11.   A growing number of American couples are victims of the marriage tax penalty, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the numbers-crunching arm of Congress.

12.   According to the authorities, the Long Island women contacted American couples, desperate for a baby, with promises of safe, easy and legal adoption.

13.   But she did have an American couple who had been waiting for six months to adopt her.

14.   Eight tourists, including an American couple, are slashed to death deep in the Ugandan jungle, apparently by Hutu militiamen targeting Britons and Americans.

15.   Five of us finally boarded the plane, including an American couple who seemed exceedingly edgy.

16.   His then-wife was working for a food photographer and the American couple began socializing among the close-knit ranks of British foodies.

17.   In June, an American couple on their honeymoon in Egypt was killed when they rode over a land mine in an off-road vehicle.

18.   It does not seem that Japanese families survive because husbands and wives love each other more than American couples, but rather because they perhaps love each other less.

19.   It is holding hostage an American missionary couple, Martin and Gracia Burnham of Rose Hill, Kan., and a Filipina nurse in the jungles of Basilan Island.

20.   It involves an American couple vacationing in Australia who went scuba diving and were mistakenly left out in the open water by the dive boat.