Around the World: Italy

1 billion now in poverty

A combination of the food crisis and the global economic downturn has pushed more than 1 billion people into hunger in 2009, UN agencies said yesterday, confirming a grim forecast released earlier this year. The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program said 1.02 billion people, about 100 million people more than last year, are undernourished in 2009, the most in four decades.