U.S. & WORLD NEWS DIGEST | World population to hit 10.1B by 2100

World population to hit 10.1B by 2100

UNITED NATIONS

The number of the world’s people is expected to grow from nearly 6.9 billion currently to 9.3 billion by 2050 and 10.1 billion by 2100, U.N. population experts said Tuesday.

The projections are used by the United Nations and its many agencies to devise and fund programs for problems ranging from climate change to maternal mortality.

The U.N. said in a report on world trends released Tuesday that global population is expected officially to hit 6.9 billion July 1 and 7 billion Oct. 31. Most of the increase is expected from the world’s “high-fertility countries,” especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

14 trapped in Mexico coal-mine explosion

SAN JUAN DE SABINAS, Mexico

A gas explosion Tuesday in a coal mine trapped 14 miners and injured another in northern Coahuila state near the U.S. border.

A mine employee wearing a mask and air tank was lowered into the shaft to evaluate conditions for a possible rescue at the small mine, and emergency personnel and federal and state officials gathered outside the pit head.

There were no confirmed deaths, and as of Tuesday afternoon, rescue crews had yet to reach the trapped miners, said Luis Martinez, mayor of the town of San Juan de Sabinas, Mexico, where the mine is located, about 85 miles southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas.

Car bomb near cafe kills 16 in Baghdad

BAGHDAD

A car bomb tore through a cafe packed with young men watching a football match Tuesday in Baghdad, killing at least 16 people, officials said. It was the first major attack since U.S. commandos killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, which struck a Shiite enclave in a mainly Sunni neighborhood, but it bore the hallmarks of the terror network’s chapter in Iraq. Al-Qaida operatives have vowed revenge for bin Laden’s death Sunday.

Scouts rescued

LANGLEY, Ark.

In the same remote valley where 20 people died in a flash flood last summer, six Louisiana Boy Scouts trapped by a rising river built a campfire and ate jambalaya and grits, confident rescuers eventually would arrive.

The boys’ two adult leaders had them set up camp near a mountain they could climb if their trail flooded — one of a series of decisions that allowed the group to emerge unharmed from the Albert Pike Recreation Area in southwest Arkansas. Rescuers also praised them for good planning, leaving a map of their planned trek and avoiding the valley floor when they realized how deep and fast the river had grown.

NYC mayor: Obama to visit Sept. 11

NEW YORK

President Barack Obama will mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in New York City at the formal opening of the national memorial to the nearly 3,000 people who died in the terrorist attacks, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday.

“I certainly think it’s terribly important for him to come on 9/11/11. And he will be there. At least the staff has told me that he will come,” Bloomberg said at an unrelated City Hall news conference.

A spokesman for the White House wouldn’t confirm the mayor’s remarks Tuesday.

Obama is set to travel to the city Thursday to visit ground zero and meet with family members of victims of the attacks in the wake of the death of Osama bin Laden, 15 years after the al-Qaida head declared war on the United States.

Associated Press