41.   In Beit Jala, a battle-zone town near Bethlehem in the West Bank, everyone seemed to be on edge, prepared for the worst.

42.   In her small town near Kiev, finding a date was easy because everybody knew everybody else.

43.   In and around Hyder, a remote town near the crash site, investigators Wednesday asked residents whether they had seen anything or anyone suspicious.

44.   In Bar Harbor, a coastal town near Arcadia National Park, visitors from all over the East this summer are tying up traffic.

45.   In the days before the killings, word spread throughout the Mixtec Indian towns near El Charco that the guerrillas wanted to meet with villagers.

46.   In November, it assassinated a paramilitary commander in Beit Sahour, a hilly, white-washed Christian town near Bethlehem.

47.   Israeli news organizations say Atta is a Palestinian from Tul Karem, a West Bank town near the Israel border.

48.   It has also wandered down the historical byways in documentaries on Coney Island or the Prohibition years in a small Michigan town near the Canadian border.

49.   It is hard to overestimate how much the trips to Washington have meant to this town near Greensboro over the years.

50.   It reduced dammed-up lakes to rivers, shattered the rural economy and turned small towns into near ghost towns.