That is more than twice even Saudi Arabia's sky-high overall rate; residents swear that they can see the city's boundaries expand by the day.

The company is still based in the city, and residents swear the doughnuts at the shop on the original site (259 South Stratford Road, 336-724-2484) are superior to those at the other 300-plus stores nationwide.

The local residents who weren't tending the shops, displaying crafts, or selling food, swore at the traffic and tried to stay out of the way.

Local residents in the Hudson River valley swear to seeing a phantom train as it turns from the shore and heads up the grade of the old bridge before it vanishes.

Local residents swear by Arirang, although there are a few cheaper places in the -complex as well.

(A resident swears that her 4-year-old horse, which died from cryptobacterial infection three weeks ago, picked up the disease from pigeons.)

But residents swear that the disrobed gradually become part of the background tapestry in a dorm teeming with musicians, painters and political organizers.

Potholes which some residents swore hadn't been patched for ten years or more were neatly filled with hottop and rolled smooth.

Many a resident of the maximum security wing swears by Mr. Westlake as the burglar's bard, the poet of the heist, the wry Miss Manners of hoodlum etiquette.

Some residents of the projects had sworn that these men were drug dealers, and indeed, several pounds of drugs and a quantity of weapons had been recovered by the soldiers.