Bye-bye, pandas: Amid curdling U.S.-China relations, zoo loses beloved beasts after 51 years

For decades, they were cuddly emblems of global co-operation. Now, they’re a bamboo-munching testament to a more turbulent world. Beloved giant pandas that came to define the zoo in the U.S. capital are gone. All three remaining ones were carted off Wednesday to the airport for a long flight to China. Thus ended 51 years of pandas at Washington’s Smithsonian National Zoo, where their enclave was the geographic centre, the top draw and the heart of the zoo. Some of the final visitors to see its pandas choked back tears as they bid farewell to creatures they’d come to know…