23 TWENTY-SIX million people voted in the 2001 UK General Election. More than 32 million votes were cast in the first series of Pop Idol.
24 IN Kenya, bribery payments make up a third of the average household budget.
25 THE world's trade in illegal drugs is estimated to be worth around £225bn - about the same as the world's pharmaceutical industry.
26 TO fly a kiwi fruit from New Zealand to the UK means five times its weight in greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere.
27 MORE than 150 countries are known to use torture.
28 AMERICANS spend £5.6bn on pornography every year - the same amount their government spends on foreign aid.
29 THE average urban Briton is caught on camera 300 times a day. With 10 per cent of the world's 30 million CCTV cameras, we are the most watched nation in the world.
30 IN 2001, 13.2 million Americans and 2.5 million Britons had plastic surgery.
31 BRAZIL has more Avon ladies than members of its armed forces. Physical beauty is so highly prized that calling someone vain is a compliment.
32 EIGHTY-TWO per cent of the world's smokers live in developing countries.
33 THE world's oil reserves could be exhausted by 2040.
34 MORE than 70 per cent of the world's population has never heard a dial tone. In Africa just one in 40 people has a phone.
35 A QUARTER of the world's armed conflicts of recent years have involved a struggle for natural resources.
36 ALMOST 30 million Africans are HIV-positive. By 2050 the disease may have claimed as many as 280 million lives.
37 TEN languages die out every year.
38 MORE people die from suicide than in armed conflicts. In the past 45 years, suicide rates have grown by 60 per cent worldwide.
39 SEVEN million American women and one million American men suffer from an eating disorder.
40 THERE are 67,000 people employed in the lobbying industry in Washington DC - 125 for each member of Congress.
41 SINCE 1977, there have been 80,000 acts of violence or disruption at abortion clinics in North America.
42 THERE are 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts around the world.
43 MORE people can identify the golden arches of McDonald's than the Christian cross. The same goes for the Shell oil logo, the Mercedes badge and the Olympic rings.
44 A THIRD of the world's obese people live in the developing world. Campaigners blame Western countries for dumping cheap, processed, fatty foods on poorer nations.
45 IN 2003 the US spent $379bn on its military. This was 22 times the combined military spending of the seven "rogue states" - Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
46 MORE than 12,000 women are killed in Russia every year as a result of domestic violence.
47 SIXTY-ONE per cent of British teenagers believe aliens have landed on Earth, while 39 per cent have any belief in Christianity.
48 TWO million girls and women are subjected to genital mutilation every year.
49 IN China, as a result of the preference for sons over daughters and the country's one-child-per-family law, there are 44 million fewer women than men.
50 SOME 120,000 women and girls are trafficked into Western Europe every year. The UN estimates the trade is worth £4bn a year
