Profound apologies for having cast unhygienic aspersions (Backside, # 332) on Nepal's stellar five-star establishments and implicating them in the epidemic of jaundice among our movers and shakers.

A quick round of the wards of the Teaching Hospital this week revealed Foreign Minister KP Oli in Room 601 with a bad case of hepatitis. Down the hall was Education Minister Mangal Siddhi Manandhar with typhoid and who knows what. Recuperating at home are Labour Minister Ramesh Lekhak (he barely made it to the meeting with the visiting Korean Labour Minister on Sunday) and Tourism Minister Pradeep Gyawali. All were suffering from the Yellow Peril, as was Supplies Minister Hridesh Tripathy who seems to have been miraculously cured after resigning from his post on Sunday. (As Supplies Minister, he is resigning just as his government is about to be dismantled anyway and before he gets all the blame for failing to ensure oil supply, electricity supply, and water supply. You have to hand it to the guy for his great sense of timing.)

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Since some Maoist stalwarts in the negotiating team were also afflicted with jaundice the Ass put two and two together and concluded that they were infected at the venue of the peace talks between the seven parties and the Maoists. The fact that most senior government secretaries who attend cabinet meetings have also all turned yellow lends credence to this hypothesis. The firm that has the catering contract for Baluwatar is obviously trying to save money washing the salad in the waters of the Tukucha that flows past the prime minister's official residence.

If he was conspiracy-minded, the Ass would say this is all part of a deliberate attempt by reactionaries to poison the entire eight-party government. Faecal contamination could be almost as effective as radioactive Polonium 210.

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King Gyanendra re-painted his palace pink and shaved his beard on advice from tantriks and is given to inspecting the palace's peacocks clad in kurta pajamas. The 7+1 parties are removing his head from bank notes anyway, but that's probably not why he has been meeting bankers lately. After last week's scare on the Ring Road when tyre-burning followed Prince Hridayendra's motorcade's non-fatal collision with a motorcyclist, Crown Prince Paras has moved lock stock and barrel to Gokarna. The royals are taking it easy as their fundo hangers-on use the restive tarai as a weapon to get back at the loktantriks.

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Taking his cue from the paintjob on Narayanhiti, Pushpa Kamal Dahal has also painted his three-storey rented house in Balaju, but olive green. We don't know who advised Brother Number One on the choice of colour, but the camouflage does seem to prove that the military wing of the party is still calling the shots.

These are the same comrades who bamboozled the seven parties into allowing them to keep 180 of their choice weapons for the "personal security" of senior leaders. That is why only 300 guns made it into the container in Shaktikhor, and they're mostly muskets and .303s. The Fierce One's personal bodyguard is his own son Comrade Prakash who carries the guerrillas' only snub-nosed Colt Commando M-16, which they captured from the Rangers two year ago.

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Maoist members of the interim parliament are now seen at embassy gatherings and they are always followed by swarthy looking chaps with bulging hip pockets. Marshals at Singha Darbar know the grey suits are carrying pistols inside parliament but look the other way.

Half the Maoists who went in to be registered at the Chitwan cantonment turned out to be under 15 and were rejected. But about 30 percent of them, many girls, managed to sneak in saying they were 18. And on that happy note, hee-haw till next week.