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AFP/Getty Images file
Panda bear Bao Bao plays in his indoor enclosure at the Berlin Zoo in 2007.
MAINZ, Germany -- Bao Bao, one of the world’s oldest giant pandas, died at the age of 34 early Wednesday, officials at Berlin’s zoo told NBC News.
The animal's health had been deteriorating over the past months, zoo officials said. Bao Bao had not been eating well and had shown a gaunt face, zoo officials say. The cause of death is being determined in an autopsy.
In 1980, Bao Bao was given as a gift by China to Helmut Schmidt, who was the West German chancellor at the time. Bao Bao was the only remaining Panda at the Berlin zoo after the death of Yan Yan in 2007.
A 20-year-old panda gives birth to her sixth cub and the little one's arrival is captured on the San Diego Zoo's "Panda Cam." TODAY.com's Dara Brown reports.
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Must be a slow news day if a panda dying of old age gets press.
Wow, Key word if you can read is, one of the World's oldest Panda's dies, not just any Panda, a 34 year old Panda or did you not read that. When an old person dies, lets say when the oldest person in the world died it made the news, this person was not famous just the oldest in the world, this is news no matter if it is a person or animal, you have issues.
In other news - Charles du Gaulle is still dead.
So when it went from MSNBC to NBC it just got worse! Even an idiot knows people are autopsied and animals necropsied!
Had Dubya focused on Afghanistan completely, instead of waging a war on Iraq in 2003 to settle a vendetta stemming from a plot during the Clinton administration years that was uncovered by US intelligence that Iraq had a red-dot on George H.W. Bush's life, we'd probably have been already done in that part of the world taking care of biz.
Time to cut the losses (before they exceed 2K) and waste another U.S. dime on the 3rd-world who would love nothing more than to see another, more devestating 9/11 scenario hit the U.S.