Haves and have-nots

By year 2000, the world had more than one billion telephones, several hundred million computers with Internet access, on which ten million e-mails are being delivered each minute, and nearly one and a half-billion Web pages.

As of 2002, one billion people have no electricity, and more than three billion-plus persons in the same year never made a phone call. —The Human Web: A Bird's Eye View of World History, J.R. McNeill and William H. McNeill

Courts in Guatemala take more than four years to resolve simple bill-collection disputes. Those in Brazil take more than five years to collect loan collateral. In Burundi, creditors must work through 62 separate bureaucratic and legal procedures to collect a debt. —The Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2003

Lucent Technologies has shifted from producing 70 percent of its own products to less than 30 percent in the last two years.

In the first half of this year, imports snagged nearly two out of every three dollars of the growth in manufacturing shipments over the same period in 2002. —The Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2003