Zimbabwe: Tear gas, clubs, gunfire close presidential voting

Police closed down voting booths and used clubs and tear gas to disperse prospective voters Monday, as a chaotic, court-ordered, third day of presidential voting ended with allegations of government rigging and anger over confusion at polling stations.

Police also shot into the air at a polling station in the Harare neighborhood of Glen Norah to disperse 600 people waiting to vote Monday night. When told to go home, they began chanting “Change, change, we want to vote!”

Also during the chaos Monday, four U.S. diplomats were detained for four hours by police, and U.S. officials said they would protest.

Sunday’s election was the fiercest fought in Zimbabwe since President Robert Mugabe led the nation to independence in 1980. Mugabe faced a strong challenge from Morgan Tsvangirai, a labor organizer turned opposition candidate from the Movement for Democratic Change. In recent years, Zimbabwe’s economy has collapsed and political violence blamed mostly on the ruling party has become rampant.

United Nations: Population boom going bust

Women around the world are choosing to have fewer children, confounding long-held predictions of a global population of 10 billion by the end of this century, a U.N. study said.

Demographers from around the world met at the United Nations on Monday to consider lowering that estimate to between 8 billion and 9 billion.

That is not just a mathematical exercise.

The implications are “momentous,” the U.N. Population Division report said. Governments use population projections to plan just about everything, from social security to school budgets, said Joseph Chamie, the agency’s director.

For decades, experts assumed the global population, now about 6 billion, would reach a staggering 10 billion by the end of this century. But the past few decades have witnessed dramatic declines in birthrates in the large, developing nations that were driving the growth.

Washington, D.C.: Airline travel forecast sees rebound in 2003

The airline industry won’t recover from the terrorist attacks for another year, the government says, but growth later in the decade will overwhelm the air traffic system if it isn’t improved.

The Federal Aviation Administration, releasing its forecasts in conjunction with its annual conference, said the number of passengers on U.S. airlines is expected to decline in the current budget year, compared with a year ago. Not until later in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 will the skies beckon again, the FAA said.

“Clearly, we are counting on no further terrorist events,” said John Rodgers, the FAA’s director of aviation policy and plans.

While air travel had dropped before Sept. 11 because of the economic slowdown, the terrorist attacks kept millions of passengers on the ground. The number of passengers, which peaked at 695.3 million in the 12 months through Sept. 30, 2000, is expected to drop to 600.3 million in the fiscal year ending this September.