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In May 2002, in the midst of a severe food shortage in sub-Saharan Africa,the government of Zimbabwe turned away 10,000 tons of corn from the World Food Program (WFP). The WFP then diverted the food to other countries, including Zambia, where 2.5 million people were in need. The Zambian government locked away the corn, banned its distribution, and stopped another shipment on its way to the country. “Simply because my people are hungry,” President Levy Mwanawasa later said, “is no justification to give them poison.”

The corn came from farms in the United States, where most corn produced—and consumed—comes from seeds that have been engineered to resist some pests, and thus qualifies as genetically modified. Throughout the 90s, genetically modified foods were seen as holding promise for the farmers of Africa,so long as multinationals would invest in developing superior African crops rather than extend the technology only to the rich. When Zambia and Zimbabwe turned away food aid, simmering controversy over the crops themselves brimmed over and seeped into almost every African state.Cast as toxic to humans, destructive to the environment, and part of a corporate plot to immiserate the poor, cutting edge farming technology is most feared where it is most needed. As Robert Paarlberg notes in his new book, Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa(Harvard University Press), in 2004 the Sudanese government “took timeout from its genocidal suppression of a rebellion in Darfur to issue amemorandum requiring that all food aid brought into the country should be certified as free of any GM ingredients.”

The methodology behind constructing a quantum channel between Space and Earth got a big boost as a research team, led by Paolo Villoresi and Cesare Barbieri from Padova University, have been able to identify individual returning photons after firing and reflecting them off of a space satellite in orbit almost 1,500 kilometres above the earth.

They say their work improves the feasibility of building a completely secure channel for global communication, via satellites in space, using quantum mechanics.

The research team fired photons directly at the Japanese Ajisai Satellite and have been able to prove that the photons received back atthe Matera ground-based station, in southern Italy, are the same as those originally emitted.

This news will be welcomed by communication companies, banks, and MI5-types worldwide as it paves the way for quantum-encrypted communication - the only form of communication that could ensure beyond any doubt that there are no eavesdroppers.