News In Brief

IMAGE PROBLEM If any tv station was going to use the right photo of Michael Jordan on the air, you'd think it would be in Wilmington, N.C., where the hoops legend grew up. But when Jordan announced his retirement, a station there put up a shot of Lee Kealon instead. Who's he? A Mike look-alike, that's who. He too is a bald, 6-foot 6-inch Wilmington native who played basketball. He's regularly mistaken for Jordan, necessitating a fast getaway from autograph hounds. They met once, at a museum. So many fans had surrounded Kealon that the Chicago Bulls star walked in almost unnoticed.

SEEKING COMPANIONSHIP

Zhang Kebiao is the talk of China these days, and not by being a political dissident or star athlete. Zhang became famous because he's a widower and his newspaper ad for a new bride has met with a deluge of responses. What's unusual about that, you ask? Only that he's also a year shy of 100.

Nations projected to have largest populations in 2050

India - not China - will be the world's most populous nation by the middle of the next century, according to US Census Bureau estimates. In its projections, India's population becomes 1.7 billion, nearly 400 million more than China's. The agency calcuates India's current population at about 1 billion, less than China's 1.2 billion. Among other shifts projected by the bureau over the next half-century: Nigeria moves from being the 10th-largest today to No. 4 . Russia, now No. 6, drops out of the top 10. And Congo (formerly Zaire) moves from No. 23 to No. 9. Census Bureau projections of the most-populous nations by 2050 (in millions):

1. India 1.706 2. China 1.322 3. US 394 4. Nigeria 337 5. Indonesia 330 6. Pakistan 260 7. Brazil 228 8. Bangladesh 211 9. Democratic Republic of the Congo 184 10. Mexico 167