A Nepalese teenager set to be declared the planet’s smallest person got big star treatment Tuesday on a tour of New York.
Crowds at Times Square jostled for a glimpse of Khagendra Thapa Magar who at 17 is the size of a baby and has stopped growing.
The Nepalese teen was making his first visit to New York as part of a publicity trip organized by the freak-show museum Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Wearing a white shirt and doll-sized pin-striped gray jacket, Magar smiled shyly, blinking at rows of cameras and the vast neon billboards lining Times Square.
Ripley’s declares Magar — at 22 inches (56 centimeters) tall and 11 pounds (five kilograms) — the world’s smallest person.
The Guinness Book of Records recently named Colombia’s Nino Hernandez to the title, saying Magar is not yet adult.
But next month the Nepali turns 18 and, at two inches (5.08 centimeters) under his rival, will easily grab the undisputed top title of tininess.

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BOGOTA: It was only this week that Colombia’s pint-sized Edward Nino was on top of the world, named the Guinness Book’s smallest man on the planet. Now a tiny Nepalese teen is about to torpedo his low-rise glory.
Nino, 24, stands 70.21 cm (27.64 in) small, and lives at home with his mother in a humble house on Bogota’s south end.
His ambitions are anything but humble; Nino dreams of traveling to Japan, China, the United States, India and Spain, and of making it big as an actor. (AFP)
The looming rub is that next month Nepal’s Khagendra Thapa Magar, who at 56 centimeters (22 inches) is more than 14 cm (5.50 in) shorter, turns 18. That means he will knock Nino out of the top spot as tiniest man. (AFP)