sweeping strike, disrupting 36 ports from Maine to Texas, has already raised fears of supply shortages and price increases on the eve of November’s election.

A month ago, when a LinkedIn user suggested that “everything Biden has touched in the past is turning to shit!”, Adam replied: “The runny kind….”

It was part of a discussion about how Biden’s student-debt relief plan was being held up in the courts. In another comment on the thread, Adam wrote: “If ya can’t get an American Democrat to pay what they borrrowed [sic], how you gonna get a California illegal immigrant to pay back their $150K loan the CA Dems are offering?”

Three months ago, another user appeared to endorse a popular conspiracy theory surrounding the emergence of a totalitarian world government while commenting on a video of Biden discussing immigration. “Did I miss the vote America took in agreement of One World Order? Treasonous actions have consequences!” they wrote.

“I think Kerry and Gates voted two thumbs up on that a few years ago …” Adam replied.

John Kerry was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, and served as secretary of state under Barack Obama and Biden’s climate envoy. Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft. Both men have been tied to debunked conspiracy theories surrounding secret global regimes.

USMX did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Adam’s posts.

Just a few weeks ago, Adam commented on a meme that claimed the US has a 48% fuel tax, which was debunked in 2022 by Politifact, when the same post was shared in Canada with the same claim.

He seemed to suggest responsibility lay with the Biden administration and Harris, however, writing: “Someone ask Kamala to explain why this is such and is she gonna fix it?!”

Earlier this year, when another user suggested Biden had smiled while walking away from a question, Adam commented: “Actually I thought he looked like he just sharted himself.”

When the strike began on Tuesday, Biden urged the port operators – represented by USMX – to give workers a “meaningful increase” in pay. Trump, meanwhile, blamed the strike on high inflation under Biden and Harris.

The timing of the strike, just weeks before the election, also raised questions about the ILA’s relationship with Trump. A photograph of the union’s president, Harold Daggett, meeting Trump in November resurfaced on social media this week.

After an assassination attempt on Trump in July, the ILA released a statement describing the 2023 meeting as “wonderful” and “productive”, and hailing Daggett’s “long relationship” with the former president.

The union has not made an endorsement ahead of next month’s presidential election. It backed Biden in 2020, declaring him to be “a true friend of the ILA and working men and women across America”.

An independent brewery in West Sussex is poised to become the first in Britain to make its beer using an ultra-high-temperature heat pump in place of an oil boiler.

Hepworth Brewery expects to cut the emissions from wort boiling – an essential step in beer-making to extract flavour – by using a heat pump that can produce steam at a temperature of up to 130C.

The new heating system will recycle the waste vapour from the brewing process, which is normally vented into the air, by using the heat pump to raise the temperature of the steam back to 130C before returning it to the brewer.

The heat pump prototype, designed by a start-up based in south-west London, is expected to lower the brewer’s fuel costs by 40% and could soon be used to power the full brewing process, it said.

Andy Hepworth, the founder and chairman of Hepworth Brewery, said the government-backed project would enable the company to “switch off our oil boiler” in favour of the “reliable new way to recycle our waste heat”.

Heat pumps are expected to play a major role in the government’s ambition to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 in line with its legally binding climate targets. However, the technology has been slow to gain acceptance by householders wary about whether replacing a gas boiler with an electric heat pump could keep their homes warm.

The government hopes to encourage households to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by the end of the decade. Only 220,000 were installed last year.

The company behind the brewery’s new heat pump system, Futraheat, based in Surbiton, said the technology proves that heat pumps can play a role in cutting emissions from industrial processes as well as households.

Tom Taylor, the chief executive of Futraheat, said: “Heat is a major component of a huge range of industrial processes, from pharmaceuticals to food and drink, and vast amounts of this is delivered by steam.

“Until now, heat pumps have been both unaffordable and unable to deliver heat at the temperature that industry requires,” he addd. “This project demonstrates the technology can now be implemented within a brewery. We’re confident it can then be rolled out across a range of industries, in the UK and worldwide.”

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.