1.  Foremost among provincial towns were a handful of regional capitals with populations upwards of five or six thousand.

2.  Fighting intensified during February around the regional capital, Stepanakert, in Nagorny Karabakh, the disputed and mainly Armenian-inhabited enclave within the territory of Azerbaijan.

3.  As the road slithers around Milkovici and into the regional capital of Mostar the illusion is crushed under the weight of ruins.

4.  Georgia has accused Russian troops in Abkhazia of backing separatists who were driven back after trying to storm the regional capital Sukhumi this week.

5.  Also these other regional capitals never evolved into the world financial center that Hong Kong is today.

6.  Among regional capitals, the Socialists maintained a majority only in the northwestern city of La Coruna.

7.  At the same time, Pittsburgh is hard at work, striving to forge a new economic identity as a high-tech center and a regional medical capital.

8.  Baranovsky heads the Russian chapter of the Green Cross, an international environmental group that runs the outreach offices in Shchuchye and the regional capital, Kurgan.

9.  A new Coke bottling plant, one of four new plants opened in Russia last year, stands at the edge of Krasnoyarsk, a regional capital in Siberia.