New Zealand: A Place to Call Home

We investigate the housing crisis sweeping across New Zealand, leaving families struggling to cope.

New Zealand is in the grip of a housing crisis.

Auckland has become one of the most unaffordable cities in the world, ranked just behind Sydney, Australia.

The average house now costs more than one million New Zealand dollars ($600,000), inequality is rife, and the most vulnerable people are being pushed into desperate situations.

Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP), a volunteer-led organisation, helps people apply for emergency housing grants.

Vietnam's Cooking School of Hope

We visit a cooking school in Vietnam that offers disadvantaged teenagers a pathway out of poverty.

Vietnam is famous for its delicious food.

But at a cooking school in Hanoi, the focus is on more than filling stomachs.

For the teenagers who attend KOTO, an internationally recognised hospitality boarding school in the Vietnamese capital, the kitchen offers a path out of poverty - one dish at a time.

"My parents both passed away at a very young age," says Duong, who grew up in Vietnam's rural heartland. "I can't afford to study, or even to live, so I decided to apply to KOTO."

Philippines: Dying For Gold

We investigate why people are risking their lives in an illegal gold industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But not everyone is reaping large profits.

Investors desperate to cash in on a market worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year are enticing poor villagers to risk their lives by diving deep below the surface of muddy mangroves in search of gold.

The nuggets they find may eventually fetch a high price, but miners often receive a pittance and there is little safeguard to protect them.

The Journey from Agadir to Dakar

Two drivers trek 3,000 kilometres across the desert, risking life and limb to deliver a payload against the clock.

Morocco's key natural resources include phosphates, zinc, manganese and iron ore. The mining industry is important to the national economy and its products highly sought abroad.

Moroccan truck drivers Ibrahim Tabii and Abdelkabir Ainan risk their lives on dangerous roads and through disputed terrain to bring mineral material from Agadir to Dakar, a 3,000-kilometre journey that can take around two weeks.

This is not like truck driving across the United States where long distances are common and hours are controlled by the federal law. It's not like driving in Europe with its tight regulation and vehicle monitoring systems measuring driver-time at the wheel.

Pakistan's Lost Children

Thousands of children go missing or are abandoned each year in Pakistan. But one charity is determined to save them.

Every year in Pakistan, thousands of children go missing or are abandoned on the streets of Karachi. Some are found dead in the streets amid piles of rubbish.

"Some days we pick up people that have been shot to death. Other days, people that have been killed in road accidents or in derailed trains," says Achgar, a paramedic in Karachi, one of the world's most violent cities.

North Korea's Secret Money

101 East reveals the shadowy financial operations funding North Korea's economy and fueling its missile ambitions.

One man was sent to a construction site in Kuwait.

Another went to work in a bank in Singapore.

Over the years, an estimated 150,000 North Korean workers have been sent abroad to raise money for the ruling Kim family.

This film reveals the men and women who help generate billions of dollars for North Korea - from former high-ranking officers to the workers who toil in factories and on construction sites around the world, only to have most of their salaries go directly back to the pariah state.

Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent revisited

A Listening Post special marking 30 years since the publication of Manufacturing Consent and its relevance today.

There is an exquisite and oft-quoted moment in an interview between BBC journalist Andrew Marr and Noam Chomsky in which Marr asks: "How can you know that I'm self-censoring?".

"I'm not saying you're self censoring. I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."

Wry as ever, Chomsky exposed the slightly delusional pretensions of the journalistic establishment - and not far behind, the complicities of the media industry with political power.

What can be done to ensure food security and preserve water?

Growth of global population to nearly 9 billion presents critical challenge to guaranteeing water and food security.

Over 800 million people live in hunger-stricken areas. The majority of those live in conflict zones.

Ensuring quantity and quality of water for survival, but also for food production in the context of agricultural intensification, is essential to mitigate the risk of mass migration conflict.

On this special edition of Inside Story from the Doha Forum, we ask: Are the current world food governance support systems enough to mitigate current risks?

Big Wata: The Surfers of Sierra Leone (video)

Members of Sierra Leone's only surf club dream of putting Africa on the surfing map.

In 2007, the fishermen of a small fishing community in the West African country of Sierra Leone witnessed an unusual sight.

It was an NGO worker in the ocean. But he wasn't swimming. He was standing on top of a board, riding the waves.

The first - and only - surf club in Sierra Leone, it is at the heart of the local community: a source of pride and, occasionally, of tension.

Lessons from the crash: Media and the 2008 financial crisis

A decade on from the 2008 global financial crisis. Plus, Twitter bots manipulate online debates on Iran.

Lessons from the crash: Media and the 2008 crisis

Exactly a decade ago, the world was hit by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Trillions of dollars were sucked out of the global economy, tens of millions of people lost their jobs and austerity economics was imposed across numerous countries.

Here at the Listening Post, we reported back then on the failings of the financial coverage - failings that meant the crash came as a huge surprise to many around the world. The financial press cheered on a bubble that eventually burst, showed a lack of scepticism about Wall Street claims and failed to expose what was in effect mass fraud on their own beat, namely the mis-selling of mortgages to millions of Americans.

The Journey from Agadir to Dakar

Two drivers trek 3,000 kilometres across the desert, risking life and limb to deliver a payload against the clock.

Morocco's key natural resources include phosphates, zinc, manganese and iron ore. The mining industry is important to the national economy and its products highly sought abroad.

Moroccan truck drivers Ibrahim Tabii and Abdelkabir Ainan risk their lives on dangerous roads and through disputed terrain to bring mineral material from Agadir to Dakar, a 3,000-kilometre journey that can take around two weeks.

This is not like truck driving across the United States where long distances are common and hours are controlled by the federal law. It's not like driving in Europe with its tight regulation and vehicle monitoring systems measuring driver-time at the wheel.

Tomorrow We Disappear: New Delhi's Kathputli Slum

In a Delhi slum, puppeteers, musicians, jugglers and acrobats try to unite as they wrangle with an approaching eviction.

New Delhi's Kathputli slum is a place of fading traditions. For over half a century, 2,800 artist families have called its narrow alleyways home.

There are jugglers and acrobats, puppeteers and painters, folk singers and magicians, many who are well-respected artists in India and abroad.

In 2009, the New Delhi government sold Kathputli to developers for a fraction of its worth. The land is to be bulldozed to make room for the city's first-ever skyscraper, which was intially going to be called Raheja Phoenix.

Myanmar's Cycle of Debt

A look at the slums of Yangon and how families are crippled by high-interest loans as others profit from their despair.

With its gleaming new shopping malls and high-rise apartment blocks, Yangon has become the symbol of Myanmar's rapid economic growth. Yet in its poorest neighbourhoods, 85 percent of households are borrowing money from loan sharks, just to cover their basic living expenses.

While the loans may rescue them from an immediate financial emergency, the interest rates - which range from five percent daily to 60 percent monthly - trap borrowers in a perpetual cycle of debt. As families struggle to make their repayments, many send their children out to work.

India's Slumdog Press

We go inside the child-run newspaper reporting on the ongoing injustices endured by India's two million street children.

They're often seen but rarely heard. India's two million street children live a desperate existence - the streets can be a brutal playground where only the tough survive.

But a newspaper run by street children is shining a light on the daily hardships they face. The reporters often don't know when they'll get their next meal, but that doesn't stop them from hitting the pavement to tell the stories of those around them.

Alfred's Free Press: Liberia's Blackboard Reporter

One innovative journalist has found a way to get daily news and information to Liberians - with a big blackboard.

In Liberia, a country where radios and televisions are luxuries most people cannot afford, Alfred Sirleaf, an enterprising journalist, has founded an innovative newspaper, The Daily Talk.

The paper is Alfred's answer to the misinformation he says caused Liberia's brutal civil war. His innovation is to write it up each day on a blackboard in the centre of Monrovia, accessible to all.

"The legacy of the war created poverty, hardship. It is this war that prompted the creation of The Daily Talk. I believe that people should be informed of what is happening," Alfred told Al Jazeera.

The Last Nomads of Morocco

Morocco's nomadic tribes are gradually giving up their traditional way of life to offer their children formal education.

Many of Morocco's nomadic communities living across the Atlas Mountains, like the Ait Atta tribe, are gradually changing their way of life from roaming herders to part settlers - or what sociologists call "a sedentary lifestyle".

But such fundamental change comes challenges, as well as opportunities.

Traditionally, nomads do not receive a formal education. However in the past decade, there have been moves to introduce what they call "tent schools" to try and equip their children for the modern world. But for them to attend school, their families have to remain in one place all year. It might also mean that the children ultimately leave their parents' traditional nomadic way of life.

Puerto Rico: Shelter After the Storm

Why are some of Puerto Rico's poorest residents being denied federal aid to rebuild their homes after Hurricane Maria?

For decades, Puerto Rico's status as a US territory has been a source of political, social, and economic conflict on the island. The 3.5 million American citizens who reside there have no voting representation in Congress.

Now Puerto Rico is fighting for its survival in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which made landfall in September 2017.

Maria was the most powerful hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in 90 years. More than 1,000 people died from the storm and its aftermath. It cut a path straight across the island, destroyed 70,000 homes and left at least 250,000 homes badly damaged.

Mohamad at Eton: From Refugee Camp to UK Boarding School

Follow a Palestinian boy's transformative journey from a refugee camp to one of Britain's most prestigious schools.

Almost a decade ago, Al Jazeera's Witness series followed 16-year-old Palestinian refugee Mohamad Fahed on a scholarship to Britain's most prestigious private school, Eton College.

Thanks to an all-expenses-paid scholarship he was looking forward to spending two years in an environment that is largely unfamiliar even to average British students.

Mohamad was a thoughtful boy whose life so far has been spent in the Rashidiya refugee camp in southern Lebanon. He dreamed of becoming an engineer, but as the second generation of his family to be born in exile, access to further education and jobs were limited.

Murder in Brazil: Covering the assassination of Marielle Franco

The murder of Franco puts a spotlight on the Brazilian media's treatment of the slums. Plus, Honduras' Radio Progreso.

Murder in Brazil: Covering the assassination of Marielle Franco

The assassination of a city councillor in Rio de Janeiro was a hit job clearly intended to send a message.

Marielle Franco embodied a new kind of politics, on behalf of the country's poor. She campaigned against the violent policing of the favelas, urban slums, which are mostly populated by Brazilians who share Franco's African heritage.

The coverage of her story has revealed the Brazilian media's own attitudes to the poor.

Pakistan's Lost Children

Thousands of children go missing or are abandoned each year in Pakistan. But one charity is determined to save them.

Every year in Pakistan, thousands of children go missing or are abandoned on the streets of Karachi. Some are found dead in the streets amid piles of rubbish.

"Some days we pick up people that have been shot to death. Other days, people that have been killed in road accidents or in derailed trains," says Achgar, a paramedic in Karachi, one of the world's most violent cities.

"But the most difficult is when we pick up innocent babies … that's unbearable," says Achgar, recalling how he recently picked up the body of a newborn at 6am. He suspects the baby was killed by its own parents.