Love Island fans do not have long left to wait as Casa Amor has been confirmed
22:45, 04 Jul 2025Updated 23:04, 04 Jul 2025
Casa Amor is returning sooner than you think(Image: ITV)
The wait is almost over for Love Island fans, as the notorious Casa Amor has been confirmed to make a comeback, and it’s sooner than you think.
Ever since this season of the beloved reality dating show kicked off, viewers have been hit with an onslaught of brutal new twists – from unexpected dumpings to plenty of bombshells that are stirring serious drama.
Recent episodes brought in the Sleepover Villa, earlier dubbed a “mini casa”, ramping up the pressure and love triangles brewing on screen. But now, Casa Amor is returning very soon with a jaw dropping twist.
In a teaser revealed at the end of Friday’s (July 4) episode, expectant fans learned that Casa Amor’s grand return is set for Sunday, (July 6), as the preview showed before rolling credits sparked excitement.
Harry could be in trouble over the weekend as his ex enters the villa(Image: ITV)
The sneak peek dropped a bombshell as six glamorous girls made their entrance into the villa, taking their positions on the terrace, while presenter Iain confirmed Casa Amor’s return, reports OK!.
Meg was the one to break the news as she read out the girls’ names – Yaz, Lauren, Andrada, Lucy, Rheo and Emma.
A shell-shocked Harry was caught uttering “that’s my ex”, causing everyone to look up at the six newcomers, and leaving Harry’s partner Helena looking gobsmacked.
Casa Amor, hailed as the greatest challenge for the islanders, sees them separated from their partners, coming face to face with tempting new singles. After an exhilarating week, the islanders will be forced to decide – will they choose to recouple or remain loyal?
Helena was left gobsmacked in latest preview clips
As per Casa Amor drama, fans are on tenterhooks to see who will stick and who will switch. Rumours have already started with Casa Amor additions, with whispers suggesting early exits Poppy and Caprice might return.
If islanders choose to stay loyal, a joyful reunion awaits. However, if one opts for a new partner, they return to the villa while their prior mate is left single.
The episode on July 4 had emotions escalating as Shakira confronted Harry about his feelings for Helena post-Superman challenge gossip from Meg, who suggested Harry’s words weren’t matching his actions.
Six new girls will enter the villa on Sunday(Image: ITV)
Shakira pressed him: “You said you’ve fully ended it with Helena, [and that] there’s nothing there with her. Then all of a sudden Meg stands up, who’s Helena’s best friend, and says that you’re telling two different girls two different things. Something’s not adding up there.”
Nonetheless, Harry insisted on his sincerity, even though later footage saw him heading to the hideaway with Helena.
In a twist that left viewers gobsmacked, an unexpected new couple emerged during the latest recoupling. As the girls lined up at the Firepit, one lad stepped forward, choosing his partner with the words: “I don’t really know her as well as I should and I think this is a good opportunity to get to know her fully… I find her attractive and over the last few days she’s really changed my opinion of her.”
Love Island continues tonight at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX
Love Island’s Remell, who was voted out as the least favourite boy, has defended his actions and said things might be different if he and Alima ‘set boundaries’
Jessica Clarke Digital Reporter
21:00, 29 Jun 2025Updated 21:58, 29 Jun 2025
Dumped Love Island star hits back at cheating(Image: ITV/Shutterstock)
Love Island’s Remell has hit back at cheating claims as he defended his decision to stick with Alima after he spent a few days away at ‘The Sleepover’. The latest episode saw the viewers vote for their favourite boy and favourite girl, with the two islanders with the fewest votes getting dumped from the villa.
Remell said that he wasn’t surprised that he was chosen to leave and admitted to taking a ‘risk’. Opening up about his connections, he said: “Despite me having what seemed to be a good connection with Poppy, my heart was telling me that I had to see it through with Alima.
“The dynamic with Poppy was more what I’m used to on the outside. But building up slowly with Alima made me realise that that’s important.”
Remell continued and said that while he “didn’t necessarily have to share the bed and kiss outside of the Truth or Dare game”, he acted how he would have done on the outside and was “being true” to himself.
Love Island’s Remell has hit back at cheating claims as he defended his decision to stick with Alima(Image: ITV)
Defending his actions, he said: “There was never a conversation with Alima about being exclusive, we hadn’t had that chat and hadn’t spoken properly about boundaries either.”
Alima was not pleased with Remell’s actions while he was away and called it off straight away. Reflecting on the experience, he said: “As soon as I came back from The Sleepover, I was ready to speak from the heart. But when I realised that she was hurt, I learned that it was a lot deeper than I originally thought.”
He added: “If Alima and I had had a conversation about boundaries, it would have made a difference. Communication is important and I’d do my best to change.”
Remell said he acted how he would have done on the outside(Image: ITV/Shutterstock)
Remell said they didn’t leave things on the best of terms, but that he would be open to having “conversations”. He said: “Things were left a bit sour. The reality is, the woman that was opening my heart and turning me into a lover boy is never going to truly know how I feel about her.
“I was ready to tell her everything once I came back to the Villa, but because the conversation didn’t end well, we didn’t get to properly talk. We’re both stubborn so it was hard to see eye to eye.
“I would be open to a conversation, but if she’s not open to it then it’s fine. It was hard for us to talk in the Villa because I felt a bit disrespected and put my guard up.”
Elsewhere in the latest episode, Megan was voted as the least favourite girl and was sent packing despite getting to know Conor.
Love Island continues tonight at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX
Love Island fans tell Conor to follow Megan out of the villa and ‘go home’ after he asked her to wait for him after she was voted as the least favourite girl and dumped
Jessica Clarke Digital Reporter
22:25, 29 Jun 2025Updated 22:27, 29 Jun 2025
Love Island fans frustratingly all say the same thing after dramatic double dumping (Image: ITV)
Love Island fans told Conor to follow Megan home after she was dumped from the island in Friday’s episode. After days of back and forth, Megan and Conor finally decided to give it a go and focus on their connection, however, this didn’t last long as Megan was brutally dumped from the villa.
Conor was shocked and upset as soon as Megan’s name was called, and he shed a few tears as he said his goodbyes. Fans have since been left confused as Conor asked Megan to wait for him while he remained in the villa, with many fans telling him to ‘go home’ if he really does like her.
One fan took to x, formally known as Twitter, and said: “ffs he cared that much, he didn’t go with her”, while another asked: “Why didn’t Connor leave w her then??”. A third penned: “I ain’t crying. he could have gone with her”, while a fourth added: “Don’t ask her to wait,..leave with her”.
Conor was shocked and upset as soon as Megan’s name was called(Image: ITV)
As the episode continued, Conor said he didn’t know if he would find another connection like the one he had with Megan, which further confused fans.
Conor said: “I hand on heart do not think that anyone is going to come through that door that I fancy more than Megan… I look at her like a girlfriend on the outside.”
This follows after a dramatic week in the villa which saw Remell and Megan brutally dumped after being voted as the least favourite boy and girl. Alima had already called off her connection with Remell after his actions in ‘The Sleepover’ where he was kissing bombshell Poppy outside of challenges.
Alima said she ‘was done’ even though Remell decided to stay coupled up with her.
Conor was shocked and upset as soon as Megan’s name was called and he shed a few tears as he said his goodbyes(Image: ITV)
Megan on the other hand had just started her connection with Conor which seemed to be going in the right direction before she was sent packing. It was an emotional goodbye for Megan and tears were shed among the girls and boys who she was leaving behind.
Before she left, she sat down for a private moment with Conor where he asked her to wait for him, and she told him she would.
Before she left, she sat down for a private moment with Conor where he asked her to wait for him, and she told him she would
After leaving the villa, Megan said: “I’m gutted to have left because I was getting to a really good place with Conor and I’d tied up loose ends with Tommy and Emily.
“I would’ve liked to have left on better terms with Tommy. We were getting there, but that comes with time and I didn’t have time on my side. I made best friends there and had an absolute ball.”
Southern Shan State, Myanmar – Tian Win Nang squats on the hard-packed earth, balancing a kilogramme (2.2 pounds) of chocolate-coloured raw opium in each hand like a human weighing scales.
“Each kilogramme is worth around $250,” said Tian Win Nang, wearing worn white flip-flops and a black T-shirt.
The son of poppy farmers, Tian Win Nang appears to be barely out of his teens.
“Chinese traders pay us in advance for the harvest,” he said, showing Al Jazeera three dinner-plate-sized mounds of opium.
“We don’t know what happens after,” he says of the journey that will see the opium go “north to the labs” where it will be processed into morphine and eventually refined into heroin.
“We do this to survive,” he adds.
Close-up of raw opium resin collected in a single day in southern Shan State [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]
The sun is high and the air is still in the poppy fields blanketing the hills in this part of southern Shan State in eastern Myanmar.
Men and women, young and old, their faces shielded with scarves and straw hats, move with quick, practised motions as hands use sharp tools to score green poppy pods before silently progressing on to another plant.
A milky fluid slowly oozes from the wound inflicted on the pod. When it has dried to the consistency of gum, the same hands will scrape off the sticky substance, gather it together and leave it to dry in the sun until it reaches the toffee-like consistency of raw opium.
This is a daily ritual for many farmers in this part of Shan State near where drug shipments have flowed along these mountain roads near the town of Pekon for decades. The routes wind towards the borders with neighbouring Thailand, Laos and China.
Armed conflict between Myanmar’s military and ethnic armed organisations in these regions has fuelled opium farming and drug production for generations, but the trade has surged in step with the country’s intensifying civil war.
A poppy field stretches across the hills of Pekon district in southern Shan State, Myanmar [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]
Alliances have long existed, experts say, between high-ranking Myanmar military officers, ethnic armed groups, local criminal networks and transnational syndicates that handle the drug trade’s logistics, refining and distribution.
“Drug trafficking in Myanmar has been facilitated by the military since the 1990s,” said Mark Farmaner, director of the London-based Advance Myanmar charity and an expert on Southeast Asia. “Many officers profit personally, and the institution as a whole reaps political advantages,” he said.
One of the most powerful regional syndicates is Sam Gor, a sprawling network made up of an alliance of rival Chinese triad gangs that operates across China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and beyond.
Despite the 2021 arrest and extradition to Australia of Tse Chi Lop – a Canadian national of Chinese origin widely believed to be the leader of Sam Gor – the network remains largely intact.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that the Sam Gor syndicate generated at least $8bn – and possibly as much as $17.7bn – in 2018 from controlling between 40 and 70 percent of the wholesale methamphetamine market in the Asia Pacific region.
Local women harvest poppies under the midday sun in southern Shan State, one of Myanmar’s main opium-producing regions [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]
Despite the high-profile arrest of Tse Chi Lop, the regional drug trade is flourishing with more than 1.1 billion methamphetamine pills seized across Southeast Asia in 2023 – a historic record, according to UNODC.
‘We oppose the production, trafficking and use of narcotics’
Most of the methamphetamine originates from laboratories hidden in the mountains of northern Shan State and other areas on Myanmar’s eastern borders, which have become the region’s epicentre of synthetic drug production and are part of the “Golden Triangle” – the lawless territory encompassing the shared borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos.
But before the explosion in methamphetamine production, the Golden Triangle was infamous for its opium crops and the heroin it produced while under the rule of the self-styled drug lord Khun Sa – the undisputed drug kingpin of the 1980s and 1990s regional drug trade.
Khun Sa is believed to have commanded a personal army of some 15,000 men and under his direction much of Shan State became the global centre of heroin production. He surrendered to the military government in Myanmar in 1996 and died in Yangon in 2007, under the protection of the same generals who had shielded him for years.
A farmer scores a poppy pod to collect its sap [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]
“In the early 1980s, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration estimated that 70 percent of the heroin consumed in the US came from his organization ,” Kelvin Rowley, a lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, wrote after Khun Sa’s death.
“The US government placed a $2 million bounty on [Khun Sa’s] head – an amount reportedly less than what he earned in a single month,” Rowley said.
Opium has now made a comeback in the Golden Triangle.
After the Taliban banned poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in 2022, Myanmar returned to being the world’s top producer of opium.
In 2023, according to UNODC estimates, Myanmar’s poppy fields stretched over more than 47,000 hectares (more than 116,000 acres), and by 2024, some 995 tonnes of raw opium was produced – an increase of 135 percent since the military takeover in 2021. The gross value of the opium and heroin trade in Myanmar last year was estimated to be between $589m and $1.57bn, according to UNODC.
The scale of drug production, the UN reports, is also tied to the civil war in Myanmar, which is now in its fourth year.
Myanmar’s economy has collapsed since the military coup in 2021, and with options narrowing, people have traditionally turned to poppy cultivation as a means to survive.
The UN notes that opium poppy cultivation in Southeast Asia has long been linked to poverty, lack of government services, economic challenges and insecurity.
“Households and villages in Myanmar that engage in poppy cultivation and the broader opium economy do so to supplement income or because they lack other legitimate opportunities,” the UN said.
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But now parts of Pekon, long a military stronghold and a key drug trafficking corridor, are under the control of the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) and other Karenni armed groups fighting the ruling military.
They say they want to change things.
“We oppose the production, trafficking, and use of narcotics,” said Maui, a deputy commander of the KNDF.
“When we capture Burmese soldiers, they’re full of meth,” Maui said.
“We ask where it comes from and they tell us, without hesitation, it’s distributed by their superiors to push them to the front lines,” he said.
“Once the war is over, we’ll go after the opium too. We want it to be used only for medical purposes,” he added.
Karenni police officers search a motorbike at a checkpoint in Pekon district, southern Shan State [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]
As part of those antidrug efforts, Karenni police forces stop and search motorcycles and vehicles on roads in the areas of Shan State they now control.
“We are stopping cars and motorbikes we don’t recognise to search for drugs,” said Karenni police commander Win Ning Thun, standing at a checkpoint just outside a village in Pekon district.
“We’re looking for yaba pills,” said Win Ning Thun, using the local name for methamphetamine pills.
“Until recently, this area was under military and pro-junta militia control,” Win Ning Thun said.
“Meth was moving freely under their supervision. They took a percentage of the profits from every shipment passing through,” he said.
‘I was supposed to make a lot of money’
Deep in the forests surrounding Pekon, a small prison holds rows of detainees arrested by Karenni police.
“Everyone here has been arrested for drug trafficking. Some were carrying yaba pills to the Thai border. Others were internal couriers,” a Karenni police official told Al Jazeera.
“These are the pills we confiscated just this past month,” he said, holding up a plastic bag stuffed with small red yaba pills that are easy to conceal, sold cheaply, but represent a trade that is worth millions of dollars.
Among the detainees in the prison was Anton Lee, who wore glasses and a calm, unassuming look.
“They stopped me at a checkpoint with 10,000 pills,” Lee said.
Young Karenni police officers pose in front of a table showing the drugs seized in their checkpoint operations [Fabio Polese/Al Jazeera]
“I was taking them to the Thai border. I was supposed to make a lot of money,” he said, offering no further details, only to say that the profit he hoped to earn would have fed his family for a year.
Now, he faces a long time in prison.
Not too far from the prison, the civil war grinds on in Myanmar as the military regime buys more advanced weaponry, and the rebel forces try to hold out and extend their advances.
The military’s air raids, drone strikes and artillery fire hammer schools, hospitals, homes and religious sites, turning entire villages into targets.
Yet, even under fire, here in southern Shan State, some appear to be trying to staunch the flow of drugs.
With limited resources, they tell of doing what they can in another battle inside a much larger war.
