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Famous raptor helped livestream viewers in difficult moments, and inspired a conservation project at her lake home

The bald eagle Jackie made her home on the shore of southern California’s Big Bear Lake for most of her 14 years. But her death earlier this week drew international attention.

The Los Angeles Times described her as “arguably the world’s most famous bald eagle”. For years, millions of people tuned into a live stream of Jackie’s nest, watching her rear her eaglets, work out life with her mate, Shadow, and, perhaps most memorably, incubate her eggs while almost completely buried in snow.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

• Readers reply: How is it physically possible to continue breaking sporting records?

If consumer capitalism continues at its current rate, will we reach a point at which there is literally no space left on Earth for all the stuff that has been created? Alex Robinson, Alnwick, Northumberland

Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday.

Nurses collapsing, builders with heatstroke, bus drivers in cabs that reach 44C. The new PM wanted to spend the summer talking about the cost of living – he should change his plans

I don’t think I have ever written before about a British strike directly related to the climate emergency. But that’s exactly what began late last week in north London, with a zeitgeisty connection to Andy Burnham’s fixation on buses: picket lines outside depots and massed walkouts, while the temperatures in the relevant parts of the capital and its suburbs hovered at about 34C (93F).

Last Friday, more than 1,500 drivers employed by the transport giant Arriva began a planned run of 26 stoppages through to October, affecting bus routes spread between London and Essex. Everything is being led by the union Unite, whose recent grievances include alleged company union-busting and assaults by the public on staff. But the fundamental basis of the dispute is at the heart of the national condition: the near-impossibility for millions of people of working through another insanely hot summer.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

Most people associate the insects with filth, but they are vital to the food cycle and sometimes even pretty

• Vote for your favourite invertebrate

Every spring, billions of flies commute thousands of miles in a huge web around the world. They may begin life in Iran and then spend the rest of it in the UK. They may hatch in India but undertake seasonal migrations to the fertile regions of Mongolia, China and Siberia.

Most of us assume that bees carry out pollination. But look closely at the creatures flitting around our gardens and parks, and you will see that many of those “bees” aren’t bees at all. They fly differently, sound different and, indeed, on closer inspection, look a bit different.

The Guardian travelled 100 miles along the EU’s longest river, where some residents are struggling to secure drinking water

For centuries, the rock was seen as a warning. When it began to emerge from the Danube, beneath Gellért Hill in Budapest, it meant the river had fallen so low that floating mills could no longer operate, crops were probably failing, and hunger would almost certainly follow. That is why, in the Hungarian capital, where over time the boulder became little more than a legend, it was named Ínség-szikla – the Rock of Starvation.

Today, amid record-low water levels on the Danube, the rock has not only emerged from the water, but surfaced almost in its entirety, along with the sandy riverbed on which it rests, astonishing geologists and government scientists sent to examine it. And, much as the rock was said to warn, Hungary is now facing an unprecedented energy crisis that has forced the country to shut down all but one of its Danube-cooled nuclear reactors for the first time in 44 years.

Ahead of Fat Bear Week, avid fans are glued to the spectacle of brown bears devouring salmon at Brooks Falls in Alaska

One of this summer’s biggest onscreen hits has had big beasts, great escapes and choppy waters, but it’s not Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey – it’s a livestream of Alaskan brown bears catching salmon.

The Brooks Falls bearcam at Katmai national park in the US was watched 7.3m times between 22 June and 4 August – up 70% from the same period last year and more than double the views it attracted in 2024.

Social media and Shazam-like birdsong apps drawing young people to hobby as they seek a gentler connection to the outside world

Sorry Elon, but they’re not your kind of tweets. Social media users are flocking to TikTok to join a burgeoning trend for birding videos as the hobby attracts a younger demographic.

With the internet ever more cluttered with polarising, shouty and AI content, evidence is emerging of Britons preferring a gentler, more melodic window on the world in the shape of footage of the nation’s feathered friends.

They rule the roads and, in their wake, even old-style saloons have been supersized. It’s an illusion of consumer choice

Recently, while traipsing from showroom to showroom in search of a used car for my growing clan, the iconic line from Christopher Nolan’s seminal Batman movie The Dark Knight came to mind: “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” And by villain, of course, I mean an SUV driver.

Because, if you haven’t shopped for a secondhand family car recently, I’ll save you the shock: wherever you look, it’s SUVs.

Coco Khan is a freelance writer and co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the UK

South Queensferry, West Lothian: The Burryman procession is one of Scotland’s most remarkable customs – and a changing of the guard is about to occur

While the Edinburgh festival grabs the headlines, just 10 miles away, one of Scotland’s most remarkable traditions takes place every August – the Burryman procession.

In this, part of the Ferry Fair, a local volunteer is covered in thousands of hooked burdock seedheads, which are attached in dense patches like Velcro. He spends up to 10 hours perambulating a seven-mile route around town, accompanied by two attendants, pausing at some 20 stops to collect charitable donations and accepting a libation of unmeasured whisky through a straw. This year’s procession is especially significant, as the identity of the Burryman is changing.

Cut in electric vehicle sales targets could add millions of tonnes of CO₂ to emissions in UK, say green campaigners

Andy Burnham has been criticised for moving to cut electric vehicle (EV) sales targets and accept North Sea drilling at a time of devastating wildfires caused by the climate emergency.

The prime minister for the first time acknowledged on Friday that the climate crisis was behind hundreds of wildfires that have ripped across the parts of the UK.

Marine conservationist says deliberate attack would be ‘act of extreme cruelty’ against endangered population

Spanish officials have launched an investigation after the matriarch of an orca pod known for jostling and ramming boats off the Iberian Peninsula was spotted with wounds suggesting she had been shot by a pellet gun.

On Friday, Spain’s environment ministry said Toñi, the oldest living member of the pod, had been seen swimming in the Strait of Gibraltar with markings on her dorsal fin that were “consistent with shots from a pellet gun”.

We learn what to fear and reject from those around us. But if disgust can be learned, it can also be unlearned

Vote for your favourite invertebrate of the year

It was the summer of 2021 and I was standing in Hyde Park, London, trying to persuade passing tourists to come bug hunting with me. I was working on a campaign to increase public appreciation of invertebrates and, while I adore bugs, this job was teaching me how differently other people see them.

A woman and her young daughter stopped to chat. Grateful for a few minutes of respite, the woman turned to her phone while the child followed me to a nearby log. We lifted it to reveal one of the largest earthworms I’ve ever seen.

Voting is open for invertebrate of the year and will close at midnight BST on Sunday 16 August; vote here

With the UK experiencing the driest summer on record, we look at how the weather is affecting the pitches and courses across the country

Delay to rainy season in forest already damaged by human-driven heating could trigger powerful ‘Godzilla’ El Niño

As a supercharged climate scorches Europe with wildfire and deluges Asia with floods, the Amazon is bracing for a drought that strikes fear into the hearts of forest defenders and food producers alike. But it should worry even more of us.

Scientists are predicting that the peak of El Niño will occur at the worst possible time for the world’s biggest tropical rainforest: the end of the dry season between October and December, when rivers are at their lowest and undergrowth is most likely to be tinder dry. This will be a period of extreme vulnerability for the forest, which plays a globally important role in stabilising the climate and irrigating crops.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Bat experts were shocked at how fast white-nose syndrome had reached Canada’s northernmost colonies from the US. Now, the race is on to find a cure before species disappear

Crawling through a narrow passage in a cave beneath a boreal forest near Fort Smith in Canada’s Northwest Territories in May, two biologists spotted a lifeless bat on a limestone ledge, its body covered in a spindly white fungus.

When they shone their headlamps to get a closer look, they saw another bat with the fungus on its forearms. “It hissed at us and crawled back into a crack,” Jesika Reimer says.

Days of rain has caused widespread flooding across the Philippines capital, Manila, and filled the city’s waterways with debris. A massive cleanup operation involving teams of workers and heavy machinery is under way

As a controversial Spanish plan for sustainable meat on an industrial scale is dropped, it has revived the ethical debate over farming these intelligent wild animals

In 2022 Nueva Pescanova, Spain’s largest fisheries business, announced it was investing €65m (£56m) in the world’s first industrial octopus farm and processing plant near the Canary Islands’ port of Las Palmas.

Despite the creatures being notoriously difficult to farm, the company predicted that by 2025 it would be producing 3,000 tonnes of octopus a year on Gran Canaria.

The gigantic aquatic acrobats are exciting Brazil’s tourists as numbers recover from whaling. But some marine biologists question how booming tourism and conservation can coexist

The anticipation is palpable onboard the Boaventura II as the yacht sets off from Rio de Janeiro at sunrise. Once beyond the Cagarras Islands, rocky outcrops just three miles off Ipanema beach, the group gathers at the bow and starts scanning the horizon.

They do not have to wait long. “Eleven o’clock!” someone calls out, as a pod of bottlenose dolphins appears, playfully diving in and out of the water. Then, two spouts of vapour hanging in the air signal the reason for the outing: a pair of humpback whales. The majestic mammals surface to breathe with an unhurried chuff, before revealing the underside of their fluke as they dive back underwater.

The wild capture and release of a female big cat into a nature reserve is the first step towards reintroducing a population that hasn’t been seen for 70 years

On 31 July, “Umit” – which means hope in Kazakh – was released into a nature reserve on the edge of Lake Balkhash after more than a decade of careful planning to return the caspian tiger to the region. With this release, Kazakhstan became the first country to restore its tiger range after they had been thought extinct, with the last reliable sighting in the country recorded more than 70 years ago.

Umit – a wild-caught female tiger transported from the Russian far east – will be joined by more big cats in the coming years, with plans to establish a self-sustaining population of about 50. A wild-caught male flown from Russia is still being monitored by authorities and will be released when he is judged fit to survive alone. Two wild tiger cubs are also being reared on the reserve in special enclosures, with as little human contact as possible, and are likely to be released into the marshlands next year, to feast on boar, deer and kulans, a type of wild donkey.

While there are fears that people harvesting their food could put pressure on habitats, some ecologists suggest responsible foraging can boost conservation and biodiversity

Angus Morton crouches behind a cricket pavilion in a London park to snip stinging nettles from an unkempt patch of greenery.

“They’re so abundant and they’re so good,” says Morton, a regenerative gardener who pops out once a week to forage bits for dinner. “I use them in pesto, tea … I’ve even seen someone putting them in croquetas.”

The 3,500 population is divided over the venture, which would bring investment and jobs, but critics claim the environmental cost would be too high

It is among the world’s last pristine wildernesses, with unique coastal waters rich in krill and squid that attract sea lions, elephant seals, dolphins and whales, and where penguins, of which there are five different species locally, outnumber people.

But plans to make the Falkland Islands, one of the most remote and furthest-flung British overseas territories, a new frontier for salmon farming has split the 3,500-strong population. Now, people opposed to salmon farming are calling for a referendum because they have lost confidence in a consultation process they claim is biased towards the industry.

In this week’s newsletter: a Guardian investigation reveals that the UK exported 139,000 tonnes of rubbish to poor districts in Adana, where farmers are left to cope with microplastics, toxic smoke, and debris

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A year ago this month, when global talks to end our spiralling plastic crisis collapsed, Emma Hardy, Britain’s then marine minister and the UK’s head of delegation, said she was “hugely disappointed”. The UK is committed to working, at home and abroad, to “protect the environment and pave the way to a circular economy”, she pledged.

But Britain, one of the world’s largest exporters of plastic waste, remains part of a global trade that enables us to send mountains of plastic rubbish to other, mostly poorer countries, fuelling pollution, health impacts and waste crime.

‘Danger no longer only comes from the hitmen, but from the state’: the Honduran farmers labelled terrorists for protecting their land

El Niño could push 50 million people into acute hunger before end of next year

‘We stared into an abyss’: the men and women battling France’s megafire