The headline that went around the world was not flattering to Nepal's international prestige: 'Nepal Prime Minister Stoned'. Nepal does have a reputation for being a bit lax when it comes to enforcing drug laws, and we do smoke pot, but this one went too far. In actual fact, BRB was not stoned, the German ambassador was. The Prime Minister decided to go to Rio anyway despite protests, and despite his own party advising him that the time was not right. Why then was Comrade Laldhoj so desperate to get the hell out of here just as his party was about to split and the opposition was on warpath? It definitely wasn't to save the global environment, since his declared policy is economic growth at whatever cost to the ecology.

BRB wants to shake hands with Raul Castro and Manmohan Singh, in that order. And there is the one-on-one with Ecuador's leftwing president, Rafael Correa, who hit the headline this week for his offer of political asylum to Julian Assange. Maybe if Ecuador doesn't work out, Nepal could offer Assange asylum provided he pays his visa extension fees (with necessary handouts to immigration officials) as well as fork out $$ every time he enters Bhaktapur and Patan Dabar Squares.

The Ass, for one, is glad Bhattarai is meeting Correa because he can lodge Nepal's official protest at the canard being perpetrated by the govt of Ecuador that Mt Chimborazo is actually the highest mountain in the world. Measured from the centre of the earth, Chimborazo is apparently 2,000 m further away from the centre of the earth than Mt Everest because of the slight bulge our planet has at the equator. Be that as it may, Ecuador's attempt to rewrite history (and geography) must be swiftly and sternly resisted by our prime minister who should make it clear that Nepal will not tolerate this kind of behaviour from a fellow non-aligned nation. If Correa refuses to back down, we should threaten to declare war on Ecuador.

The talk of the town this week is the split in the Maoist party between the UCPN-M and the CPN,M. This brings the total number of communist parties to 18, which must make Nepal the country with the highest per capita number of communist parties on earth. We should be in the Guinness Book. There is already a CPN (Matrika), a CPN-ML, CPN-UML, CPN-U, CPN (Mashal), CPN (Masal). The question we have is whether the BRB-PKD establishment faction now has the right to call itself 'Unified', or should it also rename itself Disintegrated Communist Party of Nepal as opposed to the Freshly Split Communist Party of Nepal. Or to make it simple, maybe we should just call them Hyphen Communists, Bracket Communists and Comma Communists.

The question now arises what the election symbol of the Comma Communists should be. Well, since the Bracket Maoists have hammer and sickle already and the Hyphens have the Sun, how about the Baidya Baddies register hammer and tongs as their symbol with the Erection Commission? After all, they are always going at each other with hammers and tongs.

No sooner had the Baddies split than the two sides started throwing blame for the break. Interesting thing is that both sides blame the same three entities whose names begin with 'R': Raja Baddies, RIM and RAW. Meanwhile, the bifurcation of the Baddie party is already having major repercussions right down the line. Cranti Curry Journalists are now split into the PKD, MBK and BRB factions.

There is one good thing that has come out of the Baddie split: vacancies have opened up in the central committee. But, as usual, there is stiff competition from the PKD and BRB factions to fill those positions. All indications are that the interim camaraderie between Comrades PKD and BRB will be short-lived.

Trust the current Kangresi netas not to realise just how absurd it sounds for a democratic party to say that the prime minister's announcement of elections is "unconstitutional and dictatorial".

And here is a new one: Kathmandu-based embassies apparently have to seek the government's permission before they do any clean-up activities to mark World Environment Day or such. An Israeli diplomat seems to have been told in no uncertain terms by the vigilant rangers up at Nagarjun National Park that he couldn't pick up garbage strewn along the trail without a Foreign Ministry clearance.