World hunger reaches the 1 billion people mark

One in six people in the world — or more than 1 billion — is now hungry, a historic high due largely to the global economic crisis and stubbornly high food prices, a U.N. agency said Friday.
Compared with last year, there are 100 million more people who are hungry, meaning they receive fewer than 1,800 calories a day, the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report.

The global economic crisis has compounded the problem for people dealing with pay cuts or job losses. Individual countries have also some lost flexibility in handling price fluctuations, as the crisis has made tools such as currency devaluation less effective.

Asia and the Pacific, the world's most populous region, has the largest number of hungry people at 642 million.
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest hunger rate, with 265 million undernourished representing 32 percent of the region's population.
In the developed world, undernourishment is a growing concern, with 15 million now hungry, the report said.