Mt. Everest ruling and drug smuggling

Urk harbor

It's a relief to think that Olympian Oscar Pistorius will no longer be endangered by an application to climb Mt. Everest. True, he's in the slammer for killing his girlfriend, but there is always a lurking possibility ... that has now, for the moment, been erased.

Solo climbers, blind people and double amputees have been banned from climbing Everest under new rules the Nepalese tourism ministry believes will reduce the number of deaths on the mountain.

Whew! Close call.

And then there's the tale of Urk, a close-knit Dutch community "where television and dancing are spurned by some as the devil’s work." Everyone's tight-lipped about it all, but several fishermen in Urk have been drawn into a drug trial involving the smuggling of 261 kilos of cocaine. No one is willing to talk about it, apparently, but still, this community of 20,000 has not dodged the bullet: A close call turned into a direct hit, it seems.

What's the link between these two stories? I haven't got a clue except that they caught my attention.

"Urk" -- who could pass up a name like that?