Armed Iraqi groups have mounted ever more deadly and spectacular assaults on fellow Iraqis, in bids to assert political and territorial dominance.
Rising about 28,250 feet, K2 is surpassed in height only by Mount Everest (more than 29,000 feet), 800 miles to the southeast.
For all his many feats, however, the defining event of that life was what happened on K2, a colossus rising about 28,250 feet in the Karakoram range, surpassed in height only by Mount Everest (more than 29,000 feet).
The litany seems endless and can be numbing to contemplate, but there is mounting and ever more creative movement afoot.
"Dear Comrade Kim Jong-un said now we can mount an ever more powerful nuclear warhead on a new intercontinental ballistic rocket," state news agency KCNA reportedly announced, "and put the den of evil in the United States, and all over the world, within our strike range".
In act there is mounting evidence that these ever more frequent shocks threaten to reverse development progress in low-income countries.
There's also, thankfully, a large microphone and camera off button on the side of the device, so it's not recording your every waking moment, a big concern with mounting security questions surrounding these ever more popular device.
In parts of the city shopkeepers have banded together to defy mounting extortion.Optimists believe that demands for ever more protection money point to a crisis in the Camorra's other business activities, such as the skimming of commissions off public contracts, a practice the centre-left city government claims to have all but stamped out.
Laws targeting homosexuals and mounting media homophobia are making life ever more precarious for Russia's beleaguered gay community.
