Equal contribution; authors are listed in random order.

The grand challenge facing global agriculture today is the need to increase food production to feed a rapidly growing population, amid diminishing natural and human resources and climate pressures. With the global population expected to exceed 9.5 billion by 2050, and with several key resources being depleted (see sidebar), the agricultural community is turning to a digital revolution to secure the future of our food production. Touted Agriculture 4.0, this new movement is deploying digital technologies at scale, including field and aerial sensing, automation, and other smart devices to monitor and track resources and to improve operational efficiency. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are playing a central role in driving this revolution: enabling real-time decision support using spatiotemporal data collected on farms, augmenting human labor with automated decision making and robotics, estimating and forecasting risks due to extreme weather, and aiding in longer-term planning under climate-imposed uncertainties. To propel the development and deployment of AI tools and technologies for U.S. agriculture, since 2020 the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA) has made a strategic investment in five AI institutes.

Gunmen attacked Christ Apostolic Church in Eruku, Nigeria, killing two people and kidnapping the pastor and worshippers during a Tuesday evening service.

The essence of multi-modal fusion lies in exploiting the complementary information inherent in diverse modalities.

Google's ultra-private CEO Sundar Pichai is showing me around Googleplex, its California headquarters. A walkway runs along the length of it, passing by a giant dinosaur skeleton, a beach volleyball pitch and dozens of Googlers lunching under the hazy November sun. But it's a laboratory, hidden away at the back of the campus behind some trees, that he is most excited to show me. This is where the invention that Google believes is its secret weapon is being developed. Known as a Tensor Processing Unit (or TPU), it looks like an unassuming little chip but, says Mr Pichai, it will one day power every AI query that goes through Google.

Former US treasury secretary Larry Summers is stepping down from the board at OpenAI, a week after a tranche of emails between him and late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was released. Summers said in a statement to the BBC that he was grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress. Summers, who was also once the president of Harvard University, said on Monday that he would be stepping back from public commitments over his ties to Epstein. The recently released emails showed Summers communicated with Epstein until the day before Epstein's 2019 arrest for the alleged sex trafficking of minors. In a statement, the artificial intelligence company said it respected Summers' decision to resign.

Is the fall of Pokrovsk inevitable? Is Trump losing patience with Putin? At least 19 people have been killed and dozens wounded in Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine, according to the country's emergency service. The attack came overnight on Wednesday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to arrive in Turkiye, where he hopes to revive talks over ending the war caused by Russia's full-scale invasion two years ago. Effective sanctions and assistance to Ukraine can change this," the president said in a social media post on Wednesday, calling for air defence missile aid from allies.

Nine people have been killed and dozens more wounded in a Russian attack on the western city of Ternopil, Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky has said. Nine-storey blocks of flats were hit in the strikes, as Russia fired more than 470 drones and 47 missiles at Ukraine overnight in a brazen attack, Zelensky said. Three districts of Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv, were also hit by a massive drone attack which injured more than 30 people, including children. Photos posted online showed buildings and cars ablaze. Power cuts are affecting a number of regions across the country, Ukraine's energy ministry said.

The UK lacks a plan to defend itself from military attack, a committee of MPs has warned. In a highly critical report, the defence committee says the UK is over-reliant on US resources and that preparations to defend itself and overseas territories in the event of attack are nowhere near where they need to be. The committee's chair, Labour MP Tan Dhesi, said: Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine, unrelenting disinformation campaigns, and repeated incursions into European airspace mean that we cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand. It comes as the Ministry of Defence (MoD) identified parts of the country where six or more new munitions factories could be built. In June, Defence Secretary John Healey announced plans to move the UK to war-fighting readiness, including £1.5bn to support the construction of new munitions factories, which will be built by private contractors.

Is the fall of Pokrovsk inevitable? Is Trump losing patience with Putin? Russian drones struck two central districts - Slobidskyi and Osnovyansk - in Ukraine's second largest city Kharkiv, injuring five people in an apartment building and triggering a fire, authorities said. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 22 residents had been evacuated from one section of the damaged apartment building while another drone struck an area outside a medical facility, injuring a doctor and damaging the building and nearby cars. The Kharkiv region's governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said 11 drones were deployed in the attack and seven people were injured in total.