Word: nepal
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This is the time of year in Nepal, the small kingdom perched in the Himalayas between India and China, when mountain goats, buffaloes and chickens are slaughtered to appease the Hindu gods and ensure good fortune for the coming twelve months. Nepal's King Mahendra, 47, is himself revered by his 10 million subjects as a god incarnate, but he does not trust his kingdom's fate entirely to heavenly hands. This week he was off to Washington to see Lyndon Johnson, in the hope that the coming year will bring an ample number of gifts stamped "Made...
...diplomatic talents of the canny poet King are as cool as his mile-high capital of Katmandu. He has not only managed to keep his landlocked, Wisconsin-size nation from being swallowed up by its giant neighbors but has turned Nepal into a highly profitable "neutral cockpit"-as admiring diplomats call it-by letting all the world's great rivals pay handsomely for his friendship. The Chinese have given a shoe factory, a warehouse complex and a highway that cuts strategically through the mountains from Red-held Tibet to Katmandu. India, which dominates Nepal's foreign commerce...
...needed strong leadership from the throne. In 1960, introducing Pakistani-style "controlled democracy," he abolished political parties, put the election of the legislature on an indirect basis and clapped potential troublemakers in jail. This has left him free to emancipate women and untouchables, end polygamy and begin breaking up Nepal's feudal estates...
...spread hula-hoops across the country," he declared "and now they're dumping them on little children in Nepal. Getting out of the hula-hoop business," he added, "was where I made money...
...Nepal was the scene of wild rioting after Nepalese Communist students waved pictures of Mao at an exhibit of Chinese photographs in Katmandu earlier this month. Passers-by wanted to know why the students did not also have pictures of King Mahendra, and before long fists were flying. Peking now claims that Nepal is conspiring with "imperialists...