“Why US Zoos Are Rapidly Losing Pandas Amid Tensions With China”

Three giant pandas left a zoo in Washington DC on Wednesday with a one-way ticket to China. This trio isn’t the first set of pandas in "the West" to take the monumental journey back to their ancestral homeland in recent times. Against the backdrop of hairy political tensions between the US and China, some are wondering whether this could be the end of "panda diplomacy". Two adult pandas, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, and their 3-year-old cub, Xiao Qi Ji, departed from the Smithsonian's National Zoo on Wednesday and boarded a Boeing 777 (nicknamed the FedEx Panda Express) for a…