Nepal beat US to lift Div 5 trophy

Nepal won the first major cricket tournament defeating the US by five wickets in the Pepsi ICC World Cricket League Division 5 on Saturday.

After bowling out the US for 172 in 47.2 overs, Nepal chased the target in 46.5 overs in front of 15,000 cheering spectators at the TU Cricket Ground.

Khagendra Thapa Magar shortest man: Guinness

Guinness World Records has verified Khagendra Thapa Magar, Nepal’s shortest man, as the shortest man in the world after verifying his height and weight. Thapa Magar was awarded a certificate to this effect in Rome last night.

According to Min Bahadur Rana, chairman, Khagendra Thapa Magar Foundation, 17-year-old Khagendra was awarded the Guinness certificate and a medal last night. According to the Guinness verification team, Khagendra is 56 cm tall and weighs just five kg. Rana added that Khagendra would be registered as the shortest man of the world in Guinness World Records after six months when he turns 18. He has also been given the registration number- 154894.

Chronicle of a death

Shortly after I said goodbye to my colleagues at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and reached my apartment, a fifteen-minute-walk from the office in Pittsburgh—a city in the U.S. known both for its three rivers and its industrial past—my wife Kabita called me from Nepal to say that my paternal grandfather had passed away. I paused for a while as her voice became barely audible. It was early June and the sun was just about sinking into the horizon.

I wasn’t shocked to hear the news because when I left Nepal in early March that year in 2008, my 93-year-old grandfather Dhanya Prasad Adhikari was literally on his deathbed. On a freezing January night, he fell down on the floor while on his way to the restroom. His back was badly bruised. When the doctors at a nearby hospital cited his frail health as hazardous for any sort of operation, we reluctantly brought him to my youngest uncle’s house in Jorpati, Kathmandu.