DESPITE TROUBLES, GATES STILL THE RICHEST

bill gates',390,400);">bill gates',390,400);">Bill Gates may have lost $40 billion on paper over the past 12 months while Oracle's Larry Ellison picked up $47 billion, but Microsoft's co-founder is still the world's richest individual with plenty to spare, according to Forbes magazine.

Gates, the down-but-far-from-out chairman of Microsoft Corp., once again ranks No. 1 on the annual Forbes list of the world's top 200 billionaires. Oracle Corp.'s flamboyant chairman, Ellison, took second place, with third place going to Paul Allen, a Microsoft co-founder who has gone on to make his own name as an investor and entrepreneur.

Other entertainment billionaires on the list include: Wal-Mart Stores Chairman S. Robson Walton ($20 billion); Canadian media mogul Kenneth Thomson ($16.1 billion); Viacom's Sumner Redstone ($9.4 billion); Amazon's Jeff Bezos ($7.8 billion); Kirk Kerkorian ($7 billion); Time Warner's ted turner',390,400);">ted turner',390,400);">Ted Turner ($6.9 billion); News Corp.'s rupert murdoch',390,400);">rupert murdoch',390,400);">Rupert Murdoch ($6.8 billion); Seagram's edgar bronfman',390,400);">edgar bronfman',390,400);">Edgar Bronfman Sr. ($4.2 billion); Yahoo's Jerry Yang ($3.7 billion); Yahoo's David Filo ($3.7 billion); Best Buy's Richard Schulze ($2.8 billion); DreamWorks' david geffen',390,400);">david geffen',390,400);">David Geffen ($2.7 billion); filmmaker George Lucas ($2.5 billion); and RealNetworks' Robert Glaser ($2.4 billion).

Notable music personalities on the list include artist manager Jeff Kwatinetz, who may sell the 3.9 billion panties thrown on stage at Backstreet Boys concerts on eBay for an as yet determined fortune.

Meanwhile, HITS' own Ivana B. Adored has $12 billion in Prada credit and tech tot Simon Glickman boasts a savings of $14 billion by convincing Vegas strippers that he's "researching a book on their lifestyle" and therefore deserves free lap dances. Resident Rabbi Roy Trakin leads all HITS employees however, stockpiling $40 billion by not paying for a meal since 1971.