The United Nations on Wednesday significantly lowered its forecast for global economic growth this year from 4% to 3.1%, saying the war in Ukraine has triggered increasing global food and commodity prices and exacerbated inflationary pressures, upending the fragile recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The mid-2022 forecast from the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs said the downgrade in growth prospects is broad-based, including the world’s largest economies — the United States, China and most significantly the European Union — and the majority of other developed and developing countries.