Dear reader,

The Taliban's return to power threatens Afghan women's hard-won property rights, with thousands who fled their homes during the militants' takeover at particular risk of losing their land and houses for good, rights groups and researchers say.

"It's very difficult to imagine the Taliban respecting women's property rights, and this will have devastating impacts on women who are struggling to protect themselves and their families," Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch told our Asia correspondent Rina Chandran.

In the United States, a new program tucked into Joe Biden’s $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill aims to tackle inequalities in urban areas where the effects of extreme temperatures can depend on one's zip code.

It contains a new "Healthy Streets" program geared toward communities that are frequently left behind in efforts to mitigate so-called "urban heat islands", where concrete-heavy city landscapes push up temperatures, reports our U.S. correspondent Carey L. Biron.

Finally in Durban, a warehouse storing chemicals was set ablaze during recent looting, poisoning a nearby estuary and strangling incomes of fishermen already crimped by repeated COVID-19 lockdowns.

"I have never seen a thing like this…this is devastating for us, on top of lockdown, this just adds fuel to the fire," 76-year-old fisherman Bobby Pillay told our South Africa correspondent Kim Harrisberg.

See you next week!   

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