YA’AN (AFP) – After years of charming millions of people around the world with their furry bodies and clumsy antics, foreign-born giant pandas are adapting to new lives in China.

The fluffy envoys are loaned to overseas zoos as part of Beijing’s “panda diplomacy”, with the offspring returned to China within a few years of their birth to join breeding programmes.

And as they sit among leafy surrounds in conservation centres in southwest China chomping on bamboo, they are oblivious to their diplomatic roles – or the crucial part they could play in saving their species from extinction.

“Our work is very intense and very urgent and we need to replenish the wild panda populations (with those) in captivity,” chief expert at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP) Zhang Hemin told reporters during a recent press tour.

Behind him, United States-born panda Bei Bei sorted through shoots of bamboo with his paws as he sat inside his exhibit at the Ya’an base in Sichuan province.

“After the fourth national giant panda census, we found that our wild population has formed 33 giant populations, but 22 of these populations are relatively small in number,” he explained.

“If we don’t help them, they may be at risk of extinction in the next 30 to 50 years.”

Pandas, native to mountain ranges in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, were first placed in capacity in the 1980s to save them from starvation, Dujiangyan Reintroduction and Breeding Research Center’s Qi Dunwu said.

Most were later released, but a breeding programme has since seen the captive population swell to more than 700, according to Zhang.

Since 2003, Qi said 12 captive pandas – 11 from CCRCGP and one from a separate agency – have been released into the wild, with 10 surviving.

But the COVID pandemic saw the rewilding efforts put on hold for five years.

And apart from preparing the mammals for the dangers of living in the wild, authorities need to ensure they are sent to habitats with sufficient bamboo and space, Qi added.

There are an estimated 1,860 giant pandas left in the wild, according to environmental group World Wildlife Fund.

But the animals, which were removed from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s endangered species list in 2016, still face serious threats from loss of habitat and fragmentation.

Officials are working on linking habitats to allow for pandas to mingle and breed, with more than 40 nature reserves now grouped together to form the Giant Panda National Park covering nearly 22,000 square kilometres.

The conservation efforts are partly funded by foreign zoos, which pay China millions of dollars under multi-year agreements to loan pandas.

The zoos hope the bears become star attractions that draw in more visitors, while China benefits from projecting a softer image.

Britain’s only pandas, Tian Tian and Yang Guang, left Scotland in December after 12 years without cubs.

And three pandas at Washington’s National Zoo took a one-way trip back to China in November.

Some are leaving China: Beijing said in February it had signed agreements to send pandas to San Diego, and two will return to Washington before the end of 2024.

In Ya’an, Netherlands-born panda Fan Xing, who flew to China in September, napped in her exhibit as keeper Li Xiaoyan looked on.

Fan Xing, born in May 2022, has slowly adjusted to her new diet and surroundings – including learning how to understand Chinese.

“When they first come back, we’ll speak a little bit of English to the English-speaking ones, and then we’ll slowly change into speaking Chinese,” she told AFP.

“In this process, we need to raise it with love and care, and build up a good relationship with the keepers.”

MIAMI (AFP) – Karla Hoyos is a chef ready to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice.

Whenever she gets the call, she leaves her taco business in Miami to go anywhere in the world to help feed victims of natural disasters or war.

She is one of dozens of chefs connected to World Central Kitchen (WCK), the nonprofit group founded by renowned chef Jose Andres that provides meals at global hotspots where people face trauma.

Andres, the Spanish-American restaurateur who founded WCK in 2010, mobilizes his network quickly after any catastrophe, and they serve up to 100,000 meals a day with the help of local relief groups and markets.

In recent weeks, the organisation has mustered to action in the Mexican resort of Acapulco in the aftermath of Hurricane Otis, as well as in the Middle East and Ukraine.

The role of Hoyos is to set up the makeshift kitchens, manage logistics and even offer the recipes used to prepare dishes.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a garage, if it’s a basement, if it’s a warehouse, if you have running water, electric and air vents, I’ll build a kitchen,” she said.

Hoyos speaks passionately about her trade from Tacotomia, the small restaurant she opened four months ago in a gastronomic market in downtown Miami.

For her, there is little separation between her humanitarian work and what she does in her business. It’s all part of the same vocation, born at age 12 when she baked her first tray of cookies.

“I want to put as much detail, as much love, in both things. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Michelin star restaurant or you’re eating a taco or you’re going to receive a free plate of rice because you haven’t eaten in days.”

Inspired by her grandmother and rejecting her father’s wishes for her to become a lawyer, she studied at a culinary school in Mexico before traveling to Spain – where she spent a year at a restaurant awarded three Michelin stars – and on to Italy.

Upon her return, she settled in Indianapolis and opened a Mexican restaurant with her aunt. There she began to help others, in an association supporting immigrants.

Her collaboration with WCK began in 2017, when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico.

The catering company she worked for at the time, Bon Appetit, decided to send chefs to the Caribbean island to help Andres feed the population.

Hoyos immediately agreed to go despite widespread power outages and scarce potable water. She initially sized up Andres as a “grumpy man,” but her admiration for the Spanish chef grew, and she worked at his side for three months, eventually hiring on at his Miami restaurant.

Six years later, Hoyos sometimes wonders why she travels to dangerous places, but her vocation to help always prevails.

The hardest part, she said, is returning to the normalcy of home.

“When you are trying to help people, and (you have) leave, it’s very hard to accept that you have to go home, to your AC, to your fridge full of food, to your job, to your comfort. And there’s a lot of guilt in there.”

MINA (AP) – Masses of pilgrims on Saturday embarked on a symbolic ‘stoning of the devil’ in Saudi Arabia. The ritual marks the final days of haj pilgrimage and the start of the Aidiladha celebrations for Muslims around the world.

The stoning is among the final rites of the haj, which is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

It came a day after more than 1.8 million pilgrims congregated on a sacred hill in Mount Arafah outside the holy city of Makkah, which Muslim pilgrims visit to perform the annual five-day rituals of haj.

The pilgrims left Mount Arafah on Saturday evening to spend their night in a nearby site known as Muzdalifa, where they collected pebbles they have used in the symbolic stoning of pillars representing the devil.

The pillars are in another sacred place in Makkah, called Mina, where Muslims believe Ibrahim’s (pbuh) faith was tested when Allah the Almighty commanded him to sacrifice his only son Ismail (pbuh).

Ibrahim (pbuh) was prepared to submit to the command, but then Allah the Almighty stayed his hand, sparing his son.

Pilgrims will spend the next three days in Mina, where they walk long distances on pedestrian-only streets toward a multi-story complex housing large pillars. There, they cast seven pebbles each at three pillars in a ritual meant to symbolise the casting away of evil and sin.

While in Mina, they will visit Makkah to perform tawaf circumambulation, which is circling the Kaabah in the Grand Mosque counterclockwise seven times. They will make another circumambulation, known as Farewell Tawaf, at the end of haj and as they prepare to leave the holy city.

The rites coincide with the four-day Aidiladha, which means “Feast of Sacrifice”, when Muslims with the financial means commentate Ibrahim’s test of faith through slaughtering livestock and animals and distributing the meat to the poor.

Once the haj is over, men are expected to shave their heads and remove the shroud-like white garments worn during the pilgrimage, and women to snip a lock of hair in a sign of renewal and rebirth.

Most of the pilgrims then leave Makkah for the city of Medinah, about 340 kilometres away, to pray in Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) tomb, the Sacred Chamber.

The tomb is part of the prophet’s mosque, which is one of the three holiest sites in Islam, along with the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

All Muslims are required to make the haj once in their lives if they are physically and financially able to do so. Many wealthy Muslims make the pilgrimage more than once. The rituals largely commemorate the accounts of Prophet Ibrahim (pbuh) and his son Prophet Ismail (pbuh), Ismail’s (pbuh) mother Hajar and Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), according to the Al-Quran.

More than 1.83 million Muslims performed haj in 2024, Saudi haj and umrah minister Tawfiq bin Fawzan al-Rabiah said in a briefing, slightly less than last year’s figures when 1.84 million made the rituals.

Most of the haj rituals are held outdoors with little if any shade. It is set for the second week of Zulhijjah, the last month in the Islamic lunar calendar, so its time of the year varies. And this year the pilgrimage fell in the burning summer of Saudi Arabia. The heat soared to 47 degrees Celsius at Mount Arafah on Saturday.

This year’s haj came against the backdrop of the devastating Israel-Hamas war, which has pushed the Middle East to the brink of a regional conflict.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip weren’t able to travel to Makkah for haj this year because of the closure of the Rafah crossing in May, when Israel extended its ground offensive to the city on the border with Egypt.

And they will not be able to celebrate the Aidiladha as they used to do in previous years.

There is also the conflict between rival generals in Sudan that has raged unabated for 14 months.

The confiding killed thousands and created the world’s largest displacement crisis with over 10 million forced to flee their homes.

AFP – When Iranians worry about life’s big questions, many seek answers in the works and wisdoms of Persia’s most revered poet, Hafez – sometimes with the help of a parakeet.

Retired housewife Mitra, 61, had questions about whether her son married the right woman, so she went to the tomb of Iran’s beloved 14th-Century bard in the southern city of Shiraz.

Seeking guidance, she visited a fortune-teller there, one of many who offer advice with the help of Hafez’s collected works, a book of odes known as the Divan.

After sharing her concern, Mitra watched anxiously as the fortune-teller thumbed through the thick tome, opened it on a random page and pointed his finger at one verse.

He read it out and then explained its metaphors and mystical insights. Mitra’s face lit up – the message was positive, and domestic harmony lay ahead.

“I finally did the consultation today for my son, because I had doubts on whether his marriage was a good decision,” she said in the garden of the Hafez mausoleum.

After the nod of approval for her daughter-in-law from within Iran’s ancient lyrical treasure trove, she said: “I finally regained hope.”

Some Iranian fortune-tellers, known as falgir, offer a special service to truly randomise the selection of the all-important Hafez verse.

Chirpy parakeets known as “love birds” hop across stacks of colourful envelopes that contain his enigmatic poems and pick one out with their tiny beaks.

As Hafez devotees thronged into the mausoleum to pay their respects, another person seeking advice was Hamidah, a 44-year-old chemistry professor.

“I always ask Hafez for help and consult him,” she said. “I can’t explain this with the laws of physics, but it’s a reality for me.”

Poetry enjoys immense popularity in Iran, where timeless verses on love and spirituality can be found woven into carpets, engraved in jewelry and emblazoned on street billboards. The nation prides itself on its masters such as Rumi, Saadi, Khayyam and Ferdowsi, who wrote the epic Book of Kings, preserving Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage through mythical tales and legends.

“They are our national figures and the creators of our culture,” said a 41-year-old doctor Farshad.

Early 20th-century poetry gave voice to social protest and faced censorship under the former monarchy, including the works of dissident poets Ahmad Shamlou, Forough Farrokhzad and Simin Behbahani.

But no Iranian poet has enjoyed enduring and universal adoration like Hafez, and a well-worn copy of his Divan compendium is found in most households.

People from all walks of life regularly cite his lyrical wisdoms, mostly on the themes of love and wine and ironic takes on the hypocrisy of holy men.

His poetry is recited during Nowruz, the New Year, and other celebrations such as the winter solstice festival.

“We start the year with the poems of Hafez,” said a 46-year-old housewife Maryam Youssefi for advice on what it “has in store for us”.

Fortune-tellers, known as falgir, who interpret Hafez, can be found across Iran, but especially at his tomb, set amid rose gardens in Shiraz, 800 kilometres south of Tehran.

The tradition of Hafez bibliomancy – using his ancient wisdoms for divination and guidance – is known as Fal-e Hafez.

Hafez lived during a turbulent era of Persia’s history, and his contemplative verses often spoke of pain and human suffering as well as religious hypocrisy.

His influences can be found far beyond Iran in the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others.

Hafez has remained a venerated figure after the 1979 Islamic revolution, even if some senior clerics have voiced disapproval of the Fal-e Hafez tradition. In recent years, one criticised it as out of line with the sharia law and urged people against “following Hafez’s divinations”.

Nonetheless, devotees keep flocking to Shiraz and Hafez poetry reading sessions still draw large crowds, while the divination custom remains alive and well.

Many Iranians swear by it while others “practice the tradition without really believing in it,” said a writer and poet from Shiraz Ahmad Akbarpour.

A 67-year-old fortune-teller Mostafa Eskandari said he learned Hafez’s poetry by heart and has been interpreting it for over 30 years.

“Hafez’s poems are ambiguous and multifaceted. They can be interpreted in different ways,” he said.

Yet the master of old speaks to everyone individually, said Eskandari.

“If a thousand people each set an intention and open the book of odes together, each will receive a different response.”

PATUAKHALI (AFP) – After cyclone gales tore down his home in 2007, Bangladeshi fisherman Abdul Aziz packed up what was left of his belongings and moved about half a kilometre inland, further away from storm surge waves.

A year later, the sea swallowed the area where his old home had been.

Now, 75-year-old Aziz fishes above his submerged former home and lives on the other side of a low earth and concrete embankment, against which roaring waves crash.

“The fish are swimming there in the water on my land,” he told AFP, pointing towards his vanished village. “It is part of the advancing ocean.”

Government scientists say rising seas driven by climate change are drowning Bangladesh’s densely populated coast at one of the fastest global rates, and at least a million people on the coast will be forced to relocate within a generation.

“Few countries experience the far-reaching and diverse effects of climate change as intensely as Bangladesh,” Abdul Hamid, director general of the environment department wrote in a report last month.

The three-part study calculated the low-lying South Asian nation was experiencing a sea level rise in places more than 60 per cent higher than the global average.

By 2050, at present rates of local sea level rise, “more than one million people may have to be displaced”, it read, based on a quarter of a century of satellite data from the United States (US) space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its Chinese counterpart China National Space Administration (CNSA).

Sea levels are not rising at the same rate around the world, due chiefly to Earth’s uneven gravity field and variations in ocean dynamics.

Study lead AKM Saiful Islam said Bangladesh’s above-average increases were driven by melting ice caps, water volumes increasing as oceans warm, and the vast amounts of river water that flow into the Bay of Bengal every monsoon.

The study provides “a clear message” that policymakers should be prepared for “mitigation and adaptation”, he said.

Islam, a member of the United Nations’ (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – a climate change assessment body, examined the vast deltas where the mighty Himalayan rivers of the Ganges and Brahmaputra reach the sea.

“In recent decades, the sea level rose 3.7 millimetres each year globally,” Islam added.

“In our study, we saw that the sea level rise is higher along our coast… 4.2 millimetres to 5.8 millimetres annually.”

That incremental rise might sound tiny. But those among the estimated 20 million people living along Bangladesh’s coast say the destruction comes in terrifying waves.

“It is closing in,” said fisherman Aziz about the approaching sea. “Where else can we escape?”

The threat is increasing. Most of the country’s coastal areas are a metre or two above sea level, and storms bring seawater further inland, turning wells and lakes salty and killing crops on once fertile land.

“When the surge is higher, the seawater intrudes into our houses and land,” said Ismail Howladar, a 65-year-old farmer growing chilli peppers, sweet potatoes, sunflowers and rice.

“It brings only loss for us.”

Cyclones – which have killed hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh in recent decades – are becoming more frequent as well as growing in intensity and duration due to the impact of climate change, scientists say.

A 63-year-old restaurant owner Shahjalal Mia said he watches the sea “grasp more land”each year.

“Many people have lost their homes to the sea already,” he said. “If there is no beach, there won’t be any tourists.”

He said he had experienced cyclones and searing heatwaves grow worse, with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius.

“We are facing two, three, even four cyclones every year now,” he said.

“And I can’t measure temperatures in degrees but, simply put, our bodies can’t endure this.”

Bangladesh is among the countries ranked most vulnerable to disasters and climate change, according to the Global Climate Risk Index. In April, the nation of around 170 million people experienced the hottest month, and the most sustained heatwave temperatures, in its history.

Last month, a cyclone that killed at least 17 people and destroyed 35,000 homes, was one of the quickest-forming and longest-lasting seen, the government’s meteorological department said.

Both events were pinned on rising global temperatures.

Ainun Nishat, from Brac University in the capital Dhaka, said that the poorest were paying the price for carbon emissions from wealthier nations.

“We cannot do anything for Bangladesh if other nations, notably rich countries, do not do anything to fight emissions,” he said.

Bangladesh is running out of time, Nishat added.