Selfie madness: too many dying to get the picture
Deaths and injuries lead governments to treat pictures of oneself as serious threat to public safety
The rise of selfie photography in some of the world's most beautiful, and dangerous, places is sparking a range of interventions aimed at combating risk-taking that has resulted in a string of gruesome deaths worldwide.
The act of taking a picture of oneself with a mobile phone, placing the subject centre-stage, has exploded in popularity in recent years, with everyone from Britain's Queen Elizabeth II to US President Barack Obama joining in. But the selfie has also inspired a spate of risk-taking and offensive public behaviour, pushing the boundaries of safety and decorum, whether by dangling from a skyscraper or posing with live explosives.
Several governments and regulatory bodies have now begun treating the selfie as a serious threat to public safety, leading them to launch public education campaigns reminiscent of those against smoking and binge drinking.
Dozens of grisly selfie-related deaths and injuries in early 2015 led Russia's Interior Ministry to launch a campaign warning avid mobile phone snappers about the danger of, among other things, posing for a selfie with a lion.
In June, two men in the Ural Mountains died after posing pulling the pin from a hand grenade; in May a woman survived shooting herself in the head in her Moscow office; a month later a 21-year-old university graduate plunged 12 metres to her death while posing hanging from a Moscow bridge.