CAPITAL’S MORNING TEMPERATURE 14 DEGREES CELSIUS Kathmandu, 2 May: Wednesday morning temperature in the capital was 14 degrees Celsius, Mercury s expected to rise to 29 degrees Celsius in the afternoon. Nnnn THREE STAR CLUB DEFEATS MOHAN BAGAN Kathmandu, 2, May : Three Star Club Wednesday defeated Mojan Bagan 2-1 in a friendly match at Dasharath Ranghashala,, Kathmandu. The Indian club is in town for the capital for the second time in two years. Nnnn SHERPAS CHALLENGED TO FIGHT ON EVEREST BEFORE BRAWL OUTBREAK Kathmandu, 2 May: A new account of a brawl on Mount Everest which emerged today said one of the foreign climbers involved had sworn at a group of Nepali guides and challenged them to a fight, AFP reports from the Nepali capital.. Famed climbers Ueli Steck of Switzerland and Simone Moro of Italy, accompanied by British alpine photographer Jonathan Griffith, were involved on Saturday in a bust-up with the Sherpas which has shocked the mountaineering community. The events have overshadowed the climbing season in a year when Nepal is preparing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of the world’s highest peak. Eyewitnesses say the European climbers had ignored a request to wait while the Nepali Sherpas rigged up ropes on the upper reaches of the mountain, sparking an argument between climbers on the Lhotse ice face. “Simone began to shout, many of the words in Nepali language, and many of the words were inflammatory,” wrote American climber Garrett Madison in an email sent to Outside Magazine. After this first clash — when the European climbers say they faced an aggressive Nepali Sherpa who threatened them with an ice pick — both sides descended to Camp Two at an altitude of 6,500 metres. “At one point Simone stated over open radio frequency... that if the Sherpa had a problem he could come down to Camp Two soon and ‘f***ing fight’,” wrote Madison. Steck and Moro claimed they were then attacked by an ‘out-of-control mob’ of Sherpas who threatened to kill them and threw stones at their tents. Madison, and a witness speaking to AFP, said another Western climber not involved in the original argument had actually sparked the fight after he ‘entangled physically with a Sherpa’ during efforts to mediate the argument. “The events at Camp Two can only be described as sad and unacceptable,” said Melissa Arnot, an American mountaineer who told AFP she had helped separate the two sides. “I think the foreign climbers made the mistakes and the Sherpas made some mistakes in communication,” she later told American television channel ABC. Photographer Griffith, in an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, also said Moro had sworn at the Sherpas. He praised Arnot for helping save them from a potentially life-threatening situation. “It’s not that we pissed them off and there was a fight. This is 10 or 20 years of frustration spilling out. Mob rule shouldn’t happen anywhere, let alone Everest, but something needs to change,” Griffith told The Guardian. Steck and Griffith returned to Kathmandu this morning after aborting plans to summit Everest by a new ‘undisclosed’ route. They declined to speak to media at their hotel, saying only that ‘we want to tell this story the right way’ and that they had a meeting with government head Khil Raj Regmi to work on a joint public statement. nnnn