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Benefits Cheat: Panda Fakes Pregnancy For More Food

Benefits Cheat: Panda Fakes Pregnancy For More Food

The world's first live broadcast panda cub delivery was canceled Tuesday — not because something went wrong, no, just because Mama Panda wasn't actually pregnant. She faked it.

Chinese experts suggested that Ai Hin, the panda who was supposed to be the star of the show, may have faked her condition to get extra bun rations, AFPreports.

Last month she showed signs of pregnancy at the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Centre, but according to China's news agency Xinhua, "her behaviors and physiological indexes returned to normal," leading experts to declare it a "phantom pregnancy."

Once a panda at the center is thought to be pregnant they receive 24-hour care, more food, and are moved to an air-conditioned single room. Xinhua noted that panda bears have been known to display signs of being pregnant after becoming aware of the preferential treatment.

File photo of a panda at Chengdu Center — Photo:La Priz

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FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War

Wartime And Settlements: Preview Of Israel's Post-Netanyahu Era

Heated debate in Israel and abroad over the increase in the budget for settlements in the occupied West Bank is a reminder that wartime national unity will not outlast a deep ideological divide.

photo of people in a road with an israeli flag

A July photo of Jewish settlers in Nablus, West Bank.

Nasser Ishtayeh/SOPA Images via ZUMA
Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — During wartime, the most divisive issues are generally avoided. Not in Israel though, where national unity does not prevent ideological divisions from breaking through into the public space.

Benny Gantz, a longtime Benjamin Netanyahu nemesis, who became a member of the War Cabinet after October 7, criticized the government's draft budget on Monday. It may sound trivial, but his target was the increased spending allocated for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Gantz felt that all resources should go towards the war effort or supporting the suffering economy — not the settlers.

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The affair did not go unnoticed internationally. Josep Borrell, the European High Representative for Foreign Policy, said that he was "appalled" by this spending on settlers in the middle of this war.

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