The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states, one federal district, and fourteen territories. The country is situated almost entirely in the western hemisphere: its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington D.C, the capital district, lie in central North America between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south; the state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent with Canada to its east, and the state of Hawaii is in the mid-Pacific. U.S. territories, or insular areas, are scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific territories.