FRAGRANT NAME BESTOWED UPON JAPAN’S BABY PANDA

Japan’s baby panda now has

a name: Xiang Xiang, or fragrance. Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike announced Monday that the three-month-old giant panda is called Shan Shan in Japanese, or Xiang Xiang in Chinese. The name, whose Chinese characters mean fragrance, was chosen from more than 320,000 suggestions and was approved by Chinese authorities. The Ueno Zoo in Tokyo says the panda is healthy and growing rapidly. She now weighs six kilograms and measures 65 centimetres long, nearly twice as big as she was a month ago, according to the latest measurement marking the 100th day since birth. Videos released last week showed the fluffy black-and-white cub crawling and some teeth coming in. Xiang Xiang was born on June 12 to the zoo’s resident giant panda, Shin Shin.