Hobson's Choice

Amount of Zambia's external debt: $7.1bn

Amount Zambia's income per head would be if international aid between 1961 and 1994 had had the accelerating effect on economic growth predicted by the World Bank:

$20,000

Percentage of Zambia's population who are living on less than $1 a day:

70

Number of people who moved out of the North of England between 1994 and 1997:

23,000

Number of people who moved into the South-east of England between 1994 and 1997:

70,000

Number of people who died of heroin overdoses in Italy in 1974:

8

Number of people who died of heroin overdoses in Italy in 1984: 1,000

Number of different cable television systems available in California:

180

Number of people who watch more than 3.3 hours of television a day in Brazil:

120 million

Number of architects practising in Berlin:

5,640

Number of officially registered construction workers and city employees rebuilding Berlin:

136,000

Total amount undergraduates leaving British universities this year owe in government and bank loans:

pounds 1bn

Chances that someone in Britain suffers from hay fever:

1:10

Percentage of people treated in Phoenix, Arizona, in a year, for rattlesnake bites who were attacked after the animal had been fatally bludgeoned, shot or decapitated, prompting a doctor to suggest that a decapitated rattlesnake should be treated as "a very short snake":

15

Length of Samantha, a reticulated python in the Bronx Zoo, New York:

25ft 3in

SOURCES: CHURCH TIMES, THE ECONOMIST, JOSEPH ROWNTREE FOUNDATION, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSWEEK, NEW YORKER, THE ROUND TABLE, TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT, THE SUNDAY TIMES, NATIONAL ASTHMA CAMPAIGN, NEW SCIENTIST, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT.