Tehran, Iran – Amid dire fuel shortages and mounting economic challenges, the Iranian government is seeking cost-saving measures for government workers and other citizens to deal with the crisis.
On Saturday, the government set office attendance hours for 8am to 1pm from September 23 to the end of the current Iranian year (late March 2027), with the remaining contractual hours to be completed remotely.
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Agencies must also designate one day a week when employees and managers travel to work by public transport. In recent days, government ministers have released videos showing themselves using the metro to commute to work as part of the campaign.
Metro and bus rapid transit (BRT) systems will also be free of charge until mid-November in a bid to encourage commuters to leave their cars at home. Worn-out government vehicles will also be replaced with electric, gas-powered or hybrid alternatives, although this is expected to take years to implement.
Government-linked offices are required to switch off heating and turn off lights after working hours, while schools, universities, healthcare facilities and operational services are to follow separate arrangements to be announced later.
President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a directive on September 12 instructing government agencies to facilitate remote work for suitable employees to save on petrol, electricity and natural gas costs for the state.
“We have begun consumption savings with the government,” Pezeshkian said earlier this month. This is seen as effectively framing remote work and other measures for government workers as in line with other energy-saving measures that the government has asked of the rest of the population.
Resource-rich Iran has dealt with energy crises before, rooted in mismanagement and dated infrastructure, when similar cost-saving measures were implemented. But the added pressure of war with the United States and Israel has forced the government to think of creative solutions to energy shortfalls.
In early September, the cash-strapped government raised the price of fuel for the third tier of quotas for a second time in less than a year, meaning that people will pay double for any petrol use beyond 110 litres (29 gallons) per month. Imported vehicles and some other categories of cars are also limited to the most expensive tier of fuel.
For the first five months of the current Iranian year, which ended on August 22, average daily petrol production was 122 million litres while consumption was at 132 milion litres, highlighting a shortfall in supply versus demand. In the first half of the sixth month, the gap between production and consumption was around the same, at a 10 million litre shortfall.
The US naval blockade of Iran’s southern ports in place since July has halted fuel imports that previously helped balance the gap. The blockade has also stopped Iran from exporting its oil via supertankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, affecting its foreign currency income. Crude stored on open waters beyond the blockade line is still being gradually sold to China.
Oil and gas facilities, petrochemical companies and major fuel depots were also bombed by the US and Israel, impacting production and distribution. Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said in early September that “a significant portion of production capacity has now been restored, and the process is continuing”.
As rampant inflation continues to squeeze most Iranians, data released this week by the Statistical Center of Iran also highlighted the damage the war with the US has dealt to the economy.
Iran experienced a massive 10.1 percent year-on-year fall in real gross domestic product (GDP) and a 26.4 percent fall in oil and gas extraction between late March and late June 2026, the centre’s data showed.
Including oil, industries and mining were down 14.7 percent, while construction was down by 6.4 percent, services overall by 4.8 percent, and transport, storage and communications by 17 percent.
The government has not released any information on how many workers are estimated to be affected by the remote work directive, or how it expected efficiency to be impacted.
But after decades of mismanagement, corruption and inefficiency among government-linked organisations, some Iranians believe it highlights a wider issue of state inefficiency.
“My unpopular opinion is that if 85-90 percent of government sector personnel are fired and 70 percent of ministries closed down, absolutely no problem will occur in the country,” a user named Mohsen wrote on X.
A man reacts to the camera while driving past a monument depicting the clenched fist of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a US-Israel strike on February 28, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Tuesday, September 15, 2026 [Vahid Salemi/AP Photo]
Zabihollah Salmani, a deputy head of the Administrative and Employment Organisation of Iran, told reporters during a press conference in August that more than 2.43 million were on its payroll.
If council, fire brigades, social security and non-government organisation workers were included, this would bring the number to more than four million people. The average monthly pay for government personnel at the end of the previous Iranian year in late March 2026 was around 240 million rials ($104 at the current exchange rate).
Asked by reporters how many of these employees could potentially be taken off the payroll without hurting output, Salmani said, “We do not yet have these figures.” He added that agencies were being asked to submit that information.
About 1,075,000 people are on the payroll of the Education Ministry, including teachers and trainee staff, while 600,000 employees work under the Ministry of Health and its affiliated networks, according to official figures.
Amir-Hossein, a young man working at a research centre linked with the government-funded University of Tehran, said that since the start of the month, he had been assigned two days of remote work. Working hours were set for 7am-1pm before, but are to be shifted to 8am-1pm starting from Wednesday, per the government.
His work can be done on his laptop, but might require some coordination on the phone or short commutes to other centres, he said. Overall, the remote work lifestyle has been beneficial.
“Sometimes I get more work done than I would have at the office,” he told Al Jazeera, asking not to use his full name due to security reasons.
As Amir-Hossein regularly uses online ride-hailing services to commute to and from his job, working from home has been financially beneficial for him.
An Iran-based economist who spoke to Al Jazeera on background said the government measures are essentially crisis control at best, and not a long-term solution to the problem.
In La Palma Park Stadium in Anaheim, a month before the Bay of Pigs invasion, 7,500 students and parents skipped school or work and gathered to learn about communist plans to take over the United States.
“Right now, we have a 50-50 chance of defeating the communist threat,” Herbert Philbrick, a former FBI agent, told the crowd on March 8, 1961. “Each day our chances grow less.”
Walter Knott, of berry-farm fame, sponsored the five-day “Christian Anti-Communist School” to help Orange County see the world that he saw, one where big government and liberalism led to Soviet domination.
The message stuck. Within the decade, Orange County would have 38 chapters of the conspiracy-minded, ultra-right-wing John Birch Society, which called Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower a “communist tool.” Knott and actor John Wayne were members, as was the county’s congressman.
The rightward mobilization during the suburban explosion of the 1960s gave Orange County a national reputation for hard-line conservatism with a crackpot edge — “nut country,” in the words of Fortune magazine.
The county’s deep pockets funded right-wing candidates and movements throughout the nation. At home it spawned popular but ultimately doomed measures such as the Briggs Initiative in 1978 to ban gays and lesbians from working in public schools, and Proposition 187 in 1994, which would have denied public services to immigrants in the country illegally.
The Republican Party reached its peak in the Reagan era and has been slowly losing its membership edge since 1990, as the diversity of Los Angeles and the world at large started to bleed through the so-called Orange Curtain.
Source: California Secretary of State
(Priya Krishnakumar / Los Angeles Times)
Registered Republicans today outnumber Democrats by only 2 percentage points, down from 22% at the peak, with a large contingent of self-declared independents positioned to swing elections either way. The GOP has a chance of losing four congressional seats in the county in Tuesday’s midterm election. If so, it would be the first time since the 1930s that Orange County would be without Republican representation in the House.
A GOP loss of even one or two seats would be significant, not as a turning point so much as a powerful sign of change — hastened by dislike for President Trump — in this one-time heart of American conservatism.
Source: Political Data, Inc.
(Priya Krishnakumar / Los Angeles Times)
::
Orange County seceded from its northwestern neighbor, Los Angeles, in 1889, led by fiercely independent ranchers, sheepherders, beekeepers, citrus growers and crop farmers who had bristled under the control of a rich city 30 miles up the rail line.
The county then was a constellation of small farm and dairy towns in the north and scattered resort towns along the coast. In the south, the basin tapered off into a narrowing valley between the Santa Ana Mountains and the coastal San Joaquin Hills, where sheep and cattle ranches had thrived since California was part of Spain and Mexico.
Americans had taken over the ranchos in the late 19th century after a devastating drought left many old landowners of Spanish ancestry, the Californios, broke.
Lewis Moulton was one of the Yankee migrants. He came from Boston in 1874 and grazed sheep on the open range from Oceanside to Long Beach. Family lore has it that natural gas seeps were so rich in some spots that, as he camped, he would light them to cook his breakfast.
After two decades of renting land, he and a Basque shepherd, John Pierre Daguerre, had enough money to buy Rancho Niguel, which they eventually expanded to 22,000 acres. It was rugged, isolated country, good mostly for grazing. The cheapest land was the steep part near the coast, between what would become Laguna Beach and Dana Point — about $15 an acre. Today, small fractions of an acre go for double-digit millions.
In the second half of the 20th century, these backwater ranchers and farmers, the Moulton family, the O’Neills, Floods, Irvines, Segerstroms, would physically and culturally shape Orange County into the suburban giant it is today.
But there was always an underclass that made their dreams work.
Tenant farmers — often with roots in Mexico, the Basque country or in California before the American conquest — rented spots on these ranches to graze and grow barley. Others toiled as hands for the landowners.
In the north, they lived in segregated barrios in Santa Ana, Westminster, Anaheim and Garden Grove — where their children attended separate “Mexican schools” until a federal appeals court ruled them unconstitutional in 1947. In the south, they made up smaller communities in El Toro and San Juan Capistrano.
Stephen Rios stands in the doorway of the adobe house in San Juan Capistrano built by his family in 1794.
(Mark Boster / For The Times)
“My tata got killed right there by the train when he was 93 years old,” Stephen Rios said of his grandfather, an American Indian named Mochanai, as he sat in his front garden across from the Mission San Juan Capistrano. “He was a vaquero, a well-known horse trainer.”
Rios’ family worked for the Moultons and O’Neills and lived in the adobe house built in 1794 for their ancestor Feliciano Rios, who came to California as a Spanish soldier and married an American Indian woman.
Rios, an attorney, inherited the home from his father and lives there today. His son’s bedroom has the ceiling boards that the famed bandito Joaquin Murrieta, a family friend known as the Robin Hood of El Dorado, would lift to hide in the attic in the 1850s. A flat-screen TV sits below them now.
The American Indian, Californio and Mexican residents of their dirt street — the oldest neighborhood in California — were conservative. “They loved their families, their church,” he said. “They loved their pieces of land. They were strong, religious independent people.”
Republicans reigned during the rural era. The land barons did not want labor organizers anywhere near their field hands.
When orange pickers walked out of the orchards in 1936, the strikers were arrested and beaten by police and mobs. The Times reported “old vigilante days were revived in the orchards of Orange County yesterday as one man lay near death and scores nursed injuries.”
Changes in Orange County’s 948 square miles — physical, demographic and political — have always rolled from north to south. While the Rios family was still living in the cowboy era, World War II brought rapid transformation to the northern part of the county.
The military needed more West Coast bases to fight the Japanese, and the open space between Long Beach and San Diego was perfect. The government built bases in Seal Beach, Los Alamitos, Santa Ana and El Toro.
Defense contractors and other big manufacturers followed: Hughes Aircraft, Rockwell, Ford Aeronutronic, Boeing, American Electronics, Beckman Instruments.
The farmers and ranchers became developers, or sold their land to other builders, creating vast tracts of homes across the northern end of the county from Huntington Beach to Fullerton. In this era of big cars and backyard barbecues, houses turned inward. Garages replaced porches and picture windows; neighborhoods were quiet.
The newcomers, many from the South and Midwest or white-flighters from Los Angeles, converged at church.
::
At its core, Orange County held a tension between Midwestern traditionalism and California’s drive for reinvention.
The midcentury suburbs in the north were libertarian-leaning enclaves, yet living on Washington defense spending, and listening to a sunny California-bred gospel of self-empowerment and prosperity.
An Iowan named Robert Schuller put out a newspaper ad in 1955, “Come as you are … In the family car!”
He preached from the roof of the snack bar at the Orange Drive-in theater, not about fire and brimstone, but about “possibility thinking” with catchphrases like “Turn your scars into stars.”
Robert Schuller, who delivered a new type of self-healing Gospel to the country, at the new Crystal Cathedral in 1980.
(Tony Barnard / Los Angeles Times)
Schuller’s congregation boomed, becoming one of the nation’s first megachurches. His “Hour of Power” television sermon beamed across the country. In 1980, he built a glass church longer than a football field, the Crystal Cathedral.
Orange County birthed hugely influential ministries that mixed God with conservative politics: Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel, Greg Laurie’s Harvest Crusade, Paul and Jan Crouch’s Trinity Broadcasting Network and Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.
“The megachurches reinforced and marinated the conservatism coming out of the defense plants,” said Fred Smoller, associate professor of political science at Chapman University.
Orange County’s open space and space-age technology, coupled with fervent entrepreneurship and an-edge-of-the-continent mentality, let tinkerers and visionaries experiment with minimal regulation.
This was a suburban county that, like no other, reached deep into popular culture.
Knott’s Berry Farm was the nation’s first theme park. Disneyland became one of the world’s biggest destinations. The ministries reached millions. South Coast Plaza shopping mall would draw more people from around the world than Disneyland. The Irvine ranch grew into the largest planned city in America. Leisure World became the first retirement community.
Leisure World resident Jerry Wyss enjoys the pool in 1999.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
In new coastal towns such as Dana Point and San Clemente, Hobie Alter, Gordon “Grubby” Clark and John Severson (living next door to Orange County native Richard Nixon in his “Western White House”) helped create a whole new culture around an ancient Polynesian sport that would become a multibillion-dollar surf industry.
In Laguna Beach, Tom Morey, a Douglas Aircraft composites engineer, invented the bodyboard. In Anaheim, the Van Doren brothers opened the first Vans store.
And the likes of Knott and Anaheim’s Carl Karcher, the founder of Carl’s Jr., would help give America a new brand of conservatism, with their friend John Wayne in Newport Beach to embody it.
With the Cold War at its peak in the 1960s, families in Orange County, so many of them in the military or defense industry, heeded their call.
“At living room bridge clubs, at backyard barbecues, and at kitchen coffee klatches, the middle-class men and women of Orange County ‘awakened’ to what they perceived as the threats of communism and liberalism,” wrote Lisa McGirr, a professor of history at Harvard, in “Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right.” “They became the cutting edge of the conservative movement in the 1960s.”
“The lack of a large organized working class and the near absence of racial minorities made it likely that Orange County’s political rainbow would consist of relatively few colors.”
The quiet homogeneity of the walled and gated communities allowed politicians to exploit fears of the outsider — whether they be African Americans from Los Angeles, immigrants from Mexico, or gays, Muslims and Koreans.
“The anti-minority stuff accelerated political careers here,” said Smoller, the political scientist. “We have a history of sending some real oddballs to Congress.”
An early one was Rep. James Utt, who in 1963 warned about the United Nations training “a large contingent of barefooted Africans” in Georgia to take over the country.
Cementing this conservatism: its daily newspaper, the Register, and its libertarian owner Raymond C. Hoiles. He had once waged war against a measure to improve mental health care in Alaska because he said it was a communist plot to brainwash Americans in concentration camps.
In 1964, Pat Donnelly, a young aerospace engineer working at McDonnell Douglas, bought a small home in Buena Park for $18,500. His neighbor’s first admonition to him: They must help ensure no blacks, Mexicans or Catholics moved in.
Donnelly was a Catholic, and even worse, a union-card-carrying Democrat who once played guitar and banjo in a touring folk band. He and his wife had two girls and joined the St. Pius V Church on Orangethorpe Avenue and started a choir. With his own slice of suburbia, he became more concerned about taxes and grew more conservative.
“I didn’t like some of the stuff I was seeing in the cities, the drugs and crime. It seemed like people were abusing welfare. I was paying for that.”
He switched parties and never looked back.
After Orange County’s favorite candidate Barry Goldwater lost to President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Republican rainmakers turned their attention to Reagan’s run for governor. His first political fundraiser was at a home in Anaheim, and the county would nurture his ambitions the rest of his career.
By the 1970s, developers had reached deep into south Orange County. The Irvine Co. had wound down its cattle operations and was parceling out its 185 square miles of land. Some 1,500 acres near Newport Beach would become UC Irvine. The company developed a master plan for a city to grow around the university, which would incorporate in 1971.
The Moultons sold their land soon after to developers who would build Laguna Hills, Laguna Woods, Laguna Niguel and Aliso Viejo. In their yards, homeowners would find rattlesnakes that wandered out of the wild canyons and steep hillsides between subdivisions.
To the east and south, the O’Neills’ vast scrubby land would give way to even newer, posher cities such as Rancho Santa Margarita, Ladera Ranch and the community of Coto de Caza — the setting for the “Real Housewives of Orange County.”
With all this construction, Stephen Rios’ 225-year-old adobe home is hemmed in by suburbia.
The “Los Rios District” is now on the National Register of Historic Places and is highly sought-after real estate for its quaint atmosphere.
Most of the old Californio families sold and moved on.
“Everyone else wants to live here now,” Rios said.
Jared Mathis, left, and Scott T. Barnes stand off the trail in the Aliso and Wood Canyon Wilderness looking over the 22,000 acres that their great-grandparents bought in the 1890s.
(Mark Boster / For The Times)
Lewis Moulton’s great-grandson, Jared Mathis, came back from a job back east to Laguna Hills to manage the family’s remaining holdings. A few years ago, he took his dad — who moved away in the 1970s — for a drive to look at the old ranch where he grew up.
But his father couldn’t get his bearings. All the landmarks were gone, the hills terraced, new trees and houses blocked once wide views. “They say they moved more dirt building Aliso Viejo than they did digging the Panama Canal,” Mathis said.
Mathis drove his father to the ridgeline of Laguna Beach. From there, you could see the whole ranch area, smell the laurel sumac in Aliso Canyon, glimpse some old corrals in the distance, get a grip of the topography. The white striations of terraced neighborhoods faded in the haze. The twin peaks of Modjeska and Santiago, called Old Saddleback, framed the view, as they did in most of the county, one thing that never changed.
“He could see where they had the old roundups,” he said. “That was a powerful image for him.”
As development moved south, the older, northern parts of the county lost some of their luster. The affluent white Republicans drifted to the shinier places depicted in shows such as “The O.C.”
The explosion in South County home construction created thousands of jobs. “The people building all of those houses were Latino,” said Smoller, the political science professor. Like the old tenant farmers, they helped families such as the Irvines realize their dreams.
Thousands of other Latinos would follow to work in service jobs in these wealthy new areas.
The humming economy overall and good schools also lured professional and middle-class Latinos to the northern neighborhoods that Anglos were leaving in their migration south.
In Santa Ana in the 1970s, the population of Latinos went from 40,000 to 90,000. Today, Latinos account for 78% of Santa Ana’s population. Northwest Orange County looks a lot like Southeast L.A. County. La Habra is 57% Latino; Anaheim, 52%; Buena Park, 40%; Garden Grove, 37%.
The other big factor that brought demographic change was seeded 53 years ago, when the federal government removed racist quotas on immigrants from Asia, and Greater Los Angeles became a major destination for Koreans and Chinese.
In 1975, after Saigon fell, 50,000 South Vietnamese landed in nearby Camp Pendleton, and conservative Orange County stepped up to take the anti-communist refugees.
The Register called on churches and citizens to sponsor these newcomers. They were put up in apartments in neglected parts of Westminster and Garden Grove still surrounded by bean fields.
Soon the fields and dilapidated commercial strips gave way to bustling places such as Saigon Market and Hoa Binh Market, ushering in a wave of new Vietnamese businesses that would revitalize the area.
Frank Jao started off in America selling Kirby vacuum cleaners in Whittier. Within a year, he moved to Garden Grove, became a real estate agent, then developer, first building a shopping mall in Westminster with the help of Chinese investors.
So many Vietnamese storefronts were opening in Westminster, changing its look so rapidly, that more than 100 residents signed a petition calling for the city to stop issuing business licenses. It was an ugly time.
“Anyone driving on Bolsa would more than occasionally be confronted by drivers who rolled down their windows and asked us to roll down ours, and they’d give us the middle finger,” recalled Jao, now 70. “When we’d go to work in the morning, we’d find the windows shot out by BB guns.”
His buildings became the core of Little Saigon, notably its landmark Asian Garden Mall. His company built $400 million worth of shopping centers and apartment buildings throughout Orange County and beyond.
Upscale Chinese families took to Irvine. Many had left China because of the lack of opportunities for their children to attend college, and this master-planned community, built around UC Irvine, was a huge draw, as it was to moderately affluent Koreans, Iranians and Latinos. Irvine is nearly 40% Asian now.
Koreans had begun trickling in from Los Angeles during the 1980s, seeking better schools. The 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which many Korean store owners lost their businesses, sped up the flow. They often stuck close together, moving into specific neighborhoods in Garden Grove, Fullerton and Buena Park.
The Asian influx has also contributed to the reordering of politics in once reliably Republican Orange County.
As a whole, Asian Americans are more likely to register as “no party preference” and vote based on specific issues, not party, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of political science and public policy at UC Riverside. They leaned Republican during the Reagan era and well into the 1990s while subsequent generations moved to the left.
“About one-third of Asian Americans voted for Clinton in 1992,” Ramakrishnan said, “but two-thirds voted for Obama in 2008.”
He said in the last five years strong GOP outreach to the community in Orange County — and encouragement of Asian Americans to run for office — has brought many back to the party. But Ramakrishnan said too many factors are at play to say how they will vote on Tuesday. An example: They don’t like Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, but Vietnamese, Taiwanese and Koreans like his confrontational stance toward China.
In Buena Park, Pat Donnelly, still a Republican, met a Korean American estate attorney named Sunny Park — a Democrat — at his Lion’s Club. He came to realize she had values he admired: honesty, a family focus, strong work ethic. Now he’s campaigning for her as she runs for City Council.
Park had followed her aging Korean clients from Los Angeles, moving into the affluent and increasingly Korean Bellehurst neighborhood. When she knocks on doors, many white people have offered support. But some have grumbled “No Koreans” and shut the door in her face.
A couple weeks ago, she started seeing campaign signs that said “No Sunny Park, Carpetbagger.”
She says the message that sends the Korean community is that she — and by extension they — are not from here and they shouldn’t try to take part in politics.
The political dynamic in Orange County is not so much a rising blue tide, but an ebbing red one. Since 1999, registered Democrats rose by less than 2 percentage points to 33.6%, while Republicans have fallen 14 points to 35.6% of voters. The wave is of independent voters who increased in numbers nearly as much as the Republicans fell.
A majority of Latinos vote Democrat, and growth in their community has buoyed the party. While they tend to be more socially conservative, they favor more lenient immigration policies, social programs that help the poor, strong unions and high minimum wages.
Historically, turnout has not matched their share of the population, but some Republican strategists fear Trump’s derogatory comments about Mexican and Central American immigrants might motivate them this year.
In 1996, the anti-immigrant rhetoric surrounding Proposition 187 helped end the ultra-right Orange County Republican Bob Dornan’s political career, and put Democrat Loretta Sanchez in Congress.
Just like the development, the diversity and Democratic edge are pushing south in this county of 3.2 million people.
In 2002, Democrats outnumbered Republicans only in Santa Ana, Buena Park and Stanton. Now they do in 11 cities reaching down to Irvine.
In Laguna Niguel, Candy Antone, 47, said Democrats such as her essentially lived in the closet until recently. She would go quiet when a Republican friend or neighbor would go on a political rant. “You just had to bite your lip,” she said.
But Trump is repelling even many Republicans here. “Democrats are coming out of the woodwork,” Antone said. “People we’ve known for years, we’re just finding out they’re Democrats.”
101 East meets innovators across East Asia using digital technology to transform how we grieve those we love.
East Asia is facing a demographic reckoning, with societies in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan ageing rapidly.
With a drastic shortage of burial space, a lucrative new market is emerging.
From AI avatars to DNA gems, technology is bringing loved ones back to life – in digital forms – raising questions about whether it will help heal or hinder the grieving process.
101 East investigates how new technology is transforming the way we bid farewell to those we love.
EXCLUSIVE: There were arguments aplenty and several walkouts – but Jackie Bassett and Peter Davies say they’d still do it all over again, given the choice
00:09, 07 Sep 2026Updated 07:30, 07 Sep 2026
The final emotional episodes go back over the lives of all of the contributors, since 1964(Image: Nick Wall)
In 1964, 14 children aged seven were plucked from obscurity to take part in the TV experiment Seven Up!, which would follow them every seven years to see how their different starts in life would affect them.
The nation has long been fascinated by these kids, who have now (mostly) reached the grand age of 70. Two of them have died, along with the show’s long-term director Michael Apted, who went on to have a career making films in Hollywood.
Two of the most outspoken were Jackie Bassett and Peter Davies – and both say that, despite everything they didn’t like over the decades, they’d do it all again.
Left-wing Peter, from Liverpool, was working as a teacher at a comprehensive in 1984 when 28 Up aired. He was vilified by the right-wing press for calling the Thatcher government “the most incompetent, uncaring bloody shower we’ve ever had” and pulled out for many years after that, not returning until 56 Up, when he realised it was a good way to promote the music he was releasing.
“I think for a long time I felt cynical about the programme and the way in which individual stories were shaped,” he says now. “I’m thinking particularly back to when I did 28 Up – I think one of the headlines was, ‘Would you let this man teach your children?’
“At the time I was quite shocked because I’d never experienced anything like that – the sheer level of vitriol involved in some of the comments. I was quite taken aback.”
He held Michael partly responsible for the way in which he was portrayed. “I actually spoke to Michael and said, ‘You know, you’ve really condensed me there almost to a caricature – the angry young man from the North of England.’”
But “on balance” he’d still do it all again, because of how it turned out. “It’s not a decision I’d have taken lightly because there has been a downside as well.” This downside, in turns out, is the fame that the show has inevitably brought the participants. “I’ve found that intrusion difficult at times,” he admits.
Jackie has now left Scotland, where she brought up her three sons, and moved to the Norfolk coast. “I love my children, I love my grandchildren, but it was time for me to have a life and that’s what I’m doing now,” she declares. “It only took me 65 years to get there, but I’m finally pleasing myself.” She agrees that sometimes the public’s reaction to the show can feel a bit much. “The thing is, they see you for 15 minutes on that screen and suddenly believe they know everything about you. And that’s ridiculous, as most normal people would understand.”
Peter feels the show’s aim of showing the class system evolved into “something much bigger” but still didn’t explore certain areas enough. “I think something they missed was the emergence of a new lower middle class perhaps – people like myself whose parents were working class, but who were able, by virtue of a properly resourced welfare state and state education system, to move out of that background, go to university, change our lives.”
Prior to film-maker Michael’s death in 2021, Jackie enjoyed sometimes putting him in his place, famously challenging him on camera in 2005 for asking the women about marriage and children rather than anything else.
Later, she would point blank refuse to speak about certain topics. “He never saw us, never had contact with us. So he’d come back from America to do a film with me, or Peter, or whoever, and he just sat down and started throwing questions at you. And sometimes he didn’t like the fact that we didn’t want to answer them. I was not going to talk about something that would affect my family, my children – so I basically just told him no. He didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.”
That said, she also had warm feelings for him, and knew he gave her opportunities she wouldn’t otherwise have had. “I probably would do it all over again yes,” she confesses. “Because Michael opened up a whole different world to me with the screenings of his films and things like that. Obviously there’s points on the programme that I’ve not enjoyed, usually because I sort of opened my mouth without engaging my brain, but I think I would do it.”
She thinks it was outrageous to only have four girls alongside ten boys – comprised of herself and two friends Lynn and Sue, all from the same primary school in working class East London, along with solo upper-class Suzy, who liked ballet and thought she’d probably hire a nanny one day.
“The quote wasn’t ‘show me the boy and I’ll give you the man,’ it just says ‘give me the child at seven’,” Jackie points out. “I think it was partly because at that time women were mostly at home looking after children. Women didn’t have careers – you may have had one or two, but they were few and far between. It was just, ‘well, we’ll keep it to a minimum because they’re not going to go very far and they’re not going to do very much.’ But they knew they made a mistake. They really did.”
Peter says Michael actually admitted he’d got that wrong. “It was outrageously sexist, but this was the early 60s and people behaved in outrageously sexist ways all the time.”
They have not yet seen the final films and know that watching themselves for a final time is going to feel emotional. “I’ve been told to take plenty of tissues. I have no idea what to expect, and it’s probably going to feel strange,” Jackie says. Peter believes it will be “momentous”, reasoning: “It’s just the culmination of so much, isn’t it?”
The pair of them enormously enjoyed making the double-bill 70Up finale, with new director Asif Kapadia. “I think it had become a little formulaic,” Peter says. “So having someone new on board was going to shake things up a bit. And I think he did. Some of the questions he asked were difficult to answer, but they were interesting and made me work a bit harder.”
Jackie concurs. “I’ll second that. I think it had got very staid and in its box, and Asif came in like a breath of fresh air. It was far more relaxed, nowhere near as formal. I think it actually should have worked pretty well, fingers crossed.”
They feel that now is the right time to pull the plug. “The last thing we want is us all walking in with Zimmer frames or in wheelchairs or whatever age does to us. I think it’s very appropriate to end on 70,” Jackie says., laughing: “I have no idea why it fascinates people, not really.”
“It can’t go on forever,” Peter agrees. “Two of the cast members have gone, Michael’s gone. So yeah, this feels like the right time to end it.”
Seven Up! launched in 1964 with 14 participants – 10 boys and four girls – picked to represent different elements of the UK’s class structure. They are:
Andrew Brackfield – Upper class schoolboy who read the Financial Times aged 7, went to Oxford and became a solicitor
Bruce Balden – Schoolteacher who attended a prestigious boarding school and wanted to be a missionary
Charles Furneaux – Kensington prep school boy who became a documentary producer and left after 21 Up, returns this time – but only in audio
Jackie Bassett – Working class schoolgirl from East London who moved to Scotland and had three sons
John Brisby – Upper class schoolboy whose father died when he was nine, he became a barrister and is angry over his portrayal
Lynn Johnson – Jackie and Sue’s friend Lynn died from a brain condition in 2013. She thought she would work in Woolworths but was a children’s librarian
Nick Hitchon – Yorkshire farm boy who became a nuclear scientist and moved to the US in 1982. He is featured despite his death, from throat cancer, in 2023
Paul Kligerman – A carehome resident who moved to Australia and settled in to family life
Peter Davies – A middle-class lawyer and musician from Liverpool who dropped out after 28 Up but returned for 56 Up
Neil Hughes – Peter’s classmate, wanted to be an astronaut but became a local politician and preacher and has experienced homelessness
Sue Davis – Jackie’s schoolfriend who was a single mum in 42 Up and became a university administrator who has remarried
Suzy Lusk– Upper class schoolgirl who dropped out of education at 16 and later became a bereavement counsellor
Symon Basterfield – Brought up in a Barnardo’s children’s home, he has fostered more than 120 children.
Tony Walker – Working class “cheeky chappie” from Essex who dreamed of being a jockey but became a London cabbie.
– 70 Up: The Final Chapter, 15 & 22 September, 9pm, ITV and ITVX
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
Russia has suddenly ramped-up the number of attacks, and their duration, on Kyiv. Ukrainian officials state there was a record number of waves of one-way attack drones on the capital on Thursday. This is in contrast to the typical Russian mass barrages that launch a larger number of missiles and drones that strike over a short period in an attempt to overwhelm defenses and inflict maximum damage. The change from prioritizing amplitude to frequency of these assaults indicates that Moscow could be switching to a new strategy aimed at wearing down the populace, halting commerce and exhausting air defenders.
“Again and again throughout the day, sirens sounded as Russia launched drones in small groups towards the Ukrainian capital,” the Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry noted on X. “Each new threat put people at risk and forced them to seek safety – while repeatedly interrupting work, public services, transport, and everyday plans. In total, Kyiv spent 872 minutes – almost 15 hours – under air raid alert that day.”
Kyiv faced 13 separate air raid alerts on 27 August.
Again and again throughout the day, sirens sounded as Russia launched drones in small groups towards the Ukrainian capital. Each new threat put people at risk and forced them to seek safety – while repeatedly interrupting… pic.twitter.com/hTxOipgx0I
This was reportedly the largest number of air raid alerts experienced in Kyiv since the opening days of the all-out war. “The previous record appeared to be set on March 1, 2022, when Kyiv was placed under air raid alert 12 times in a single day,” the Kyiv Independent explained.
In addition, “the capital saw eight more air raid alerts by the morning of Aug. 28 as Russian forces continued attacking Kyiv and the surrounding areas overnight,” the publication added.
Kyiv
Russia’s attacks on Kyiv and the surrounding region continue almost nonstop for a second day. Other regions of Ukraine were also targeted overnight.
▪️ A Russian strike with guided aerial bombs in Sumy killed a 61-year-old civilian. Seven other people were injured. Residential… pic.twitter.com/XUHlw9CKUG
“For over 40 hours straight, Russia has been terrorizing Ukraine’s capital with combined barrages, setting a new grim record for the number of air raid alerts and destroyed civilian infrastructure sites,” Terekh stated on X Friday. “The enemy has long employed this tactic in frontline cities, scorching the earth and any chances of normal life. Its goal is to make our hands drop in despair. To make us search for culprits among ourselves. To make us snap at our own. To make us peer into the future with squinted eyes. To leave not a single minute when it’s appropriate to rejoice in anything: from life’s little joys to our successes on the front lines. To let exhaustion win.”
Вже понад 40 годин поспіль росія тероризує українську столицю комбінованими обстрілами, встановлюючи черговий антирекорд за кількістю повітряних тривог і знищених обʼєктів цивільної інфраструктури. Цю тактику ворог давно застосовує у прифронтових містах, випалюючи землю і…
A former high-ranking Ukrainian military officer offered us a similar assessment, though he surmised that it could backfire on Moscow.
“They want to keep constant pressure on the population and plant a fear of losing lives, increasing starvation, demoralizing the population, plant panic etc.,” the retired officer told us. “My belief is that they won’t achieve such strategic objectives. It is too late. It could have the opposite effect: more hate, more aggression and anger toward Russians.”
A helicopter extinguishes a fire in warehouses damaged by Russian drone strikes on August 27, 2026, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Russian forces launched a massive attack on Kyiv with drones, hitting warehouses. (Photo by Ivan Antypenko/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images) news
The retired officer posited that this spike in the pace of Russian strikes could be part of the escalation Russian President Vladimir Putin recently threatened. Still, it remains unknown at this point whether this is a one-off or the sign of things to come. The coming days should give us an indication of that.
The Latest
Most of the fiercest fighting at this point is centered around Kupyansk in Kharkiv Oblast and Slovyansk in Donetsk. Here are some key takeaways from the latest Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessment:
Kharkiv: Russian forces continued offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast on August 26 and 27 but did not advance as Ukrainian forces counterattacked. The Russians also continued offensive operations in the Kupyansk direction on August 26 and 27 but did not advance as Ukrainian forces counterattacked.
Donetsk: Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Slovyansk direction on August 26 and 27 but did not make confirmed advances as Ukrainian forces counterattacked around Lyman. Russian forces also continued offensive operations in the Dobropillya tactical area, Pokrovsk, near Novopavlivka itself and northeast and south of Oleksandrivka on August 26 and 27 but did not make confirmed advances.
Zaporizhia: Russian forces continued limited offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on August 26 and 27 but did not advance.
Kherson: Neither Russian nor Ukrainian forces reported ground activity in the Kherson direction on August 27.
Ukrainian officials are investigating why weapons were stored in a residential neighborhood after a deadly Russian drone attack on a warehouse in a village near Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the investigation centers on negligence. The strike and resulting secondary explosions at the facility in the village of Myla killed at least 37 people and injured at least another 15, according to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry (MoD).
Zelensky didn’t specify the exact variants of the weapons stored, but the Russians claimed they struck a warehouse containing the Fire Point company’s FP-1 and FP-2 drones and another one in a different Kyiv suburb that stored Flamingo cruise missiles.
TWZ cannot independently verify this Russian claim and Ukriane did not confirm the attack on the warehouse containing the Flamingos. We’ve reached out to Fire Point for more details.
“Since yesterday evening and throughout the day today, I have been receiving reports on the situation in the village of Myla, Kyiv region, where detonation began following a Russian strike,” Zelensky stated on X. “A terrible situation and terrible negligence on the part of those who stored explosives right next to people. Another such crime – after what happened in Vyshneve – is absolutely unacceptable.”
Since yesterday evening and throughout the day today, I have been receiving reports on the situation in the village of Myla, Kyiv region, where detonation began following a Russian strike. A terrible situation and terrible negligence on the part of those who stored explosives… pic.twitter.com/YyRpBxQ8Kz
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 29, 2026
Vyshneve is a town where an ammunition depot belonging to the Ukrainian defense conglomerate Ukroboronprom, the country’s largest weapons manufacturer, was attacked in July. The secondary explosions killed seven and wounded 29 others, according to the Kyiv Independent.
“I expect the details to be presented to the public promptly,” the Ukrainian leader added. “The first strike was on an ammunition storage site that definitely shouldn’t have been there – a Defense Forces storage facility. Shells, mines, other ammunition, and drones detonated. The scale is significant. We have already spoken with the Prosecutor General, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the Commander-in-Chief – they have everything necessary for the investigation. I want to separately thank everyone who is there on the ground and at other sites of Russian strikes, doing everything possible to help and save people.”
Smoke is still rising from the ammunition depot in the village of Myla, Bucha District, Kyiv Oblast, which was targeted by Russian Geran-4 drone strikes.
The reported death toll has risen to 37, with at least 42 others injured and 381 people evacuated.
The retirement home at Myla near Kyiv where twenty people died after a Russian strike caused secondary detonations at a secret ammunition depot placed amidst dense suburbia. pic.twitter.com/iPhODiVXJ7
The Ukrainian MoD called for a full accounting of all weapons and ammunition storage locations.
“Siting depots holding explosives next to civilians is unacceptable,” MoD stated on X. “The heads of all relevant components of the Security and Defence Forces and of Ukraine’s defence industry must carry out a full audit of the sites where weapons and ammunition are stored. Facilities of this kind must not stand next to residential buildings where people live.”
We bow our heads in deep sorrow together with every family that has lost loved ones in the terrible tragedy in the village of Myla, Kyiv region.
As of 15:00 on 29 August, 37 people are known to have been killed and 15 injured. Two more are still being searched for under the…
As we noted earlier in this story, the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) claims it hit “an ammunition depot in [Myla] (Fire Point LLC), where components and launch boosters for long-range FP-1/FP-2 unmanned aerial vehicles were stored in warehouses.”
The MoD also claims it struck the “Fim Service transport and logistics centre in Chayki” whose “warehouses were used to store Flamingo long-range cruise missiles.” The village is also near Kyiv; however, there have been no reports of collateral damage. Ukrainian officials have not independently confirmed that weapons were stored there. The Kyivschina24 media outlet reported that the Chayki attack struck a tile warehouse owned by the Agromat company, not a weapons storage area.
Russian Defense Ministry (MoD)
Whether it was the case in these instances or not, it should come as absolutely no surprise that Moscow would do everything possible to target Fire Point standoff munitions and their supply chain, considering how big of a threat they have become. Regardless, while Ukrainian officials are now investigating why explosives were stored so close to a residential neighborhood, the incident highlights the precarious nature of the country’s weapons production. Due to repeated Russian attacks, this work is widely distributed to avoid having a single point of failure.
“Well, the logistics are hell, to be frank,” she told us. “But we do not have the luxury to have the factory in a classic way, with the walls and roof, … when I say factory — and we have 90 of them in the moment — when I say factory I mean this whole ecosystem with logistics, with warehouses, everything is hidden and dissolved in a way that the critical components are always duplicated, triplicated, quadruplicated. It’s a lot of additional investments and, of course, a lot of risks and a lot of additional time for logistics specifically, but again, we do not have any other choice. Therefore, the factory in this matter is a whole ecosystem.”
Footage of the production and testing of the FP-1/2 attack UAVs and the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile
In the wake of the Vyshneve attack, Ukroboronprom fired two of its directors after Zelensky said that the ammunition depots were stored too near to civilian areas “in violation of Ukrainian law and orders from military leaders,” the Kyiv Independent noted. The criminal investigation in that case is ongoing.
It is too early to say what will happen with this latest incident. The investigation into the Myla case has just started and there is no immediate word about whether Ukraine is also investigating the storage of weapons in Chayki. We will monitor this situation and provide updates when warranted. A satellite image obtained by TWZ appears to back up Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim that his country’s Alpha Unit destroyed a Tu-95MS Bear bomber during a drone attack on Russia’s Engels Air Base. The facility is located about 350 miles east of Ukrainian-held territory.
The satellite image, provided by Vantor, shows the right wing of the bomber partially severed. It is unclear from the image how extensive any damage was caused by shrapnel.
Ukraine has frequently attacked Engels in its effort to destroy the bombers housed there. Russia, trying to defend against this ‘kill-the-archer’ approach, is building protective shelters for its military aircraft, which now extend to long-range bombers, an unprecedented development for the Russian Aerospace Forces.
Engels, also known as Engels-2, is one of the most important airfields of Russia’s Long-Range Aviation Branch. It is home to the 22nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Division, which is responsible for Russia’s only squadron of Tu-160s, plus another squadron of Tu-95MS bombers.
Both of those types have been widely employed in the conflict in Ukraine and especially in the standoff strikes that have targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, among other objectives, civilian and military, across the country.
“Today, we received information from the American side about the meetings in Moscow that took place the other day,” the Ukrainian leader stated on X. “There was a series of meetings. We spoke before the meetings, and we have spoken again now with the Americans. Thank you for the information – and for the necessary tone of the conversation with Russia.”
“We value the alignment of steps and the fact that America is advancing a realistic vision of what needs to be done and what must be achieved,” he added. “Russia must end its war, and all the necessary conditions must be created to make that happen.”
Ratcliffe’s visit has sparked a wide range of conjecture, and disparate reports about the purpose. The New York Times, for instance, wrote that the journey was made “to privately share his bleak assessment of the state of the Russian war against Ukraine, and to urge the Russians to cut a deal before their military and economic situation gets worse.”
President Donald Trump, for his part, tried to downplay the whole thing, calling it “semi-routine,” which doesn’t exactly square with the fact that this was the first publicly known visit of a CIA director to Moscow since November 2021, just months before Putin launched his full-on invasion.
Today, we received information from the American side about the meetings in Moscow that took place the other day. There was a series of meetings. We spoke before the meetings, and we have spoken again now with the Americans.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 28, 2026
Kyrylo Budanov, the Head of the Office of the President, said the Armed Forces of Ukraine need to mobilize 30,000 every month in order to keep defending against Russia. He made the comments during an interview on the national nightly newscast.
“Unfortunately, we have to accept it [mobilization] as it is,” Budanov explained. “We cannot do otherwise. We have to find the courage and honestly say: we cannot mobilize fewer than 30,000 people a month. This is the minimum number needed to maintain what we have.”
Budanov’s comments come as Ukraine is struggling to put enough troops on the front lines and is facing opposition to how recruits are often forced into service, sometimes physically.
“So, no matter how we say that we are now going to recruit people differently, the numbers will not change,” Budanov added. “And that means the number of dissatisfied people will not change either. There is nothing we can do about it.”
Meanwhile, Budanov expressed hope that it would be possible to change the approach to what he described as “forceful mobilization” to some extent.
“I hope we can change the approach to this forceful mobilization, which sometimes takes place,” Budanov acknowledged. “It is not happening everywhere, but such cases do occur. We need to tackle this.”
Kyrylo Budanov: “Unfortunately, we have to accept it [mobilization] as it is. We cannot do otherwise. We have to find the courage and honestly say: we cannot mobilize fewer than 30,000 people a month. This is the minimum number needed to maintain what we have.”… pic.twitter.com/csebu3b3cV
As we have frequently noted, AI plays a key role for Ukraine, especially helping guide weapons to target. To help improve these functions, Ukraine has created a sandbox of sorts where weapons developers can fine-tune their AI systems with real-world data.
“In the past, coordinating a fire mission – from an observer detecting a target to the actual opening of fire – could take 15–20 minutes, or even longer, when done manually,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry (MoD) explained. “In modern warfare, such a delay is effectively unacceptable. This is where artificial intelligence comes in to assist human operators.”
“At the find stage of the kill chain, reconnaissance drones can use visual data repositories to detect objects,” the MoD noted. “For this purpose, the Brave1 defense innovation cluster created Brave1 Dataroom, a secure platform that provides developers with access to structured datasets for testing, training, and fine-tuning military AI solutions.”
“The platform specializes in detecting and intercepting aerial targets, including Shahed-type drones,” the ministry proffered. “To train drone AI systems using real-world battlefield data, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine has provided Ukrainian developers with access to Avengers Labs. The platform provides access to an annotated dataset of 5 million frames collected during military missions.”
The dataset is regularly updated, with Ukraine’s homegrown DELTA battlefield management and situational-awareness system serving as its primary source.
“Targets included in the dataset range from tanks, artillery, and air defense systems to enemy infantry groups and aerial targets, including reconnaissance UAVs and Shahed-type drones,” according to the ministry.
Coordinating a fire mission manually once took 15-20 minutes. In this war, that’s a lifetime.
Avengers AI, trained on 5M annotated battlefield frames and integrated into DELTA, now flags 70% of enemy equipment in real time across 100,000+ video streams a month.
The city of Druzhkivka, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, is on the front line of a grinding battle. It is part of the so-called fortress belt of cities where ensconced Ukrainian forces have held off brutal waves of Russian attacks for years. Recently released drone video shows the extent of the damage, with virtually no building untouched and vast swaths of the city completely abandoned.
Irish journalist Caolan Robertson provides a gripping view of another fortress belt city, Kramatorsk, and the last power plant in the region, which is a frequent target of Russian attacks.
Another Ukrainian city is being wiped out right now while the world looks away
Here’s what’s happening in Kramatorsk:
• Glide bombs & FPVs pound the city to make them unliveable.
• Civilians evacuated every day but not everyone is leaving.
Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets made the statement during a press conference held at the publication, focused on Russian disinformation concerning prisoners of war, exchanges, and people missing in action.
According to the ombudsman, the 345 documented executions involved Ukrainian soldiers who had clearly surrendered, including by laying down their weapons, raising their hands, or lying on the ground to demonstrate that they were no longer taking part in hostilities.
