A listening post that stretches from the arid Karoo in South Africa to the Pacific Ocean - Twenty-one countries have joined in a global research project to pick up radio waves from outer space. It will be the world's largest radio astronomy station, using 4,000 special antennae built across the southern hemisphere -- from southern Africa to Australia and New Zealand. Protecting the Tropical Rainforest in Peru - Peru has the fourth-largest area of tropical rainforest in the world, but it is also vulnerable to illegal logging - losing up to a million hectares in the past decade. Six reserves have now been set up to provide living space for the indigeneous people and protect the forest. In the El Sira reserve, 600 kilometers northeast of the capital Lima, indigineous people live from growing and harvesting rubber. Up to now, these people have lived from their own products, almost entirely autonomously. But their home region is threatened. International companies and illegal loggers are looking for new tracts of forest to exploit. Philippines - The Scavenger Children - Evelin and her brothers and sisters are what people call "scavenger children." Their home - Umapad, a suburb of Mandaue City on the island of Cebu - is not so much a village as a garbage dump. The dump provides everything people need to live: wood for their huts, clothes for the children, rice, meat, salad for lunch - and even medicine. The trash is both a curse and a blessing for these families. On the plus side the discarded metal and plastic they collect can be exchanged for cash.

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Episode #503 / Length: 26 minutes