Paying the bills can be tough in NZ's biggest city, so the Herald has examined what we're paying more for and why. We look at the stories behind the prices.

New Zealanders pay nearly $1 more to download Lorde's hit single Royals and 50c more for a Big Mac than fans around the world.

It would take 19 median incomes in Auckland to buy a home for the city's median house price, a Herald analysis has found.

Auckland icon and New Zealand champion Sir John Kirwan is The New Zealand Herald's first guest editor in its 150-year history, he has firm ideas of what should be in the paper and online with special attention to the success of south Auckland.

Drunk patrons will not be allowed in bars from next week, and if they are caught, the bar-owner will face a fine of up to $5000.

A radical new teaching model has sparked fears of creative decline at one of our most successful visual art schools.

In the cut-throat world of competitive television, today's darling can be ditched tomorrow. TV3's John Campbell is the critics' favourite, the new crown prince of current affairs - but that's not enough.

Chris Cairns, speaking this evening at Auckland Airport, said he hadn't been aware of the allegations against him until today.

Former New Zealand batsman and former Wellington councillor John Morrison said he would be very disturbed and surprised if the allegations proved to be true.

New Zealand great allrounder Chris Cairns is one of three players being investigated by the ICC over allegations of match fixing.

NZ Cricket Players Association boss Heath Mills says match-fixing allegations make it a 'sad day' for the sport, and believes the onus is now on players to come forward.

Ninety years after Auckland's leaders began hankering after electric trains in 1923, the city is poised to join the world of modern rail transport.

The gap between 15-year-old students who are excelling and those who are failing has widened despite the Govt's increased focus on the educational achievement "tail".

Bosses are being urged to look at why workers are staying home sick, as a new report puts the cost of employee absences at $1.26b a year.

The gap between the rich and the poor appears to be widening with the number of Kiwis earning more than $100,000 increasing by nearly three quarters.

In downtown Tokyo, state broadcaster NHK was airing the dull debates of a Parliament night sitting when all hell broke loose.

Auckland councillors have passed the first stage of a new bylaw to make the wearing of lifejackets compulsory in small boats.

Lance Scullin was "always there in times of trouble", but after a violent clash with a group of youths he turned down offers of help. 12 hours later, he was dead.

Pride and patriotism hasn't succumbed here, even in the face of lost lives and livelihoods, and the daily battle to get things back to the way they were before October 29, 2012.

A peek inside Auckland's Wynyard Quarter residences gives an idea of how the 1500-apartment precinct could look. And there's one big thing missing...

A push to make the wearing of lifejackets compulsory on small boats is another case of "Nanny State" and won't reduce drownings, a boating club says.

'It's important to remind people how fragile life is," says the keeper of a food stall a few metres from the ghostly ruins of Xuankou Middle School.

One of the world's leading earthquake scientists has called on New Zealand to adopt cutting-edge technology that could give people as much as 25 seconds' warning.

When 81-year-old Lois Kennedy woke to desperate cries for help from her neighbour, she leapt out of bed and ran - grabbing a hearth brush as she rushed to the door.

A former rest home manager is calling for better care for the elderly after her father was "starved of food and fluid" in a Whakatane centre.

Auckland's most expensive house, the seven-bedroom mansion on exclusive Paritai Drive partly financed by former Hanover Finance director Mark Hotchin, has been sold to a businessman for $39m.

NZ can look forward to cheaper broadband or higher data caps after National was yesterday left with no mates in Parliament to support its proposal to override price cuts.

At 95, Lilian Robinson is blazing a new path for older Kiwis who want to stay out of rest homes.