KARACHI, February 6 (Internews): The margin between the have and have-nots in the world is growing at a shocking pace, says a new report titled "An Alternative Global Audit" made available here Sunday.

Here are selected examples from the report that highlight the yawning gap between the growing number of poor in the world and the rich: Bill Gates, Helen Walton and Warren Buffet are the three richest people in the world, with a combined wealth of œ82bn. That makes them richer than 48 of the world's countries put together.

Mobile phone sales are booming; telecommunications is one of the most profitable global businesses. But more than half the people on the planet have never made a phone call.

Last October, the sixth billionth person on the planet was born in Bosnia. About 230,000 people are born every day. Global population has doubled since 1960 and could be 10 billion by 2050.

One child born in Britain, America or France this year will consume and pollute more in its lifetime than 50 children born in developing nations.

The cost of a single Stealth bomber would wipe out the debts of 20 of the world's poorest countries.

Were the Nineties about The Spice Girls, the Internet, Titanic or Monicagate? Perhaps they were really about 154 million hectares of tropical forest - three times the size of France - which were destroyed.

Half the world's species of plants and animals live in these forests: 1,000 species are driven to extinction every year. Most plants with cancer-fighting properties grow in the rainforest.

It would cost less than œ4bn to provide a basic primary education to every child in the world. Europeans spend œ7.5bn each year on ice cream.

More than one billion people do not have safe water and nearly three billion lack adequate sanitation. In Africa, the number of children who die of diarrhoea is equivalent to 33 jumbo jets full every day.

Diarrhoea can be avoided with a treatment costing at less than half a dollar.

The cost of feeding the armies of the world every year is more than the total income of the poorest 45 percent of the world's people.

It would cost œ8bn a year to meet the basic health and food needs of the world's poorest people. Each year dog and cat lovers in Europe and the US spend at least œ11bn feeding their pets.

We live in the information society, on the cusp of the Internet revolution. Everybody, we are told, is getting on-line. But 39 out of 40 of the world's people do not have access to the Web. A computer costs an American a month's wages. It costs a Bangladeshi man eight years' wages.

More than 22 million people are refugees, with many more displaced within their own countries. Yet global tourism is booming; numbers have more than doubled to nearly 600 million a year in the last 20 years.

A kitchen tile in Bill Gates' œ32m Seattle mansion cost œ450. That is more than the average weekly income of a village of 82 people in Uganda.

One and a third billion people live each day on less than a dollar.

The richest 400 Americans are worth more than one trillion dollars, with an average wealth of œ1bn. That is more than the gross domestic product of China.

Coral reefs are home to more than 25 percent of all marine life. On present trends, 70 percent of the world's coral reefs will die in the next 40 years.

The world's richest 20 percent eat 11 times as much meat and seven times as much fish as the poorest 20 percent.

In Britain, 78 people in 100 have their own television. In Bangladesh, it is one in 100. In Monaco, there are 99 phones for every 100 people.

In Cambodia there is just one.

Take two girls born today - one in sub-Saharan Africa, one in Britain.

The first has a one in six chance of dying before her fifth birthday. If she is fortunate, she will live to be 48. The second has a 0.6 percent chance of dying by her fifth birthday. She can expect to live to the age of 79.

In France, everyone has access to sanitation. In Malawi only six in 100 do.

Britons, on average, spend œ93 a year on cosmetics, hairdressing and beauty treatments. This would pay the salary of a nurse in Zambia for three months.

Twenty years ago, four people in 10 had clean water, now it is six in 10. An average family had 4.7 children; now it is three children. Infant mortality was 10 in 100, now it is six in 100.

The most effective way to reduce poverty is to invest in the education of girls. This empowers women to have smaller, healthier families and enjoy a higher standard of living. Educated mothers are more likely to send their children to school, creating a cycle of education and poverty reduction.

Polio was one of the worst killers of the 20th century: some 20 million people remain paralysed. After a worldwide immunisation programme, polio will be eradicated within two years. The last disease to be eradicated was smallpox in 1977.

More people have climbed out of poverty in the last 50 years than in the previous 500 years.-Internews