nzherald.co.nz's new digital subscriptions have launched today - giving you an unrivalled and expanded menu of investigative journalism, insightful commentary and indepth analysis, along with a glittering line-up of international content.
Premium is here - nzherald.co.nz's new digital subscriptions have launched, offering more of the best journalism from New Zealand and around the world.
There's an expanded menu of investigative work from our team of writers, as well as insightful commentary and indepth analysis, supported by a glittering line-up of international content.
Here are seven pieces that are well worth checking out:
National Party leader Simon Bridges and the whispers of enemies within
If slushies are effective at lowering the heat, National Party leader Simon Bridges might want to follow the lead of the Department of Corrections and install a slushy machine in his caucus room.
Leaders of the Opposition tend to have a rough time of it, at least until the last one who becomes Prime Minister. But Bridges seems particularly jinxed, writes Claire Trevett. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Panic on Everest as group's oxygen tanks fail one after another
On a frozen lip of rock near the summit of Mount Everest, climber Adrian Ballinger watched as his teams' oxygen regulators failed, one after another.
Several of them hissed, swiftly expelling oxygen from cylinders carried by the hundreds of climbers who scale the world's highest mountain every year.
Others shot plumes into the sky "like fireworks," Ballinger said.
Panic spread among the 25 climbers. Of the group's few dozen regulators, which sit atop cylinders and control the flow of oxygen, nine failed in less than an hour during their expedition last spring, he said.
Panic spread among 25 climbers as nine of their oxygen regulators failed in less than an hour while ascending the world's highest peak. Photo / supplied.
Unsung Hero: The forgotten All Blacks legend who died at war
Virtually forgotten by New Zealand rugby, George Fletcher Hart was - along with Dave Gallaher - arguably our finest ever All Black to die in war.
A mainstay in the national team in the early 1930s and judged by many (including the late Sir TP McLean) as our finest winger of the decade, Hart served as a tank commander in World War II, dying on June 3, 1944, of wounds sustained during the Battle of Monte Cassino.
Unlike Gallaher, however, Hart's remarkable story has never been fully told - until now
All Black winger George Hart sprints away from defenders in the early 1930s. Photos / Supplied
Who killed Blair Peach? The mystery surrounding the Kiwi schoolteacher's death
Blair Peach was killed at an anti-racism protest in London's Southall 40 years ago this week.
It was 1979 when Peach died and the National Front – that particularly English disease of white resistance against dark-skinned migrants - was on the rise.
The 33-year-old schoolteacher received a fatal blow to the back of the head and a report identified six police officers as possible suspects. Steven Braunias reports on the enduring mystery around theKiwi schoolteacher's death.
Kiwi Blair Peach was killed in London 23 April 1979 attacked by a group of men as he protested against a neo-Nazi march. Photo / supplied
Diabetes amputation horror: 'I was clawing at the walls'
Pam Abraham's diabetes restricted the flow of blood to her leg so severely that the agony left her "clawing at the walls". Surgeries claimed the toes on her left foot, and an infection nearly killed her.
Sadly her case is no longer unusual. Diabetes now causes close to 1000 amputations a year in New Zealand - a loss of legs, feet and toes largely unknown in wealthy suburbs, but increasingly common in other areas.
In part two of a three-part Herald Fair Care investigation, Nicholas Jones examines Abraham's case and finds systemic problems in Northland linked to growing amputation numbers and associated deaths.
Pamela Abraham has had all the toes on one foot amputated because of diabetes. Photo / Michael Craig
Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll: The true story behind seminal NZ rock band
A new documentary on the career of the great Flying Nun band The Chills – and the personal struggles of the band's genius frontman, Martin Phillipps – opens in cinemas this week. Steve Braunias charts a parallel story through interviews with Phillipps and others who have known or worked with him.
Scene from The Chills: The Triumph and Tragedy of Martin Phillipps, which opens in cinemas this week. Photo / Frans Schellekens/Redferns.
A Holocaust story for the social media generation
The teenager's Instagram posts start out breezily enough. Eva Heyman, who just got her first pair of heels for her 13th birthday, films herself eating ice cream in the park. There's also a teenage crush.
But everything rapidly turns dark.
Eva's Instagram account, based on a diary kept by the real Eva Heyman in 1944, went live this morning for the start of Israel's annual Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day.
In 70 short episodes, a British actress playing Eva takes followers along on her Holocaust journey: a happy bourgeois pre-war existence interrupted by the Nazi invasion of her hometown in what was then Hungary; her family's forced move into the cramped chaos of the ghetto; and the packed train that ultimately transports her to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp from which she never returns.
Eva's Instagram account, based on a diary kept by the real Eva Heyman in 1944, went live this morning for the start of Israel's annual Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day. Photo / Instagram
