Russia’s chess team is to remain banned from international competitions, officials have ruled.

In a dramatic move, an International Chess Federation (Fide) general assembly meeting in Budapest voted to maintain sanctions against Russia and its ally, Belarus.

Both countries were kicked out of the federation after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Those supporting the move say chess in Russia is controlled by Vladimir Putin, with people including the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, sitting on the board which runs the game domestically.

A majority of delegates in Budapest voted in favour of a motion to conduct consultations with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) regarding the possibility of lifting some restrictions against children and vulnerable groups.

However, bans against the Russian national team, officials, flag and anthem in international competitions will remain.

The final decision now rests with the federation’s strategic body, the Fide Council, which is unlikely to overturn the results of the ballot.

Malcolm Pein, head of the English Chess Federation, told the BBC the result was a “crushing defeat” for Russia.

“There is no doubt that many delegates feared consequences for the governing body’s relationship with the IOC if policy diverged,” he said.

Sixty-six countries supported the motion, with 41 opting for a third option – that all restrictions should remain in place.

Just 21 countries voted to lift sanctions. As well as Russia and Belarus, they included several former Soviet republics and other Russian allies in Africa and Asia.

The highly anticipated vote was seen as a test of Western resolve to maintain pressure on Russia in culture, sport and diplomacy.

Before voting began, Ukraine called on delegates to reject the proposal to lift sanctions.

“It’s a victory for Ukraine,” the Ukrainian Chess Federation’s Viktor Kapustin told the BBC.

“This vote means that Russia does not have enough support that they assumed they had,” he added.

“Russia is an aggressor and invader, and the aggressor must be punished in all spheres of their life, including sport. It’s important to keep the sanctions, or even strengthen them. For them to recognise their crimes.”

Russia said politics should be left out of chess and urged other representatives to vote to lift all sanctions.

Kyiv was supported by England, Scotland, Wales, the US, France and many other western nations. The IOC, with which Fide is affiliated, had also recommended that the organisation comply with an earlier decision by the Olympic body that sanctions against Russia in sport remain in place.

Following Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Fide voted to ban the Russian national team and officials from competitions.

In a separate move, a Fide commission applied sanctions to the Russian Chess Federation (CFR) last June, excluding it for two years for “bringing chess into disrepute” and violating the international organisation’s principles.

It found that the Russian federation had organised tournaments in areas of Ukraine illegally occupied by Russian forces and reprimanded Fide’s Russian president for his membership of the CFR board.

Earlier this month, the ban was commuted to a €45,000 (£37,700) fine and the reprimand cancelled, a move which was criticised by Ukraine and its allies.

Ex-defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who are both under international sanctions, are also CFR board members.

Have you ever stayed in a hotel or resort before and can’t believe it actually exists, let alone you are setting foot in such a magical place? That was the experience I had while visiting Fairmont Banff Springs; a castle-like historic hotel that makes fairytale dreams come true.

Banff National Park, adjacent to the property, was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1984, and when you visit, you understand why. The soaring craggy mountains, glacially-fed bright blue rivers and lakes, thick forests and picturesque meadows are all jaw-droppingly beautiful. Amidst the natural splendor, the Fairmont Banff Springs prominently reaches for the pristine blue skies, a bastion of architecture, historic significance, luxury accommodations and fine dining.

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

A great way to orient yourself to the property is to take a history tour. Our guide, Ewen, was from Scotland and gave great insights to the property’s history, which itself is speckled with Scottish thistle motifs, European-inspired design and over 130 years of remarkable history. The tour helps to add the layers of appreciation to the space, from the fossil-speckled Tyndall stone flooring, to the explanation of the hotel’s footprint being 180 degrees off from the architect’s original orientation. Stories of original guests staying for a 3-4 month season and having their bank accounts verified at check in, to a hidden lounge behind a bookshelf in the Rundle Bar. A fascinating peek into the property’s past, the well-timed tour is a great orientation.

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

The Fairmont Gold Experience is a hotel-within-a-hotel luxury offering for guests, which I highly recommend. A private check-in desk as well as lounge with dedicated concierge staff only accent the beautifully appointed rooms and large lounge space which is home to an impressive breakfast spread, canapes and cocktails throughout the day. A quiet area lounge is backed by a large fireplace; ideal for curling up with a good book and enjoying a comfy afternoon.

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

Vermillion dining room

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

Dining experiences abound at Fairmont Banff Springs, and you should try them all. The Vermillion Room is home to French-inspired cuisine. Sweeping views of the surrounding mountains can be enjoyed from the dining room and bar areas. Open for breakfast, lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch (which I enjoyed thoroughly with an impressive array of fare and perhaps the best profiterole I’ve ever had), Vermillion Room is charming and delightful.

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

1888 Chop House fare

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

1888 Chop House is the award-winning steakhouse on property. Known for their Alberta beef, wild game and oceanwise seafood, no stay at Fairmont Banff Springs is complete without a meal at this storied steakhouse. Details and touches such as the nasturtium butter to go with the 1888 house bread, a delectable bison tenderloin, or a wagyu beef tenderloin with accompaniments such as Quebec blue cheese, lobster tails or foie gras will have you begging to return. Desserts such as the Textures of Chocolate or Forest Berries and Cream are worth saving room for as well.

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

Another aspect to the resort that isn’t to be missed is the 40,000 sf spa. Dip into the mineral pool surrounded by various temperature waterfall whirlpools, or head outside for a hot tub that overlooks the valley beyond while birds sing in the branches above. While there, I tried the 60-minute Signature Rockies Rehydration service; an assortment of dry-brushing skin technique, relaxing massage and top-tier spa product treatments that my only wish was wanting to stay longer.

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

The indoor and outdoor pools are ideally situated to take in the view of the surrounding mountains, with lounge areas available in both. Paramount to this destination is the great outdoors; so whether strolling or biking into town, taking a horseback canter, riding the scenic gondola, or playing a round of golf, there is something for everyone.

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

The hotel may have been opened in 1888 by the Canadian Pacific Highway, but there is no lack of luxury and memorable experiences to be had at this hotel and resort today. Enjoy one of the 739 hotel rooms, the opulent dining opportunities, 27 holes of internationally acclaimed golf, and spacious spa in the Rocky Mountains. For rates and reservations, visit https://www.fairmont.com/banff-springs/

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

Fairmont Gold loung food offerings

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

The Rundle Bar

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

The Rundle Bar fare

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

The Rundle Bar patio

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

Deluxe room

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

The Rundle Bar quiet lounge

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

Crown Suite bathroom

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

Junior Suite

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

Yoga on outdoor patio

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

Walk into town

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

Running on trails in Banff

Courtesy of Fairmont Banff Springs

Enjoy golf in the stunning mountain setting

A strange phenomenon has brought together a diverse group of people in a US suburb. For weeks or months, a persistent, low hum has been heard by each of them, but not by their families and friends. It has been causing headaches, nosebleeds, insomnia and — increasingly — panic. Some people have moved out of the family home. Others have lost their jobs.

What is this hum? One of the group suggests a kind of seance to see if, collectively, they can control it. Another blames the “deep state”, government surveillance or conspiracies by the Democrats. A cult-like atmosphere develops as the group looks desperately for leadership.

This is the plot of Jordan Tannahill’s The Listeners, which began life as the outline plot for an opera but first appeared as a novel in 2021, before being realised as an opera in 2022. Now it is being turned into a BBC television mini-series, starring Rebecca Hall, by Tannahill himself. Meanwhile, the opera, composed by Missy Mazzoli, will have its first US performances this month by Opera Philadelphia, which co-commissioned it.

The timing is not coincidental. With the US election less than two months away, the subject of how a group of people can fall under the influence of one individual with a strong personality is again likely to be scrutinised in the media.

“We conceived this idea initially in 2016, when [Donald] Trump was elected,” says Mazzoli, American composer of a series of successful operas. “We were asking what Trump offers Americans — a sense of belonging, of being listened to by a leader — and, on the darker side, whether he is exploiting people to his own end. The pluses and minuses of having a charismatic leader have certainly been more in the conversation in the last eight years. That election revealed a lot about America, about how people were frustrated, feeling alone and unheard.”

Mazzoli says she has long been fascinated by cults. “At the time there were a lot of documentaries about cults, from Wild Wild Country, about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s community in Oregon in the 1980s, to The Vow, on the cult NXIVM in upstate New York. All these organisations tend to follow the same pattern, in that there is eventually some sort of betrayal, in which one person comes forward and says there is abuse from the leader, and within days or weeks the cult will disintegrate.”

The basic idea was presented to Tannahill, the Canadian playwright and author, who produced a seven-page outline for an opera. From there to a full libretto was still a sizeable undertaking and that fell to Royce Vavrek, who had already worked with Mazzoli on her opera Proving Up. Meanwhile, Tannahill went his own way writing the novel, so The Listeners has a complex family tree.

Vavrek says he was not involved in Tannahill’s dramaturgical journey, and Tannahill was not involved in theirs: “When you plant two seeds, they’re the same genus of flower and yet they grow in different ways in different environments.”

He says that watching Trump and Kamala Harris develop their campaigns has taken on extra resonance. “Even though [the opera] is not a direct allegory to the political climate we’re living in, it is interesting to compare the rhetoric coming out of the two presidential candidates with that of Howard [the cult leader in The Listeners] and see how they are encouraging people to fall in line with their platform.”

What neither the opera nor the book does is offer easy answers as to why people are drawn into cults. It may often be politics or religion that is the conduit, but those who feel the attraction are not easily categorised.

The story that Tannahill proposed brings them together through the allegorical symbol of “the Hum”, a real-life phenomenon felt by an estimated 4 per cent of the world’s population. Here it signifies an unquantifiable human need in search of a solution. One of music’s unique strengths is that it can be ambiguous, and Mazzoli’s opera makes the most of that quality, suggesting a powerful but unknown force at work, drawing the audience into another world.

“That is the true mysteriousness of the Hum,” says Lileana Blain-Cruz, the opera’s director. “People are asking themselves: ‘Am I going crazy? What is reality? Am I alone in this?’ It’s wonderfully dense and complex. Missy and Royce like to go deep into the subterranean layers of our consciousness, and that’s why I love this opera. Yes, it’s the politics, but it’s also psychology. What makes us people?”

We follow the human story through the character of Claire, the role taken by Hall in the TV series. A middle-class wife and mother, she finds her life upended by the unceasing hum, losing her job as a teacher and leaving her family. In group meetings at Sequoia Crescent she starts to find solace — until it all goes wrong.

For Mazzoli, the moral ambiguity of Claire’s character adds to the many-layered story. We are rooting for her and yet she starts down a questionable path in her relationship with Kyle, one of her students, who also hears the Hum. It is a measure of how isolated they feel that they gravitate towards the cult.

“In this incredibly divided nation each side is finding a sense of identity with a certain party,” says Mazzoli. “I think that’s, in part, because we don’t have a social safety net. The idea of individualism, of being able to take care of yourself and not have the government intervene, means that people often don’t have a sense of community.

“But a need for community is part of human nature. We just have to go to greater extremes to find it, whether that means joining a cult or finding some extreme community online. America seems ripe for that scenario just now.”

Missy Mazzoli’s opera ‘The Listeners’ runs September 25-29, operaphila.org

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For a growing number of Americans, election day is already here.

Polling day may be officially set for November 5, but in several states early voting is under way, with tens of millions of Americans expected to cast their ballots before then.

In-person voting began on Friday in three states — Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia. A handful of others, including Alabama and Wisconsin, have started mailing absentee ballots to voters who have requested them, and several more will follow suit in the coming weeks.

“Happy voting season!” declared one Democratic party activist outside a government building in Arlington, Virginia, on Friday, where several hundred voters lined up before the polls opened at 8am to be among the first in the country to cast their ballots for the White House.

“We want to win in October, not November 5,” said Rose Fabia, a 65-year-old Democratic party volunteer wearing an “I VOTED” sticker on her lapel.

“It is psychological, showing to the other side that we have the numbers.”

About 20 miles, or 32km, away, outside a polling station in nearby Fairfax, Virginia, Mary Lyn Field-Nguer, 76, was also leafleting for the Democrats after casting her own ballot for Kamala Harris.

“I really wanted to be the first person in line,” Field-Nguer added. “Anything could happen, and if anything prevented me from voting I would never forgive myself.”

Voters have long been able to request absentee ballots in advance of US elections. But the practice of early voting — either in person or by mail — exploded four years ago in the Covid-19 pandemic. A record of more than 100mn Americans exercised their franchise before election day in 2020.

While it remains unclear whether a new record for early voting will be set this election cycle, there are strong signs that the practice remains popular in many parts of the country.

According to the US Census Bureau, just under half of people casting ballots in the 2022 midterms voted before election day — a trend experts say is likely to continue this year.

On Friday morning in Arlington, a queue of waiting voters had already stretched on to a second floor of the government building within the first hour of the polls being open.

Gretchen Reinemeyer, who has been general registrar and director of elections for Arlington county since 2019, said the precinct could “easily be on track” to match the number of early votes seen on the first day of voting in 2020, when some 1,400 people cast ballots.

“Any October surprise is probably going to have less potency because so many early votes have already been banked,” said J Miles Coleman, a non-partisan analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Arlington, just outside Washington DC, is a heavily Democratic area: the county backed Joe Biden by an 81-17 margin over Donald Trump there in 2020. Biden won statewide in Virginia by a 10-point margin.

A small but critical share of the electorate swung to the right the following year in an off-year governor’s election to support the more-moderate Republican Glenn Youngkin, and on Friday morning several Republican volunteers were also outside the polling station encouraging people to back Trump over Harris.

The Financial Times poll tracker shows Harris with a lead of more than seven points over Trump in Virginia, but some recent surveys of the state have suggested the race may be closer.

GOP volunteers in Arlington were also urging people to vote early.

“You never know what is going to happen on election day,” said Matthew Hurtt, chair of the Arlington Republicans, who added that “from a campaign perspective,” voting early also helped organisers better target their efforts in the run-up to polling day.

While people’s votes are kept secret, records are updated in near real-time showing how many ballots have been cast and who has already voted. That allows campaigns and both political parties to stop reaching out to people who have cast ballots, and focus their resources on those who have not.

“It takes you off the list to receive mailers and to receive other campaign materials, so you save the campaign money and you save your mailbox,” Hurtt added.

Still, early voting has emerged as a divisive issue among Republicans in particular, who have tended to favour voting in person on election day over early voting in recent cycles.

Trump has sowed distrust in the electoral system and continued to maintain, without evidence, that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him. The former president has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting in particular is a major source of fraud, and earlier this month he vowed that if elected president again, he would prosecute anyone who “cheats” in this year’s ballot.

In Fairfax, Katie Gorka, chair of the Fairfax County Republican Committee and a former Trump administration official, questioned why voters needed access to expansive early voting now that the pandemic was over.

“But as long as these are the rules we encourage Republicans to abide by them so that we can win,” she added.

“The whole Republican party is trying to get people to vote early because the Dems vote early,” said Bart Marcois, a 60-year-old consultant who cast his ballot for Trump in Fairfax. “We show up on election day and say ‘yay we had a big turn out’ but theirs is already in the bag.”

“They’re harvesting ballots and carrying them in,” Marcois added, in an apparent reference to Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that Democrats are submitting illegal ballots. “Every Republican is worried about fraud.”

Other Republican voters, however, were more optimistic.

“Voting is just one of the most important gifts our Founding Fathers gave to this country,” said Mariam Bell, a 69-year-old retiree holding a “Women for Trump” sign in Fairfax.

“This is not about Republicans or Democrats, though, it’s about elites versus the average American,” she added. “Trump understands this and has changed the paradigm.”

Emirati student Shaima lives in Abu Dhabi with her four siblings and parents. But she says her seven-person household is small — her father grew up alongside 11 brothers and sisters in the days when the region’s families were legendarily large.

The generational downsizing in the 21-year-old’s family reflects a dramatic social shift across the United Arab Emirates: Emirati women bear about half the number of children their grandmothers did in 1970, with the fertility rate down from 6.7 per woman in 1970 to 3.7 by 2017, according to official data.

In a country that lures millions of migrant workers to power an economy that has grown at breakneck speed since the 1960s, the trend has prompted many Emiratis to worry that they belong to a dwindling minority in their own country — and spurred authorities to offer more support designed to encourage large families. 

“Us Emiratis are a minority in our own country,” said Shaima, who called the trend “upsetting”. Expatriates form 93.5 per cent of the UAE population of about 9.5mn, according to the UN.

“Why is demographics a sensitive issue?” said William Guéraiche, associate professor at the University of Wollongong in Dubai. “Because this imbalance will grow between the Emiratis and foreigners, and Emiratis feel more and more under siege, rightly or not. But this is the general perception, and the authorities have to deal with that.”

The Emirati fertility rate, which government figures put at 3.2 in 2021, has halved in the past two decades, according to Luca Maria Pesando, associate professor of social research and public policy at NYU Abu Dhabi. He described the drop as “very fast for a demographic transition”.

Although 3.2 exceeds the so-called replacement rate of 2.1 live births per woman, meaning the number of Emiratis is not falling, the authorities are concerned about the speed of the decline, said Pesando, who is working on plans to open a state-funded demographics research centre at NYU Abu Dhabi. “If this has halved [in 20 years], maybe it can halve again,” he added.

One former Emirati official said it was almost inevitable the Emirati minority would dwindle as a proportion of the resident population.

“If we are successful in . . . attracting more people into the country, this automatically diminishes us as a percentage,” he said. “How do you counter that? Encourage people to have more kids.” 

The government has traditionally offered generous subsidies to local families, from grants and loans for housing and weddings to marriage counselling and help with childcare.

But a new “Emirati Family Growth Support Programme” in Abu Dhabi, the emirate which includes the UAE’s capital city, focuses on family size, with incentives such as reduced loan debt on the birth of a fourth, fifth and sixth child.

The government wants Emirati families to “grow their numbers because they play a vital role in achieving social stability and preserving national identity”, said Hamad Ali Al Dhaheri, under-secretary of Abu Dhabi’s community development department.

The UAE does not publish detailed national statistics on population composition. But data from Dubai, the region’s business and tourism hub, shows expat population growth still outpacing that of locals. While the number of Emiratis in Dubai increased 31 per cent between 2015 and 2023, the number of foreigners rose by 46 per cent.

Expatriates are largely transient and have scant chance of becoming Emirati citizens, but the UAE has in recent years offered longer-term visas and encouraged foreigners to buy property and invest in businesses. 

The Emirates are expecting a further influx of overseas workers as they pursue ambitious plans for the economy, with Dubai alone forecasting a population of 5.8mn people by 2040, from around 3.5mn now.

The millions of migrant workers, from domestic help to oil engineers and finance professionals, have helped drive rapid growth since Abu Dhabi started exporting oil in the 1960s and Dubai established itself as a trading hub. In just a few decades the country has moved from a largely impoverished tribal society to enjoying some of the region’s highest living standards.

By 2023 the UAE recorded the Middle East’s second biggest gross domestic product per capita, according to the World Bank. 

But the country’s economic success is a leading factor behind its own slowing birth rate, according to observers. Some Emiratis say rising living costs discourage them from having more children. A government worker and mother of one said she was not planning to have more because of the expense of childcare, including education costs.

Academics also argue that smaller families are partly driven by the UAE’s success in encouraging women to pursue higher education and employment and contribute to the economy, which has led many to delay marriage and having children.

The UAE has a high proportion of working women compared with the wider region, with 55 per cent of those aged over 15 participating in the labour force. By contrast the average across the Middle East and North Africa is 19 per cent, according to International Labour Organization estimates.  

For 30-year-old Huda, a museum researcher whose mother married at 16 and had nine children, staying at home to raise a family was the last thing she wanted.

“[My generation] were very open to [what we saw in] American and western movies,” she said. “We wanted independence.”

Other UAE policies to help working mothers, such as lengthening statutory maternity leave to 60 days, may not be enough to bring back the big families of the past.

“I know I’m going to be a working mum,” said Shaima, who said she would like four children. “I need to balance between my working life and taking care of my kids. And having a lot of kids is not going to help.”