Around the world briefs
By Associated Press
Pandas arrive at National Zoo, but won’t be ready for public debut until January
WASHINGTON | The National Zoo’s long dark panda drought has come to an end.
Eleven months after the zoo sent its three wildly popular pandas — Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub Xiao Qi Ji — back to China, a new pair of bears arrived late Tuesday morning.
The three-year old giant pandas, named Bao Li and Qing Bao, were flown from China to Dulles International Airport in suburban Virginia, with a refueling stop in Alaska. They were loaded into special FedEx trucks and arrived at the zoo just before noon.
“Our team has worked tirelessly to prepare for the pandas’ arrival, and we’re thrilled to welcome Bao Li and Qing Bao to Washington, D.C., the only place you can see giant pandas for free in the nation,” said Brandie Smith, the national zoo director who travelled to China to take part in farewell ceremonies for the bears there. “As a result of our collective efforts, today we joyfully celebrate a new chapter of our 52-year-long giant panda breeding and conservation program.”
The zoo was closed Tuesday to facilitate the arrivals. The bears will be quarantined from the public for at least 30 days. A statement from the zoo set the date for the bears’ official public debut and the reopening of the renovated panada house as Jan. 24, 2025.
Bao Li (precious vigor) and Qing Bao (green treasure) arrive in Washington as part of a new 10-year agreement with Chinese authorities. The previous deal expired last year, leading to some concern among American panda-lovers that Beijing was gradually pulling its furry friendship ambassadors from American zoos amid rising diplomatic tensions.
Breeding pairs in zoos in Memphis and San Diego had already returned to China earlier and the four pandas in the Atlanta zoo left for China last week.
That anxiety turned to optimism last November when Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly stated a desire to continue the panda exchange programs. This year, a new pair of bears has been delivered to the San Diego Zoo, while another pair has been promised to San Francisco.
In Washington, National Zoo officials remained conspicuously silent about negotiations for a new panda agreement, but they expressed optimism about striking a new deal and launched a multimillion-dollar renovation of its panda enclosure in anticipation. Then in late May, Smith teamed up with first lady Jill Biden to announce that Bao Li and Qing Bao would be arriving by the end of this year.
Pandas have become one of the unofficial symbols of the nation’s capital, dating back to 1972 when the first pair — Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing — were sent as a gift from Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai following President Richard Nixon’s historic diplomatic visit to China. Later, a rolling series of 10-year cooperation agreements was struck.
“The giant pandas are an iconic part of the Washington, D.C., story, both for locals and incoming travelers alike,” said Elliott L. Ferguson, II, president and CEO of Destination DC. “The interest and excitement associated with their return directly benefits the entire city, bringing further interest and visitors to our hotels, restaurants and other attractions.”
The exact terms of the deal are still unclear; under previous 10-year agreements the Chinese government receives $1 million per year, per bear. Any cubs born in overseas zoos are typically returned to China before they reach age four.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, credited the decades of cooperation with advancing research into panda preservation and breeding. During the lifespan of these agreements, giant pandas have been reclassified from an endangered species to merely vulnerable.
“The current round of cooperation will focus on prevention and treatment of major diseases, and protection of habitats and wild giant panda populations,” Liu said in an email. “We hope the arrival of the pandas will inject fresh impetus into exchanges between China and the U.S., and help to stabilize the broader bilateral relationship as well.”
A full-scale replica of Anne Frank’s hidden annex is heading to
New York for an exhibition
AMSTERDAM | The annex where the young Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi occupiers during World War II is heading to New York.
A full-scale replica of the rooms that form the heart of the Anne Frank House museum on one of Amsterdam’s historic canals is being built in the Netherlands and will be shipped across the Atlantic for a show titled “ Anne Frank The Exhibition “ at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.
“For the first time in history, the Anne Frank House will present what I would call a pioneering experience outside of Amsterdam. To immerse visitors in a full-scale, meticulous recreation of the secret annex. Those rooms where Anne Frank, her parents, her sister, four other Jews, spent more than two years hiding to evade Nazi capture,” Anne Frank House director Ronald Leopold told The Associated Press in an interview detailing the upcoming exhibition.
In July 1942, Anne Frank, then aged 13, her parents Otto and Edith, and her 16-year-old sister Margo went into hiding in the annex. They were joined a week later by the van Pels family — Hermann, Auguste and their 15-year-old son, Peter. Four months later, Fritz Pfeffer moved into the hiding place, also seeking to evade capture by the Netherlands’ Nazi German occupiers.
They stayed in the annex of rooms until they were discovered in 1944 and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. Anne and her sister Margot were then moved to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in February 1945. Anne was 15.
Her father, Otto, the only person from the annex to survive the Holocaust, published Anne’s diary after the war and it became a publishing sensation around the world as a symbol of hope and resilience in the face of tyranny.
Leopold said the New York exhibit promises to be “an immersive, interactive, captivating experience” for visitors.
It opens on Jan. 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
While the faithfully rebuilt annex of rooms will be the heart of the exhibit, it also will trace the history of Anne’s family from their time in Germany, their move to the Netherlands and decision to go into hiding, to their discovery by Nazis, deportation, Anne’s death and the postwar decision by her father to publish her diary.
“What we try to achieve with this exhibition is that people, our visitors will learn about Anne not just as a victim, but through the multifaceted lens of a life, as a teenage girl, as a writer, as a symbol of resilience and of strength. We hope that they will contemplate the context that shaped her life.”
The exhibition comes at a time of rising antisemitism and anger at the devastating war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that has now spread to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon following the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel.
“With ever fewer, fewer, survivors in our communities, with devastating antisemitism and other forms of group hatred on the rise in the U.S. but also across the world, we feel … our responsibility as Anne Frank House has never been greater,” Leopold said. “And this exhibition is also in part a response to that responsibility to educate people to stand against antisemitism, to stand against group hatred.”
Anne’s diary will not be making the transatlantic trip.
“We unfortunately will not be able to travel with the diary, writings, the notebooks and the loose sheets that Anne wrote. They are too fragile, too vulnerable to travel,” Leopold said.
Among 125 exhibits that are traveling from Amsterdam for the New York exhibition are photos, albums, artefacts such as one of the yellow stars Jews were ordered to wear in the occupied Netherlands, as well as the Best Supporting Actress Oscar won by Shelley Winters for her role in George Stevens’ 1959 film “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
Italy expands its ban on
surrogacy to overseas as critics
say it targets same-sex couples
ROME | Italy on Wednesday criminalized citizens who go abroad to have children through surrogacy, a measure slammed by opponents as “medieval” and discriminatory to same-sex couples.
The measure extending a surrogacy ban in place since 2004 was promoted by Premier Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party and its conservative coalition partner, the League, asserting that it protects women’s dignity.
The Senate after a seven-hour debate passed the bill 84-58, the final step in the process after the Lower House’s approval last year.
Italians seeking surrogacy in countries such as the United States or Canada, where the practice is legal, can face up to two years in jail and up to $1.1 million in fines.
The surrogacy ban applies equally to all couples. But same-sex parent advocates say it hits gay families particularly hard in a country struggling with record-low birthrates and where only heterosexual couples are allowed to adopt.
Same-sex marriages are also banned in Italy, and LGBTQ+ couples have been fighting to obtain parental rights for the partner who is not the biological parent.
Several lawmakers and LGBTQ+ activists protested in front of the Senate to oppose the law, some holding banners that read: “Parents, not criminals.”
“When protectionism prevails, a social phenomenon is not erased,” opposition lawmaker Riccardo Magi said during the protest. “It is simply relegated to a dark area, which the law doesn’t reach. In that case, it’s easier for exploitation, abuse and rights violations to prevail.”
“We are very saddened because Italy has once again missed an opportunity to demonstrate that it is a country in line with what Europe and the world are,” said Cristiano Giraldi, the father of two 10-year-old children born from a surrogate mother in the U.S.
The Catholic Church has strongly opposed surrogacy in Italy and abroad, with Pope Francis calling for a universal ban and criticizing what he called the “commercialization” of pregnancy.
At the same time, the Vatican’s doctrine office has made clear that same-sex parents who resort to surrogacy can have their children baptized.
While commercial surrogacy contracts are common in the U.S. — including protections for mothers, guarantees of independent legal representation and medical coverage — they are banned in parts of Europe including Spain and Italy.
Southern Africa is enduring its
worst hunger crisis in decades
due to El Niño, the UN says
CAPE TOWN, South Africa | Months of drought in southern Africa triggered by the El Niño weather phenomenon have had a devastating impact on more than 27 million people and caused the region’s worst hunger crisis in decades, the United Nations’ food agency said Tuesday.
The World Food Program warned it could become a “full-scale human catastrophe.”
Five countries — Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe — have declared national disasters over the drought and resultant hunger. The WFP estimates that about 21 million children in southern Africa are now malnourished as crops have failed.
Tens of millions in the region rely on small-scale agriculture that is irrigated by rain for their food and to make money to buy provisions. Aid agencies warned of a potential disaster late last year as the naturally occurring El Niño led to below-average rainfall across the region, while its impact has been exacerbated by warming temperatures linked to climate change.
“This is the worst food crisis in decades,” WFP spokesperson Tomson Phiri said. “October in southern Africa marks the start of the lean season, and each month is expected to be worse than the previous one until harvests next year in March and April. Crops have failed, livestock have perished and children are lucky to receive one meal per day.”
The five countries that declared drought-related disasters have pleaded for international aid, while Angola on the west coast of Africa and Mozambique on the east coast are also “severely affected,” Phiri said, showing the extent to which the drought has swept across the region.
“The situation is dire,” Phiri said. He said the WFP needs around $369 million to provide immediate help but has only received a fifth of that amid a shortfall in donations. The WFP has begun helping with food assistance and other critical support at the request of various governments in the region, he said.
Phiri said southern Africa’s crisis came at a time of “soaring global needs,” with humanitarian aid also desperately required in Gaza, Sudan and elsewhere.
Other aid agencies have said the drought in southern Africa is especially harsh, with the United States aid agency, USAID, saying in June it was the most severe drought in 100 years during the January to March agricultural season, wiping out swathes of crops and food for millions.
El Niño, a weather phenomenon which warms parts of the central Pacific, has different impacts on weather in different parts of the world. The latest El Niño formed in the middle of last year and ended in June. It was blamed, along with human-caused climate change and overall ocean warmth, for a wild 12 months of heat waves and extreme weather.
In southern Africa, food prices have risen sharply in many areas affected by the drought, increasing the hardship. The drought has also had other damaging effects.
Zambia has lost much of its electricity and has been plunged into hours and sometimes days of blackouts because it relies heavily on hydroelectric power from the huge Kariba Dam. The water level of the dam is so low that it can hardly generate any power. Zimbabwe shares the dam and is also experiencing power outages.
Authorities in Namibia and Zimbabwe have resorted to killing wildlife, including elephants, to provide meat for hungry people.
Scientists say sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most vulnerable parts of the world to climate change because of a high dependency on rain-fed agriculture and natural resources. Millions of African livelihoods depend on the climate, while poor countries are unable to finance climate-resilience measures.
—From AP reports
