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Taipei Zoo's Veteran Giant Panda Celebrates 20th Birthday

Panda Yuanyuan enjoys her birthday cake for her 20th birthday at the Taipei Zoo in Taipei, Taiwan, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
Panda Yuanyuan enjoys her birthday cake for her 20th birthday at the Taipei Zoo in Taipei, Taiwan, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
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Taipei Zoo's Veteran Giant Panda Celebrates 20th Birthday

Panda Yuanyuan enjoys her birthday cake for her 20th birthday at the Taipei Zoo in Taipei, Taiwan, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)
Panda Yuanyuan enjoys her birthday cake for her 20th birthday at the Taipei Zoo in Taipei, Taiwan, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

With politics set aside, well-wishers gathered to wish the Taipei zoo’s senior panda a happy 20th birthday.
Visitors crowded around Yuanyuan's enclosure to take photos of her with a birthday cake in the shape of the number 20.
Yuanyuan was born in China and arrived in 2008 with her partner Tuantuan. He died in 2022 at age 18 but not before fathering two female cubs, Yuanzai and Yuanbao, now 11 and 4 respectively and still living at the zoo.
Danielle Shu, a 20-year-old Brazilian student in Taiwan, said she found online clips of the pandas an enjoyable distraction. “And I just find it really funny and cute,” The Associated Press quoted Shu as saying.
Giant pandas are native only to China, and Beijing bestows them as a sign of political amity. Yuanyuan and Tuantuan arrived in Taiwan during a period of relative calm between the sides, which split amid civil war in 1949. China claims the island its own territory, to be annexed by military force if necessary.
Faced with declining habitat and a notoriously low birthrate, giant panda populations have declined to around 1,900 in the mountains of western China, while 600 pandas live in zoos and breeding centers in China and around the world.

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Schools in Pakistan’s Karachi Closed as Rare August Cyclone Builds Up 

A view shows anchored fishing boats, after fishermen were advised not to venture into the sea due to expected cyclonic storm over the Arabian Sea, at Karachi's Fish Harbor, in Karachi, Pakistan August 29, 2024. (Reuters)
A view shows anchored fishing boats, after fishermen were advised not to venture into the sea due to expected cyclonic storm over the Arabian Sea, at Karachi's Fish Harbor, in Karachi, Pakistan August 29, 2024. (Reuters)
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Schools in Pakistan’s Karachi Closed as Rare August Cyclone Builds Up 

A view shows anchored fishing boats, after fishermen were advised not to venture into the sea due to expected cyclonic storm over the Arabian Sea, at Karachi's Fish Harbor, in Karachi, Pakistan August 29, 2024. (Reuters)
A view shows anchored fishing boats, after fishermen were advised not to venture into the sea due to expected cyclonic storm over the Arabian Sea, at Karachi's Fish Harbor, in Karachi, Pakistan August 29, 2024. (Reuters)

Heavy rains and stormy winds forced authorities in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, to close schools on Friday, after a deep depression in the Arabian Sea that the weather office says could develop into a cyclonic storm.

Parts of Karachi received 147 mm (5.79 inches) of rain overnight, the local weather office said, and the city's mayor, Murtaza Wahab, in a post on X, asked residents to avoid "unnecessary movement".

The deep depression which is off the Rann of Kutch in India's Gujarat, is expected to intensify into a cyclonic storm on Friday, India's weather office said, adding that it would move north-west over the Arabian Sea in the next two days.

Authorities in Pakistan asked fishermen and sailors not to venture out to sea, and warned that the storm is likely to result in flooding in cities as well as flash floods in hilly areas in coming days.

More than 28 people died and around 18,000 have been evacuated since Sunday from cities near the Gujarat coast, disaster management authorities said on Thursday, even as more rain was expected in the state as the cyclonic storm builds up.

The formation of a cyclonic storm over the Arabian Sea in August was a rare occurrence, the Indian Express newspaper reported, saying the last such storm was in 1964.