Temperatures rising – Inside the 9 July Guardian Weekly

Is the world getting too hot for humans?
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Last week's searing temperatures in North America's Pacific north-west were more than just another heatwave. The 49.6C registered in the tiny British Columbian town of Lytton was not simply the hottest temperature on record in Canada, it also defied computer modelling of how the world might change as emissions rise. Our global environment editor Jonathan Watts looks at how the rare phenomenon known as a heat dome is part of a growing trend towards extreme weather events, while climate science professor Simon Lewis explains why global heating is making more of the planet too hot for humans.

Starting with the Soviet invasion of the 1970s, Afghanistan has spent four decades as a battleground for proxy wars between competing nations and ideologies. As US and British troops withdraw, Emma Graham-Harrison returns to Kabul, where she spent several years as a foreign corespondent, to find little optimism and much anxiety at the resurgence of the Taliban.