Nepal

The world’s tallest mountain just grew by either three or 14 feet, depending on if you ask Nepal or China.   Mount Everest’s overnight growth spurt occurred after China and Nepal finally settled a long-running disagreement over the precise dimensions of the mountain. Prior to this week, Nepal had measured Everest at 29,028ft from a 1954 survey, while China had recorded it in 2005 as about 29,017ft.  Neither could agree on the height, with Nepal insisting the snowcap should be included. China was adamant the calculations should be limited to the rock base.  The dispute was rekindled in 2015 when geologists suggested the snowcap may have shrunk by a few centimeters after a magnitude 8.1 earth

This article is an edited excerpt from the book Gurkha Oddysey: Campaigning for the Crown by Peter Duffell. We had our first taste of impending troubles in Hong Kong caused by the Cultural Revolution during the Easter holiday of 1966.  On April 6 in the late afternoon, we had returned to Queen’s Hill [a barracks located in the northern part of Hong Kong] from a battalion-command-post exercise testing our vehicle-mounted radio systems. We were looking forward to the Easter break. We picked up some news of rioting in Kowloon and decided that we would leave the radios mounted in the vehicles in case a call came. At 1am that call did indeed come.  Without warning, we were rudely awakened by the