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Tom Ballard was just six years old when his mother died while attempting to climb the world's second-highest mountain, K2. Now, Alison Hargreaves' 21-year-old son is training to scale the same 28,000ft peak. The mother-of-two, who had successfully climbed Everest just three months earlier, was swept off the mountain during her descent in 1995 aged just 32. Her body was never found.

Teens are getting high on an emerging drug called "fake weed," a concoction also known as K2 and "spice" that is also causing hallucinations, vomiting, agitation and other dangerous effects. In the last month, Dr. Anthony Scalzo, a professor of toxicology at Saint Louis University, has seen nearly 30 cases of teenagers experiencing these adverse effects after smoking the fake weed, a legal substance that reportedly offers a marijuana-like high.

Customers trying to buy the herbal mixture K2 left the local store Sacred Journey empty-handed Friday morning. The store, 1103 Mass., was out of stock; demand for K2 has risen after Kansas legislators announced they would work to ban the substance. Some law enforcement officials have compared K2 to marijuana. “At first it was just word of mouth, but a lot of news agencies picked up on it and within a month ... just a lot of business,” said Sacred Journey employee Matthew Rader. “It was not uncommon for (the line) just snaking around the store.” Rader is among those...

Vitamin K is absolutely essential to build strong bones -- and it is proven to prevent heart disease. For several years, compelling evidence has shown that most people don't get enough vitamin K to protect their health through the foods they eat.Green leafy vegetables supply almost half of the vitamin K for the majority of Americans. Most foods considered rich in vitamin K have shown to have less vitamin K than previously thought. Despite this vital information, the majority of multi-vitamins don't contain any vitamin K at all -- and those that do don't contain enough.Recent research supporting vitamin...

Italian climber seen stumbling down K2 just days after 11 fellow climbers perish on deadliest day of disaster By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 4:15 PM on 04th August 2008 An Italian climber has been seen stumbling down the world's second highest mountain K2 just days after 11 fellow climbers were killed. A frostbitten Marco Confortola was seen slowly climbing down to a height where he could be reached by a rescue helicopter. In the mean time three Pakistani high altitude porters and an American climber are climbing up to him. Retired Brigadier Mohammad Akram, vice president of Pakistan's...

An ice avalanche has killed at least 11 climbers on Pakistan's K-2 mountain, CNN.com reported Sunday. Mountaineer Fredrick Strang said at a K-2 base camp that the climbers were descending the Himalayan mountain, the second highest peak in the world, when the avalanche destroyed a fixed rope that the group was using to get to the summit. K-2 is 28,250 feet tall -- about 785 feet shorter than the world's highest peak, Mount Everest -- but climbers generally regard K-2 as the more difficult to summit. Roughly 22 climbers were in the group trying to summit K-2 on Friday night,...

Four Russian mountaineers have gone missing in Pakistan on the world's second highest mountain, K2.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Uzbekistan has told the United States to quit a military base that has served as a hub for missions to Afghanistan since shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks, a Pentagon spokesman said on Saturday. A notice to leave Karshi-Khanabad air base, also known as K2, was delivered on Friday by a courier from the Uzbek Foreign Ministry to the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, the Washington Post reported in its Saturday edition, citing an unnamed senior U.S. official involved in Central Asia policy.

Ally in Terror Fight Evicts U.S. Forces From Base By ROBERT BURNS, AP WASHINGTON (July 30) - The Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan has notified the State Department that U.S. military aircraft and personnel must leave an Uzbek air base that has been an important hub for American military operations in Afghanistan, a Pentagon official said Saturday. Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman, said the notice was received Friday at the U.S. Embassy in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. Flood said he did not know whether the Uzbeks stated a reason for evicting U.S. forces from Karshi-Khanabad air base, commonly referred...

Uzbekistan has reportedly given the US six months to move out of a key base used for operations in Afghanistan. The notice to leave Karshi-Khanabad air base, known as K2, was given to the US embassy in the Uzbek capital on Friday. A Pentagon spokesman said the US was "evaluating the note to see exactly what it means". Uzbekistan has been an ally of the US in Central Asia, but correspondents say relations were strained over the bloody suppression of a protest in May. Earlier this month, Russia, China and four Central Asian states demanded a timetable for US troop...

THE beginning of a United States-Russia divide in Central Asia has opened with Uzbekistan's announcement that it will close an American airbase on its territory. The US Embassy in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent received the diplomatic note terminating the agreement late last week, said state department spokeswoman Nancy Beck. "This is a bilateral agreement between two sovereign nations, and either side has the option to terminate that agreement," said Ms Beck. The move follows the decision, backed by the US, not to return 450 Uzbeks who fled the country after a massacre of protesters in the town of Andijan...

Karshi-Khanabad air base in south-eastern Uzbekistan, which the US has been given six months to leave, has played a key role in supporting US operations in Afghanistan since 2001. Its location in a secure area, a short journey from the border with Afghanistan, makes it an ideal logistical centre outside the field of military operations. Known by US troops as K2, it is used as a landing base for humanitarian goods, which are then taken by road into often inaccessible areas of northern Afghanistan. Its long runway also makes it useful for refuelling large military aircraft. Flight curbs Uzbekistan's authoritarian...

The Uzbek authorities have decided to close a US airbase in the country, concluding a major shift in foreign policy. This has important implications for Uzbekistan's politics, security and economy—in particular the country's large but barely developed hydrocarbons sector. The realignment does not, however, equate to an Uzbek "return" to Russia—China remains an important partner, supportive of Uzbekistan’s concerns, and it has the potential to act as a counterweight to Russian influence. Uzbekistan's government on July 29th gave notice to the US embassy in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, that US forces had 180 days to leave the Karshi-Khanabad airbase, which...

The U.S. Embassy in Tashkent received a diplomatic note calling for the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Uzbekistan. The term of the bilateral agreement between Tashkent and Washington that allowed Americans to use the Karshi-Khanabad air base in southern Uzbekistan is over. U.S. forces have used the base called K-2 airfield since 2001. It served as a hub for their military and humanitarian missions in Afghanistan. Uzbek authorities are said to have given six months to Washington to remove its aircraft, personnel and equipment. This move will create logistical problems for U.S. military, forcing them to use more extensively...

The United States said on Tuesday it would pay Uzbekistan nearly $23 million for use of an airbase in the country which is a hub for US operations in Afghanistan from which it is being evicted. Members of the US Congress protested the payment. “Uzbekistan in July gave the United States 180 days to leave the Soviet-era Karshi-Khanabad airbase, called K-2, following US criticism of the Uzbek government’s violent suppression of demonstrators in the town of Andijan in May’’ Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. The US is continuing to use the base despite restrictions placed by the Uzbek government on...

Where it's moved to is not my problem," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said with evident pleasure when asked about the future of a U.S. military base in Uzbekistan, which authorities have ordered vacated within months. "It's not like I have to move it myself," Ivanov said. Ivanov is an extremely proud man, and he will not have forgotten the slight humiliation he suffered back in 2001. On the eve of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, Ivanov declared that he could not admit even in theory the possibility of a NATO troop presence on CIS territory. Less than a week later...

TASHKENT, September 27 (RIA Novosti) - The United States will withdraw its contingent from the Khanabad base according to the timetable set by the Uzbek government, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried said Tuesday. He said the U.S. respected Uzbekistan's decision and would withdraw from the base as scheduled by the Uzbek government. In late July, Uzbekistan demanded Washington's withdrawal from the base within six months.

The United States is losing its best base for continuing the anti-terror operation in Afghanistan -- Karshi-Khanabad -- situated in south-eastern Uzbekistan in direct proximity to the area of fighting. Afghanistan is also unlikely to provide a worthwhile replacement. In the opinion of representatives of the local military and political establishment, whom I met during my recent trip to Kabul, the only base in Afghanistan which could substitute for Khanabad is the aerodrome in Shindand. But it is located in the zone of "military instability" and the United States, although it has inspected it carefully, is cautious about using it....

WASHINGTON, July 30 (Reuters) - Uzbekistan has told the United States to quit a military base that has served as a hub for missions to Afghanistan since shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks, a Pentagon spokesman said on Saturday. A notice to leave Karshi-Khanabad air base, also known as K2, was delivered on Friday by a courier from the Uzbek Foreign Ministry to the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, the Washington Post reported in its Saturday edition, citing an unnamed senior U.S. official involved in Central Asia policy. Asked about the report, Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said early on...

Ian Ith, Staff Reporter of the Seattle Times. Pete Schoening's name will forever be etched in the annals of mountaineering for his conquests of many of the highest and most treacherous peaks on Earth. For being one of the first two Westerners to summit the remote Pakistani peak Gasherbrum I, a 26,470-foot monster also called "Hidden Peak," Mr. Schoening is listed among such luminaries as Sir Edmund Hillary, the first to scale Everest, as one of the world's renowned climbers. But whether the famously humble man wanted it this way or not, climbers will forever associate the name Pete Schoening...