Hobson's choice

Average GDP per capita of European Union member states: pounds 14,000

Average GDP per capita of Poland: pounds 3,965

Number of bomb attacks in Poland so far this year - the same total as the whole of last year: 118

Age of Polish girl prosecuted this year for blackmailing shop owners in Warsaw's Praga district with threats to bomb their premises: 16

Number of people killed in ethnic and sectarian violence this year in Karachi, Pakistan: 780

Amount Pakistan's President Nawaz Sharif and his entourage are reported to have spent in Kentucky Fried Chicken after touring Karachi: pounds 214

Last year in which fewer murders were recorded in New York than the 770 of 1997: 1967

Number of drug arrests in New York last year - more than at the height of the crack epidemic in the late Eighties: 101,000

Number of times the infant mortality rate in Iraq has increased since the Gulf War: 5

Number of American Muslims: 6 million

Number of years Mordechai Vanunu spent in solitary confinement in a 2x3 metre cell for divulging Israel's nuclear secrets: 12

Number of years of his sentence Vanunu, still in solitary confinement, but with a larger cell and permission to exercise with other prisoners, has still to serve: 6

Annual salary of a fully qualified solicitor working in a UK law firm that earns more than 25 per cent of its income from legal aid: pounds 20,000

Minimum annual salary of a fully qualified solicitor working in a UK law firm that does no legal aid work: pounds 60,000

Percentage of the populations of St. Lucia, St Vincent, Dominica and Grenada who rely on banana farming for their living: 50

Number of bananas imported by the UK a week: 130 million

Complied by Will Hobson

SOURCES: Guardian(x2), Warsaw Post(x2), Eastern Eye, Asian Age, New York Review of Books(x2), American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences(x2), Red Pepper(x2), Voice(x4)