Russian drones struck port and grain storage facilities in and around the Danube River port of Izmail. Ukraine's infrastructure minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the attacks damaged about 40,000 tonnes of grains expected by countries in Africa. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of waging an attack on "global food security". The Ukrainian governor of Kherson said two people were injured following a Russian attack on a residential area. More than 10 Russian drones were downed during an attack on Kyiv at about 3am (00:00 GMT), Ukrainian officials said.

Ukraine's coastal region of Odesa was rattled by Russian drones which hit grain storage facilities in the south of the region, according to authorities in Kyiv. The grain port of Izmail, an inland port across the Danube River from NATO-member Romania, was the main target of Moscow's drone attack. "As a result of the attack, fires broke out at the facilities of the port and industrial infrastructure of the region, and an elevator was damaged," Odesa region Governor Oleh Kiper said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app. Russia's continued attacks against the Ukrainian civilian infrastructure on #Danube, in the proximity of Romania, are unacceptable. These are war crimes and they further affect UA's capacity to transfer their food products towards those in need in the world.

As the global population has expanded over time, modernizing agriculture with the aid of innovations like AI has been humanity's prevailing approach to staving off famine. A variety of mechanical and chemical innovations delivered during the 1950s and 1960s represented the third agricultural revolution. The adoption of pesticides, fertilizers and high-yield crop breeds, among other measures, transformed agriculture and ensured a secure food supply for many millions of people over several decades. Concurrently, modern agriculture has emerged as a culprit of global warming, responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, namely carbon dioxide and methane. Meanwhile, inflation on the price of food is reaching an all-time high, while malnutrition is rising dramatically.

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--To solve humanity's most complex and demanding problems ranging from creating sustainable global food production and preventing infectious disease epidemics to ensuring the safety of our planet and natural resources is the HPC community's next grand challenge. HPC and AI are revolutionizing how we untangle and solve global threats and humanitarian crises. The SC18 plenary session will examine the potential for advanced computing to help mitigate human suffering and elevate our capacity to protect the most vulnerable. This plenary session will hear from innovators who are redefining how we predict and prevent humanitarian crises by leveraging advanced computing. The session is the kick-off event, which immediately precedes the Exhibitor Opening Gala.