A state-of-the-art British fighter jet that has been stuck at an Indian airport for more than five weeks is set to fly out on Tuesday.

The F-35B is due to be “pulled back from the hangar today and the departure is scheduled for Tuesday”, an airport spokesman told the BBC. “We do not have any technical details,” he added.

The F-35B landed on 14 June at Thiruvananthapuram airport in the southern state of Kerala where it was diverted after it ran into bad weather during a sortie in the Indian Ocean. It then developed a technical snag.

Its prolonged presence on Indian soil sparked curiosity and raised questions about how such a modern aircraft could remain stranded in a foreign country for so long.

After the plane, which was part of the fleet of the HMS Prince of Wales, was unable to return, engineers from the Royal Navy’s flagship carrier visited it to fix it.

But they were unable to repair it, and a fortnight back, the UK ministry of defence said they had deployed a team of 14 engineers “to Thiruvananthapuram airport to assess and repair the F-35B aircraft”.

The team came with specialist equipment necessary for the movement and repair process, a statement said. Videos from the time showed the F-35B being towed away to a hangar.

There had been speculation that if the technicians failed to repair the aircraft, it would have to be dismantled and carried out in a bigger cargo plane such as a C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft.

Over the past two weeks, the UK high commission in India and the defence authorities have responded to the BBC’s messages saying they would not share details of repairs.

But on Monday, an airport official told the BBC that “the aircraft is confirmed to be airworthy”.

It is scheduled to be pulled out of the hangar on Monday morning, he said, adding that the exact time of its departure is “yet to be communicated, which airport will be used for refuelling on the way to London or when the backup aircraft will arrive to transport the technicians and equipment back”.

F-35Bs are highly advanced stealth jets, built by Lockheed Martin, and are prized for their short take-off and vertical landing capability.

Images of the “lonely F-35B”, parked on the tarmac and soaked by the Kerala monsoon rains, made it a subject of jokes and memes with many suggesting that it did not want to leave the scenic state of Kerala, described as “God’s own country” in tourism brochures.

The case of the stranded $110m (£80m) jet was also raised in the House of Commons.

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Five-day deluge unleashed flash floods and landslides that killed 18 and left nine others missing, authorities say.

Torrential rains that lashed South Korea have killed at least 18 people and left nine others missing, authorities said, as the government lifted advisories for heavy rain and the meteorological agency warned of a return of heatwaves to southern parts of the country.

The toll on Monday came as South Korea’s military also announced dispatching thousands of troops to rain-ravaged areas to assist in recovery efforts.

The downpours began on July 16 and brought some of the heaviest hourly rainfall on record to some of South Korea’s central and southern provinces. The five-day deluge collapsed homes, triggered landslides and unleashed flash floods that swept away cars and campers.

At least 10 people were killed in the southern county of Sancheong, and four others remain missing there, according to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.

Another person was killed when their house collapsed in the town of Gapyeong, northeast of the capital, Seoul, while a man who had been camping near a stream there was found dead after being swept away by rapid currents.

The man’s wife and teenage son remain missing, the South Korean JoongAng Daily reported. Two others, including a man in his 70s who had been buried in a landslide, were listed as missing in the same town.

The rains also forced some 14,166 people to evacuate their homes in 15 cities and provinces, and caused “extensive property damage”, the Yonhap news agency reported.

The agency said 1,999 cases of damage had been recorded at public facilities, and 2,238 cases were recorded at private homes and buildings.

South Korea’s military said it has dispatched some 2,500 personnel to the southwestern city of Gwangju as well as the South Chungcheong and South Gyeongsang provinces to assist in the recovery efforts.

The troops will be overhauling homes and stores affected by the rains, it said.

Hannah June Kim, an associate professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at Sogang University in Seoul, told Al Jazeera that “a lot of people were taken off guard” because monsoonal rains came later than expected this year.

“The expectation was that monsoons would not be appearing during this summer,” she said. “So, when this heavy rain started to fall this past week, a lot of local areas were unprepared.”

“We are seeing the heavy effects of climate change and how it’s affecting different areas,” she added.

South Korea’s Meteorological Administration (KMA) forecast more rainfall in the southern regions on Monday but said that a heatwave would follow. According to the JoongAng Daily, heatwave advisories and warnings have already been issued for parts of South Jeolla, the east coast of Gangwon and Jeju Island.

“From July 24 onward, morning lows will remain between 23 and 26 degrees Celsius [73.4F to 78.8F], and daytime highs will range from 30 to 35 degrees Celsius [86F to 95F], higher than the seasonal averages of 22 to 25 degrees Celsius [71.6F to 77F] in the morning and 29 to 33 degrees Celsius [84.2F to 91.4F] during the day,” it reported, citing the KMA.

Scientists say climate change has made extreme weather events more frequent and intense around the world.

In 2022, South Korea endured record-breaking rains and flooding, which killed at least 11 people.

They included three people who died trapped in a Seoul basement apartment of the kind that became internationally known because of the Oscar-winning Korean film Parasite.

The government said at the time that the rainfall was the heaviest since records began, blaming climate change for the extreme weather.

The powerful Ecuadorean gang leader Adolfo Macías Villamar has been extradited to the United States to face charges of drug and arms trafficking.

Known as “Fito”, he was recaptured in June, almost a year after he escaped from a high-security prison where he was serving a 34-year sentence for a series of crimes.

He will appear in a US federal court on Monday, where he will plead not guilty to international charges of drug and weapons trafficking, his lawyer told Reuters.

Macías was leader of Los Choneros gang, which is linked to powerful criminal organisations from Mexico and the Balkans. He is also suspected of having ordered the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in 2023.

Los Choneros is blamed for Ecuador’s transformation from a tourist haven to a country with one of the highest murder rates in the region.

More than 70% of all cocaine produced in the world currently passes through Ecuador’s ports. The country is located between the world’s two top cocaine exporters, Colombia and Peru.

In June, police tracked Macías down to what they described as an underground bunker below a luxury home in the city of Manta. He was taken to La Roca, a maximum security prison. At the time, Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa praised the security forces for capturing him and said that he would be extradited to the US.

The country’s prison authority said he was taken out of prison in Ecuador earlier on Sunday to be handed over to US authorities.

“Mr Macías and I will appear tomorrow before the Brooklyn federal court … where he will plead not guilty,” his lawyer, Alexei Schacht, told Reuters. “After, he will be held in a to-be-determined prison.”

Ecuadoreans voted in favor of allowing the extradition of citizens in a referendum called by President Noboa, who vowed to crack down on rising crime.

In March this year, Noboa told the BBC he wants US, European and Brazilian armies to join his “war” against criminal gangs.