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Eight years on from the 2017 violence that pushed hundreds of thousands of Rohingya across Myanmar’s border into Bangladesh, the junta-backed government in Naypyidaw has publicly announced it is prepared to accept the return of more than 300,000 Rohingya refugees once regional security conditions stabilize. The confirmation, released in an official statement from Myanmar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs over the weekend, marks the first formal update to the long-stalled repatriation process in years, even as ongoing armed conflict across Rakhine State leaves any large-scale return unlikely in the near term.

The roots of the current Rohingya refugee crisis stretch back decades, but the most catastrophic displacement began in August 2017. Following coordinated attacks on military outposts by a Rohingya insurgent faction, Myanmar’s military launched a large-scale counterinsurgency crackdown across northern Rakhine State. The brutal, coordinated operation forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee their homes for neighboring Bangladesh, where they joined an estimated 200,000 other Rohingya who had been displaced by earlier waves of state-led violence dating back to the 1970s. The operation’s scale and brutality drew global condemnation, with the United Nations and multiple world governments accusing Myanmar’s military of carrying out ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Rohingya population.

Successive Myanmar governments have long refused to grant the Rohingya official status as one of the country’s 135 recognized ethnic minorities, instead labeling them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and referring to them exclusively as “Bengalis.” Under the current repatriation verification process, the statement explains that authorities have cross-checked 426,545 of the 828,824 names on the refugee roster provided by the Bangladeshi government as of the end of July. Of those screened, 308,797 have been confirmed as former residents of Rakhine State who are eligible for return. An additional 113,507 applicants could not be verified through Myanmar’s existing records, while 4,241 screened people were flagged for alleged links to what the ministry called “terrorist activities.”

The foreign ministry’s statement reaffirmed that the government will continue bilateral coordination with Bangladesh to facilitate the safe return of all verified former Rohingya residents, but only once security across Rakhine State improves. The statement also pushed back on widespread accounts that more than 1 million Rohingya have been displaced from Rakhine since 2017, claiming that just over 540,000 people crossed into Bangladesh following the 2017 violence, with roughly 200,000 Rohingya remaining in northern Rakhine State.

Plans for organized repatriation first took shape in 2018, when Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement to launch a two-year structured return process. But those plans collapsed entirely after the 2021 military coup that ousted the elected civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. The coup triggered widespread armed resistance across the country, and security in Rakhine State has deteriorated sharply since 2023, when renewed clashes broke out between the military and the ethnic Arakan Army, which has seized control of most of Rakhine’s territory over the past three years. The latest round of fighting has forced thousands more Rohingya to flee Rakhine for Bangladesh and other neighboring regions in search of safety.

For the hundreds of thousands of refugees still trapped in overcrowded Bangladeshi camps, conditions have grown increasingly desperate in recent years. Cuts to international aid, persistent overcrowding, lack of access to livelihoods and healthcare, and the complete absence of a safe path to return have pushed growing numbers of refugees to attempt dangerous unauthorized sea crossings to Malaysia and Indonesia on overcrowded, unseaworthy boats.

Earlier this year, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced that Myanmar had agreed to repatriate 5,000 Rohingya currently residing in Malaysia as part of a regional repatriation initiative. But a senior official from Myanmar’s foreign ministry later clarified to the Associated Press that the plan only applied to verified Myanmar nationals being held in Malaysian immigration detention centers, and rejected claims that the government would accept the return of Rohingya refugees outside that narrow framework.

In the pre-dawn hours of a recent Saturday, a powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake jolted the Flores region of East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, leaving at least two people dead and widespread structural damage across the remote, mountainous island area.

The seismic event, which struck just before 5:00 a.m. local time at a shallow depth of 15 kilometers around 1,000 kilometers from Indonesia’s popular tourist hub of Bali, sent panicked residents of Maumere — Flores’ largest population center — spilling into open streets in fear.

One of the hardest-hit infrastructure sites was Lorens Say Port in Maumere, where dramatic eyewitness footage captured large sections of concrete breaking free from the terminal building and crashing down onto passengers waiting to board an inter-island ferry. The collapse of the ship’s gangway threw multiple waiting travelers into the surrounding sea.

Immediately following the main quake, Indonesian officials issued a nationwide tsunami warning, prompting thousands of coastal residents to flee inland on motorbikes and foot for higher ground. The warning was later lifted after no large waves materialized, but lingering anxiety has kept many communities on edge.

Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) confirmed the two fatalities so far are one man and one woman, though agency officials note that casualty data is still undergoing verification by on-the-ground response teams. “The victim data is still being verified and further data collection is being conducted by the field team,” the BNPB said in an official statement.

Search and rescue teams from the country’s Basarnas disaster response agency have already deployed to Maumere to locate and extract anyone trapped in collapsed or damaged structures, but the region’s remote, mountainous terrain has slowed efforts to map the full scale of destruction. Multiple strong aftershocks have continued to rattle the area in the hours after the main quake, including one 6.1-magnitude tremor that has added to risks for residents and first responders alike.

In a public advisory, the BNPB outlined its immediate priorities: protecting public safety, preventing additional casualties from aftershocks and secondary hazards, and completing a rapid needs assessment across the affected zone. The agency urged local residents to remain calm, stay clear of low-lying coastal areas, and avoid entering any structures that have already sustained cracks or visible structural damage. “A rapid assessment is currently underway to determine the number of casualties and the extent of the impact. We will provide that information after the data has been verified,” the statement added.

Arnold Welianto, a resident of Talibura village in Sikka, East Nusa Tenggara, shared his firsthand account of the disaster with the BBC. Welianto said he was asleep in his home when the “very strong shaking” jolted him awake. “I was startled awake and immediately went to my child’s room,” he recalled. “Once we were outside, residents in our neighbourhood, which is located close to the shoreline, had already fled their homes and were heading toward the hills and crowding the roads, while some other residents were standing along the roadside because the sea had also receded.”

“The water remained low for quite some time, so everyone panicked and ran – I went around to the community health centre, and the people there had already been evacuated,” Welianto added. He noted that most area residents are still choosing to stay outdoors for safety, as ongoing aftershocks have left them too afraid to return to potentially unstable homes.

On August 4, a routine commercial flight from Phuket to New Delhi operated by Air India took an unexpected turn when the Airbus A320 suddenly dropped around 300 feet (91 meters) in altitude mid-flight. The sudden plunge left 13 passengers and four crew members injured, though the aircraft ultimately landed safely at its destination with all 137 passengers and eight crew members on board. What began as a standard incident investigation quickly erupted into a national discussion across India about aviation safety protocols and the complexities of drug testing for pilots, after unconfirmed media reports claimed the flight’s captain tested positive for cannabis in a follow-up laboratory analysis.

India’s aviation ministry confirmed that both pilots on board completed mandatory post-incident screening for psychoactive substances following the landing. The initial test result for the captain triggered the need for additional confirmatory testing, and both pilots have been suspended from active flight duties pending the outcome of the full investigation. Multiple outlets have cited anonymous sources claiming the confirmatory test returned a positive result for marijuana, but neither Air India nor Indian aviation regulators have issued an official confirmation of this finding to date.

Most critically, no official link has been drawn between the alleged positive test result and the sudden altitude loss that sparked the incident. Investigators are conducting a broad review of all contributing factors, including technical aircraft performance, operational protocols, medical conditions and human performance variables, leaving the root cause of the plunge undetermined.

While the public has focused immediately on whether cannabis use caused the incident, aviation researchers and toxicology experts point to a much more nuanced question that does not have a clear answer: what can a positive cannabis test actually reveal about a pilot’s level of impairment at the time the incident occurred, hours before the test was administered?

Decades of small-scale research on cannabis and pilot performance has established that the drug can interfere with the core skills required for safe flight. In a 1976 simulator study, 10 pilots who consumed a moderate dose of cannabis showed measurable performance declines in altitude control, heading maintenance and radio navigation, with impairment lasting at least two hours and fading within four to six hours. Follow-up research conducted in the 1980s and 1990s found even more concerning results: pilots tested on flight simulators 24 hours after cannabis consumption still showed significant performance declines in critical functions including aircraft control, landing accuracy and approach deviation. Most alarmingly, the vast majority of participating pilots had no awareness that their performance had been compromised.

A 2000s review conducted by aviation medicine specialist David Newman for Australia’s Transport Safety Bureau echoed these conclusions, noting that cannabis affects cognition, behavior and psychomotor function in a dose-dependent relationship, with complex, high-concentration tasks such as commercial flight particularly vulnerable to impairment. The review also confirmed evidence of residual performance effects that can last up to 24 hours after consumption.

But as cannabis use has become more widespread globally and product potency has increased significantly in recent decades, the science linking test results to real-time impairment has grown far more complicated. A 2022 randomized clinical trial led by researcher Thomas Marcotte at the University of California San Diego tested 191 regular cannabis users on simulated driving tasks. The study found that while users who smoked THC showed initial performance declines, impairment could not be predicted by the THC content of the product, the user’s prior experience with cannabis, or even blood THC concentration. By roughly four and a half hours after consumption, performance for most test participants was comparable to that of participants who did not receive active THC.

This finding upends simplistic assumptions about positive cannabis tests, experts say. A positive test only confirms that THC or its metabolites are present in the body, not when the cannabis was consumed or whether the person was impaired at the time of the incident. The relationship between test results and impairment varies widely based on dose, method of consumption, frequency of use and individual biological differences, creating a challenge that regulators do not face with alcohol.

“Unlike with alcohol where there’s a more robust relationship between alcohol concentrations in blood and impairment, the association is much more complex with THC. THC rapidly leaves the bloodstream after smoking, and there is limited to no correlation between blood THC concentrations and impairment,” Marcotte explained. “In people who use at least occasionally, THC can be detectable in blood for days and sometimes weeks after last use, particularly in more frequent users. This is long after any acute impairment has subsided.”

Impairment timelines also vary by consumption method: after smoking cannabis, acute impairment typically lasts between three and five hours, while impairment from edible cannabis products lasts longer, generally between six and eight hours. For edible consumption, the metabolite 11-OH-THC is often more closely tied to cognitive impairment than THC itself, which may be present at low detectable concentrations.

To date, no widely accepted standardized test exists that can definitively confirm whether a person is currently impaired by cannabis to the point that they are unfit to fly. Regulators have responded to this uncertainty with a range of policy approaches. Canada, which legalized recreational cannabis in 2018, implemented a strict rule requiring all flight crew and air traffic controllers to abstain from cannabis for a minimum of 28 days before beginning duty, with individual airlines permitted to enact even stricter rules. The policy is explicitly designed to account for the ongoing uncertainties around impairment detection.

A 2026 study from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) underscores the risk of overinterpreting positive tests. The NTSB analyzed pilots killed in U.S. civil aviation accidents between 2018 and 2022, finding that 52.8% had at least one drug detected in their system, with THC driving most of the increase in positive illicit drug results. However, the NTSB emphasized that the study only measured drug presence, not impairment at the time of the crash.

Past accident investigations have reflected this nuance. In a 2011 small plane crash in Canada, investigators concluded that 50.1 ng/ml of THC in the pilot’s blood was sufficient to cause cognitive impairment that contributed to the crash. By contrast, after a 2017 helicopter crash in New Zealand, THC was detected in the pilot’s blood from consumption two days prior, but forensic experts ruled he was almost certainly not impaired at the time of the accident, and investigators concluded cannabis did not contribute to the crash.

The core takeaway from these cases is that a positive cannabis test does not inherently prove the drug caused an incident, nor is it meaningless. Its significance depends on concentration, timing of consumption, context of use and supporting evidence, experts say.

In the Air India case, this means investigators need to answer far more than whether the captain’s confirmatory test was positive. They will need to confirm what type of sample was tested, whether the test detected THC itself or a breakdown metabolite, what concentration of the substance was present, and what that reveals about when the cannabis was consumed.

In response to the public controversy sparked by the reports, Air India has announced it will immediately implement mandatory drug testing for all of its pilots, expanding on existing regulations that only require random testing of at least 10% of pilots annually. Toxicology experts note that even with expanded testing, common testing methods using urine, blood or saliva can only confirm exposure to THC, not reliably pin down the timing of use or confirm impairment at the time of the flight hours earlier. While saliva testing is more closely linked to recent use, it can still detect THC up to a day or more after consumption.

For investigators, the question is not a simple yes or no on whether the pilot used cannabis. Three distinct questions need to be answered: was cannabis consumed, was the pilot impaired during the flight, and did that impairment contribute to the sudden altitude drop? While the first question may be answered soon, the second and third will require far more rigorous analysis to resolve.

Early Saturday morning, a powerful 7.7-magnitude undersea earthquake shook coastal regions of Indonesia’s Flores island, leaving at least two people dead, two others injured, and a swath of collapsed infrastructure across the seismically active archipelago. As of the latest official updates, emergency response teams are still conducting preliminary damage assessments across the most hard-hit areas.

The U.S. Geological Survey recorded the quake striking at 5:58 a.m. local time, with a relatively shallow depth of just 10 kilometers. Its epicenter was placed roughly 68 kilometers (42 miles) north-northwest of Ende, a major city in Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province. The initial seismic event was followed by multiple smaller aftershocks that complicated immediate response efforts.

Immediately after the quake was detected, Indonesian disaster authorities issued a broad tsunami warning covering coastal areas of four provinces: East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi, and Southeast Sulawesi. The warning urged all coastal residents to evacuate to higher ground and avoid low-lying areas including beaches and riverbanks. However, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency later canceled the alert after continuous monitoring confirmed no significant sea level shifts that would threaten coastal communities, easing widespread public panic.

Local eyewitness accounts paint a picture of chaotic panic as the quake hit. Yohanna Embu, a resident of Sikka regency in East Nusa Tenggara, told reporters that strong shaking damaged dozens of structures across the area, including a total collapse of the waiting room at Maumere’s port terminal. Panicked residents flooded roads heading for higher ground immediately after the shaking began.

At St. Peter Major Seminary, locally known as Ritapiret Seminary, dozens of students were gathered for morning Mass when the roof of the campus assembly hall caved in. Rev. Guidelbertus Tanga, the seminary’s rector, said students and on-site nuns fled the collapsing structure in immediate panic. At least one priest suffered a broken leg after jumping from the second floor of a damaged campus building to escape.

As a safety precaution, multiple hospitals across the affected region evacuated all patients from their main buildings. Local television footage showed medical staff moving critical equipment including patient beds, IV stands and oxygen cylinders outside, where they set up temporary triage and treatment areas to continue care amid the risk of aftershocks damaging weakened structures.

Indonesia’s position along the Pacific Basin’s “Ring of Fire” – a vast network of active volcanoes and tectonic fault lines – leaves the 17,000-island archipelago chronically prone to major seismic and volcanic events. This region of Flores is no exception: a devastating 1992 earthquake in the same area triggered a tsunami that killed an estimated 2,500 people, leaving a lasting memory of seismic risk among local communities.

Associated Press journalists Niniek Karmini and Edna Tarigan contributed reporting from Jakarta for this story.

On a sweltering Thursday morning in mid-August 2026, central London’s streets hit an unprecedented 30 degrees Celsius by 10 a.m., marking what climate officials confirm will be the United Kingdom’s hottest summer ever recorded. Just steps from Oxford Street’s iconic Selfridges department store, discarded newspapers carry headlines of spreading wildfires across the British countryside, while a unhoused man calls out for spare change under the unforgiving sun. Inside the cool, air-conditioned building, a Saudi Arabian coffee stand promotes the kingdom, a nod to the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s 40 percent controlling stake in the century-old luxury retailer.

It was here just one week earlier that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, faced a rare public confrontation during a walk through nearby North Audley Street. A Sudanese protester, shouting across the road at the delegation, called out “UAE is killing people in my country, stop killing my people” over the UAE’s widely reported involvement in Sudan’s ongoing civil conflict. A member of the Sheikh’s large entourage responded by hurling a racial slur at the protester, calling him a “Black bitch”.

As of mid-August, Sheikh Mohammed has remained in London, where he has held closed-door meetings with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and been photographed visiting the upscale west London neighborhood of Chelsea. For Gulf’s wealthiest citizens, however, London’s Mayfair district—home to North Audley Street, one of the most expensive addresses in the world, lined with Michelin-starred restaurants, luxury supercar showrooms and five-star hotels—has long functioned as a home away from home.

For Gulf visitors, the annual August pilgrimage to central London blends business, leisure, and familiarity, shaped by decades of historical and financial ties between Gulf states and the UK. Inside Selfridges, 15-year-old Khaled and his 53-year-old uncle Mohammed, visiting from Dubai, framed their regular trip as a natural extension of Gulf investments in the UK. “We come to London because we have a lot of investments here and we like to help them out,” Khaled told Middle East Eye, when asked about the confrontation with Sheikh Mohammed. Dismissing the Sudanese protester as “ignorant,” he added, “We are helping Sudan. We are sending humanitarian aid. It was disrespectful.”

His uncle, who grew up in Dubai before the oil boom transformed the emirate into a global luxury hub, echoed the sentiment. “Yes, you can have freedom of speech, but you can’t say that to a leader; it’s not respectful,” he said, noting that today’s Emirates offer instant access to any service imaginable: “you can get whatever you want within minutes. Someone will bring it to you. You don’t even have to get up.”

The pair are part of a decades-long pattern of Gulf leadership and elite families sending young people to the UK for education, with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, and many other senior Gulf leaders all having attended British universities or received military training in the country. Khaled, who plans to enroll at a London university, says he prefers the British capital’s relatively cool summer temperatures to Dubai’s habitual 40-degree August heat, where even daily life is confined to air-conditioned spaces. Like many young Gulf visitors, he keeps his time in London limited almost exclusively to the capital’s most affluent central neighborhoods, avoiding working-class and migrant-heavy outer areas. “We don’t go to the areas where there are roadmen and lots of migrants and stabbings,” he explained, pulling up a phone map marked with what he calls “prime khaleeji hangouts”—all clustered within Mayfair, including high-end restaurants Cipriani, Ivy Asia, Sexy Fish, Supernova and Nobu.

Khaled’s wariness of London outside its elite core is shared by many other young Gulf visitors. A Saudi woman, speaking on condition of anonymity, recalled the reaction of a 15-year-old Saudi student attending a residential summer school in the capital: the teen insists on hiring a personal bodyguard, claiming “people here are so poor they will try to stab me for my Hermes” bag. Even for middle-class Gulf families, London’s central luxury districts function as a self-contained enclave where visitors can easily encounter fellow Gulf citizens. Two teenage sisters from Bahrain, shopping in Selfridges, said they had unexpectedly run into multiple school friends during their trip, a common occurrence in Mayfair. “When we go to Harrods we see people from the Gulf, we see friends and family… It’s not hot, it’s nothing compared to back home where we spend all the time with the AC on,” the 17-year-old sister explained. Still, some aspects of London life remain unfamiliar: “We don’t really have or use public transport in Bahrain. The underground here is very crowded and chaotic. The architecture is different here too.”

Across North Audley Street from Selfridges, at the historic Marlborough pub, temperatures continue to climb through the afternoon. Apart from a small group of regulars drinking pints, the street is dominated by Gulf visitors. Two Kuwaiti fashion and lifestyle influencers, Sarra and Elaf, pose for photos against the street’s Georgian townhouse facades, as a Bugatti supercar roars past. “We mainly spend our time here in Mayfair,” Sarra said. “We come for the weather, the people, the shopping. In our country we can’t find a lot of the brands you have here… For us, it’s good weather. We also come in November because we love the cold, and we love the Christmas vibes.”

For local Mayfair businesses, the annual August influx of wealthy Gulf visitors is not just a seasonal trend—it is the backbone of their annual revenue. At Grays Antique Market, a historic covered market housing more than 80 independent luxury dealers, one senior jeweller says he never takes holiday in August, relying on Gulf shoppers to make his year. “They are an integral part of the business, especially in August; I can’t go away now,” he explained, noting that members of the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE are all regular customers. “Mayfair is the mecca of the Arab world in a way. They love fine things. The men come here to buy silver jewellery, the women come here because they know they can get brands like Cartier, Tiffany and Bulgari at a steep discount.” He added that young Gulf shoppers regularly spend four-figure sums on small luxury items, and one customer recently purchased an £18,500 piece without hesitation—half the price she would have paid back home.

The jeweller also noted a dramatic shift in the source of luxury capital in London over the past four years. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the city was widely nicknamed “Londongrad” for the massive flow of Russian oligarch money into its luxury sector. “I used to deal with a lot of Russians, but they’ve all left like rats from a sinking ship,” he said. “The Russians still here don’t have any money.” Today, that void has been filled by capital from Gulf states, which now own major London landmarks including Selfridges and Harrods, the rival Knightsbridge department store purchased by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in 2010.

At the heart of Mayfair sits Grosvenor Square, which housed the United States’ diplomatic mission to the UK from 1785 until 2018. The former embassy building has since been converted into a luxury hotel, home to the Qatari-owned Qinwan Cafe, another popular gathering spot for Gulf visitors, where three small chicken sandwiches sell for £20 and authentic Palestinian dates—familiar to Gulf visitors—are on offer. On a recent afternoon, women in abayas and men in designer polo shirts sat at outdoor tables, scrolling through social media and posting photos of their coffee to Instagram.

For London’s working-class residents, however, Mayfair’s wealth is a distant, often stark contrast to their own economic struggles. Sitting in his delivery van outside the square, Hash, a delivery driver from south London, waited for his next job amid the 30-degree heat. “Mayfair means money,” he said, reflecting on how his own earnings have fallen over the past six years. “There was a time six years ago, when he could make £500 a day driving a delivery to Scotland and back. Now he says he is lucky to earn more than £100 a day.”

A short walk away, long queues of Gulf tourists wait outside Marchesi, the historic 19th-century patisserie, while a Ferrari dealership glints in the midday sun on Berkeley Square. Deep underground at Green Park Underground station, temperatures climb close to 40 degrees Celsius, as station announcements warn passengers of partial line closures and severe delays across the London Underground network—an inconvenience most Gulf visitors never encounter, confined as they are to the air-conditioned comfort of Mayfair’s luxury spaces.