A sherpa works to bring the body of Goutam Ghosh down Mount Everest in May 2017. Photo / Dawa Finjhok Sherpa, Seven Summit Treks, The New York Times
A sherpa works to bring the body of Goutam Ghosh down Mount Everest in May 2017. Photo / Dawa Finjhok Sherpa, Seven Summit Treks, The New York Times
Welcome to Friday and congratulations on making it through the week. Your reward? A three-day weekend.
What better way to spend Queen's Birthday (and the extra day up your sleeve) than catching up on all the great big reads from the week?
To say it's been a busy news week is an understatement. The drama out of Parliament with the Budget leak gripped the country. Internationally, too, there's been a lot happening, particularly with the shocking number of deaths on Mt Everest.
So if you're looking for some great features to read over the weekend, here are 11 international pieces that are well worth checking out.
The death toll from a traffic jam of climbers on Mount Everest rose to 11 over the past two weeks, as a record number of people attempted to scale the world's highest peak. Hundreds have died trying to scale Everest, and its icy graveyard holds many bodies. In 2017, New York Times reporter John Branch wrote about the desperate and dangerous pursuit to find two Indian climbers who died trying to reach the summit.
Isabella de la Houssaye raised her five children on adventure. Then came a brutal cancer diagnosis, and a burning desire for a final journey with each one.
Rebecca Byerly of The New York Times follows Isabella and her daughter as they tackled Acongagua, the highest summit outside the Himalayas.
Isabella de la Houssaye and her daughter Bella share a moment in their tent at Camp One during the ascent of Aconcagua. Photo / Max Whittaker, The New York Times
Brian Nicholson's first impression of Brooke Geahan was that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever met. His second impression? That she was really sick.
Formerly wildly social, an avid tennis player, and a mainstay of New York City's downtown literary scene, Geahan was battling Lyme disease. On May 11, the couple joined 120 friends and family at the Viansa Sonoma winery in Northern California wine country for a truly magical wedding.
The New York Times charts a love story with tragic twists and highly-charged emotion.
The wedding of Brooke Geahan and Brian Nicholson, at the Viansa Sonoma winery in Sonoma, California. The two met when Geahan was battling Lyme disease. Photo / Anastasiia Sapon, The New York Times
The Winklevoss twins finally have something to shout about. Remember them? They were the square-jawed Teutons, made famous in the 2010 film The Social Network, who whined that their former Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg had stolen the original idea for Facebook from them.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss once sued Mark Zuckerberg claiming Facebook was their idea. Now, they say their second act is even bigger. Photo / Getty Images
Rabia Kanwal's parents were sure her marriage to a wealthy Chinese Muslim she had just met would give her a comfortable future, far from the hardships of their lives in Pakistan. But she had a premonition.
A New York Times investigation looks into arranged marriages as China's one-child bachelors seek wives as far afield as Pakistan.
Rabia Kanwal and Zhang Shuchen were married in Islamabad in January. Eight days after they went to his home in China, she left to return to Pakistan. Photo / New York Times
In December of 2009 marketers at Accenture, AT&T, Gatorade, General Motors, Gillette, Nike, TAG Heuer and other companies faced a difficult decision. After tabloid reports of infidelity and an alleged altercation with his wife that ended in a car crash, Tiger Woods — who had endorsement deals with those firms — publicly (if vaguely) apologised for his behaviour and announced that he was taking an indefinite leave from golf.
This posed a problem - what should brands do when scandal hits an endorser?
In 2010, Tiger Woods admitted his extra-marital affairs to the media. Photo / Getty Images
For most of the history of women's tennis, the "dress" has symbolised the feminine side of the game in its most retrograde sense, and been used as a means of gender stereotype, self-expression, and eyeball-attracting marketing
Finally, however, in the hands of Serena Williams, it has become a political tool.
A year after the catsuit controversy, the tennis star is smashing old rules and stereotypes.
For three decades, Jiang Lin kept quiet about the carnage she had seen on the night when the Chinese army rolled through Beijing to crush student protests in Tiananmen Square.
Now, the former People's Liberation Army journalist has defied a political taboo to describe the bloody crackdown in Beijing and urge a national reckoning.
A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing's Cangan Blvd. in Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. Photo / AP
After he graduated from university, Vozbeth Kofi Azumah was reluctant to tell anyone — even his mother — what he planned to do for a living.
"I'm a farmer," he said, buzzing his motorcycle between freshly ploughed fields on a recent afternoon. "Here, that's an embarrassment."
In a place where farming is a synonym for poverty, a growing number of young, college-educated Africans are attempting to fight the stigma.
Vozbeth Kofi Azumah, who grows snails and giant rats on his farm in Ghana, is among an increasing number of college-educated agricultural entrepreneurs in Africa. Photo / Nana Kofi Acquah, NY Times
When Mena Massoud, the star of the new Aladdin live-action remake, got the first callback for the title role, he decided not to revisit the beloved 1992 animated original. Instead he wanted to draw inspiration from the underlying theme: a "journey of personal identity."
The little-known actor talks casting controversies, questions of representation and how he held his own with Will Smith.
Mena Massoud, the star of the new Aladdin live-action remake. He was one of more than 2000 hopefuls who auditioned for the role. Photo / Philip Cheung, The New York Times
