GENEVA (AP) — More than 17 million people in Afghanistan are facing crisis levels of hunger in the coming winter months, the leading international authority on hunger crises and the U.N. food aid agency warned Tuesday.
The number at risk is some 3 million more than a year ago.
Economic woes, recurrent drought, shrinking international aid and and influx of Afghans returning home from countries like neighboring Iran and Pakistan have strained resources and added to the pressures on food security, reports the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, known as IPC, which tracks hunger crises.
“What the IPC tells us is that more than 17 million people in Afghanistan are facing acute food insecurity. That is 3 million more than last year,” said Jean-Martin Bauer, director of food security at the U.N.'s World Food Program, told reporters in Geneva.
"There are almost 4 million children in a situation of acute malnutrition,” he said by video from Rome. “About 1 million are severely acutely malnourished, and those are children who actually require hospital treatment.”
Food assistance in Afghanistan is reaching only 2.7% of the population, the IPC report says — exacerbated by a weak economy, high unemployment and lower inflows of remittances from abroad — as more than 2.5 million people returned from Iran and Pakistan this year.
More than 17 million people, or more than one-third of the population, are set to face crisis levels of food insecurity in the four-month period through to March 2026, the report said. Of those, 4.7 million could face emergency levels of food insecurity.
An improvement is expected by the spring harvest season starting in April, IPC projected.
The U.N. last week warned of a “severe” and “precarious” crisis in the country as Afghanistan enters its first winter in years without U.S. foreign assistance and almost no international food distribution.
Tom Fletcher, the U.N. humanitarian chief, told the Security Council on Wednesday that the situation has been exacerbated by “overlapping shocks,” including recent deadly earthquakes, and the growing restrictions on humanitarian aid access and staff.
While Fletcher said nearly 22 million Afghans will need U.N. assistance in 2026, his organization will focus on 3.9 million facing the most urgent need of lifesaving help in light of the reduced donor contributions.
FILE - A crowd leaves a stadium after attending the public execution, carried out by Taliban authorities, in Khost, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Saifullah Zahir, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is drifting on Tuesday following mixed data on the economy’s strength, which did little to clear uncertainty about where interest rates may be heading.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% in midday trading and remains a bit below its all-time high set last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 147 points, or 0.3%, as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was nearly unchanged.
Treasury yields eased a bit, following an initial swing, after one report said the U.S. unemployment rate was at its worst level last month since 2021, but employers also added more jobs than economists expected. A separate report, meanwhile, said an underlying measure of strength for revenue at U.S. retailers grew more in October than economists expected.
The mixed data initially sent Treasury yields lower in the bond market. The knee-jerk reaction seemed to be that the data could encourage the Federal Reserve to see the slowing job market as the biggest threat to the economy, rather than high inflation, and cut interest rates further in 2026. But yields quickly recovered and then drifted up and down.
What the Fed does with interest rates is a top driver for Wall Street because lower rates can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, even if they also may worsen inflation. A report coming on Thursday will show how bad inflation was last month, and economists expect it to show prices for U.S. consumers continue to rise faster than anyone would like.
A report released after the U.S. stock trading began on Tuesday suggested price pressures are rising sharply, with average selling prices for businesses climbing at one of its fastest rates since the middle of 2022. The preliminary report from S&P Global also said growth for overall business activity slowed to its weakest level since June.
“Higher prices are again being widely blamed on tariffs, with an initial impact on manufacturing now increasingly spilling over to services to broaden the affordability problem,” according to Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.17% from 4.18% late Monday. The two-year yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, eased to 3.49% from 3.51%.
Helping to keep the overall market in check were continued swings for stocks that have been caught up in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.
Oracle rose 1.5%, and Broadcom added 0.5%. They both had dropped to sharp losses last week, even though both reported stronger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
But CoreWeave, which rents out access to top-of-the-line AI chips, fell 3.4%.
Questions remain about whether all the spending underway on AI technology will produce the kind of profits and productivity that will make it worth the expense.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Pfizer fell 5.3% after giving a forecast for profit in 2026 that was below what some analysts expected. Its forecast for revenue next year, of between $59.5 billion and $62.5 billion, was close to analysts’ expectations.
Kraft Heinz rose 1% after saying Steve Cahillane, who was most recently CEO of Kellanova, will join as CEO on Jan. 1. After Kraft Heinz splits into two companies, which is expected to happen in the second half of 2026, Cahillane will lead the one that will hold onto the Heinz, Philadelphia and Kraft Mac & Cheese brands.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe and Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.6% ahead of an expected hike to interest rates by the Bank of Japan later this week.
Other markets in Asia also had some of the world's sharper swings. South Korea’s Kospi dropped 2.2%, while indexes fell 1.5% in Hong Kong and 1.1% in Shanghai.
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
Specialists Alex Weitzman, left, and Meric Greenbaum work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A television displays a news conference with Fed chairman Jerome Powell on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Currency traders pass by a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
