By JAMES BROOKS, Associated Press

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Facing complex bureaucracy at home in Poland, Magdalena Kujawińska and her Colombian fiancé Heinner Valenzuela traveled to Copenhagen to become husband and wife.

“We realized that it’s not that easy to get married in Poland,” the 30-year-old Kujawińska said as the couple waited for their 10-minute ceremony at the Danish capital’s 19th-century City Hall.

“You need a certificate that you are not married,” she said. “We tried to get it from Colombia, but it’s only valid for three months, and it couldn’t get to Poland from Colombia in three months. It was just impossible for us.”

The couple, who live in Krakow, had been engaged for more than three years when Kujawińska heard about Denmark’s relatively relaxed marriage laws from a colleague. Working with an online wedding planner, the couple prepared the necessary documents.

“And in four days, we had the decision that the marriage could be done here,” a smiling Kujawińska said.

Newlyweds Magdalena Kujawińska, right, from Poland and Heinner Valenzuela from Colombia pose for photos at the Copenhagen City Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. Wednesday 9 July 2025. (AP Photo/James Brooks)

Copenhagen attracts couples from around the world

Couples who don’t live in Denmark, both mixed- and same-sex, are increasingly getting married in the Scandinavian country — prompting some to dub Copenhagen the “Las Vegas of Europe.”

The head of the marriage office at Copenhagen City Hall, Anita Okkels Birk Thomsen, said that about 8,000 wedding ceremonies were performed there last year. Of those, some 5,400 of them were for couples in which neither partner was a Danish resident.

“That’s almost double what we saw five years ago,” she said. “They come from all over the world.”

City wants to ensure room for locals

But the city sees a downside to that: demand for ceremonies at City Hall now far exceeds the number of slots available.

Mia Nyegaard, the Copenhagen official in charge of culture and leisure, said in a statement to The Associated Press that the “significant rise” in the number of foreign couples getting married in the capital “poses challenges for Copenhagen-based couples wishing to get married.”

Local authorities plan to take action. Nyegaard said about 40% of wedding slots available at City Hall will be reserved for Copenhagen residents starting from the end of October. While booking a slot there is the most obvious way to get married in the city, arranging a ceremony with a private registrar is also an option, and that won’t be affected.

Copenhagen lawmakers will look after the summer break at what else they can do to relieve overall pressure on wedding capacity in the city.

People gather in front of the Copenhagen City Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. Friday 18 July 2025. (AP Photo/James Brooks)

Liberal laws

Denmark’s marriage laws are liberal in several ways. In 1989, the country became the world’s first to allow the registration of same-sex civil unions. The legalization of same-sex marriage followed in 2012.

For unions of all kinds, Denmark — unlike many other European countries — doesn’t require a birth certificate or proof of single status to obtain a certificate that grants the right to get married in Denmark within four months. Officials might, in cases where divorce papers don’t show clearly that a divorce has been finalized, ask for a civil status certificate.

Applications to Denmark’s agency of family law cost 2,100 kroner ($326), and couples are issued with a certificate within five working days if they satisfy the requirements.

Non-resident couples can travel to Denmark and get married with just a valid passport and, if required, a tourist visa.

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“We get that thing like, ‘Are you sure we do not need a birth certificate?’ And we go, ‘Yes,’” said Rasmus Clarck Sørensen, director of Getting Married in Denmark.

Clarck Sørensen, a Dane, began the wedding planning business with his British wife back in 2014.

“In the last 20, 30 years, people just meet more across borders,” he said. “Marriage rules are often made for two people of the same country getting married.”

“They kind of piled on patches onto marriage law, and a lot of people get trapped in those patches,” he added.

His online company’s “Complete Service” package, priced at 875 euros ($1,014), includes help gathering all the necessary documents, processing the certificate application and organizing the date of the ceremony.

The business says it helped over 2,600 couples last year.

Copenhagen, easily Denmark’s biggest city with the country’s best transport links, is the most popular location and so far appears to be the only one struggling with demand.

Any changes to the city’s rules will come too late to bother newlyweds Kujawińska and Valenzuela, who are now busy planning a celebration in Poland with family and friends.

“It means a lot for us because we’ve been waiting a lot for this,” Kujawińska said. “We’re really happy.”

By ELÉONORE HUGHES

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday it was imposing sanctions on Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes over alleged suppression of freedom of expression and the ongoing trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

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Bolsonaro is accused of masterminding a plot to stay in power despite his 2022 election defeat to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Moraes oversees that case.

“De Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions — including against former President Jair Bolsonaro,” U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in a statement.

The decision orders the freezing of any assets or property de Moraes may have in the U.S.

Brazil’s Supreme Court and the Presidential Palace did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wednesday’s announcement follows the U.S. State Department’s announcement of visa restrictions on Brazilian judicial officials, including de Moraes, on July 18.

It also comes after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 50% tariff on Brazilian imported goods that is set to come into effect on Friday. In a letter announcing the tariff on July 9, Trump explicitly linked the import tax to what he called the “witch hunt” trial of Bolsonaro currently underway in Brazil.

Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, was hosted by the then-U.S. President at his Mar-a-Lago resort when both were in power in 2020.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

By DAVID FISCHER and MIKE SCHNEIDER

MIAMI (AP) — A legal challenge to a hastily-built immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades was filed in the wrong venue, government attorneys argued Wednesday in the first of two hearings over the legality of “Alligator Alcatraz” in a lawsuit brought by environmental groups.

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Even though the property is owned by Miami-Dade County, Florida’s southern district is the wrong venue for the federal lawsuit by environmental groups since the detention center is located in neighboring Collier County, which is in the state’s middle district, government attorneys argued during Wednesday’s hearing in federal court in Miami.

“Everything is happening outside the southern district, either Collier County, Tallahassee or the District of Columbia,” said attorney Jesse Panuccio, who represented the state of the Florida.

Friends of the Everglades attorney Paul Schwiep agreed that the lawsuit could have been filed in any of several districts, including Florida’s middle district, but the temporary facility could have significant impacts on the cities, environment and drinking water of Miami-Dade County, making the southern district an appropriate venue.

Schwiep also pointed out that the state only complained about venue after a judge appointed by President George W. Bush recused himself from the case earlier this month, and it was reassigned to U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republicans have called Williams an “activist judge” after she found Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in contempt for ignoring her orders in another case.

Panuccio denied any attempts of “judge-shopping” and said the state would be seeking to change the venue of any cases related to the detention facility filed in the southern district.

Williams did not rule on the venue challenge Wednesday. Any decision about whether to move the case could also influence a separate lawsuit brought by civil rights advocates who say that detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz” have been denied access to attorneys and immigration courts.

The federal and state government defendants in the civil rights case also argue that the lawsuit was filed in the wrong venue. At the request of a judge, the civil rights groups on Tuesday filed a revised class-action complaint arguing that the detainees’ constitutional rights were being violated.

Work progresses on a new migrant detention facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility in the Florida Everglades, Friday, July 4, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

“Defendants have wholly failed to develop any policy or process for detainees to access legal counsel at the facility,” they wrote in a new filing seeking class-action status. “Attorneys have been unable to discover any working process for setting up calls, via phone or video, with their clients or prospective clients.”

Environmental groups filed their lawsuit against federal and state officials in Florida’s southern district last month, asking for the project being built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades to be halted because the process didn’t follow state and federal environmental laws. Besides Wednesday’s hearing over venue, a second hearing has been scheduled for next week on the environmental groups’ request for temporary injunction.

The first of hundreds of detainees arrived a few days after the lawsuit was filed, and the facility has the capacity to hold 3,000 people.

The detention center was opened by Florida officials, but critics said it’s unclear whether federal immigration officials or state officials are calling the shots. Florida officials named the facility after the closed island prison outside San Francisco to highlight its remoteness and difficulty to escape. Deportation flights from “Alligator Alcatraz” started last week.

Williams on Monday ordered that any agreements be produced in court between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Florida Department of Emergency Management, a move that could shed some light on the relationship between federal and state agencies in running the facility.

Critics have condemned the facility as a cruel and inhumane, as well as a threat to the ecologically sensitive wetlands, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican state officials have defended it as part of the state’s aggressive push to support President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

By JANIE HAR, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Fans of the Grateful Dead are pouring into San Francisco for three days of concerts and festivities marking the 60th anniversary of the scruffy jam band that came to embody a city where people wore flowers in their hair and made love, not war.

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Dead & Company, featuring original Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, will play Golden Gate Park’s Polo Field starting Friday with an estimated 60,000 attendees each day. The last time the band played that part of the park was in 1991 — a free show following the death of concert promoter and longtime Deadhead Bill Graham.

Certainly, times have changed.

A general admissions ticket for all three days is $635 — a shock for many longtime fans who remember when a joint cost more than a Dead concert ticket.

But Deadhead David Aberdeen is thrilled anyway.

“This is the spiritual home of the Grateful Dead,” said Aberdeen, who works at Amoeba Music in the bohemian, flower-powered Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. “It seems very right to me that they celebrate it in this way.”

Formed in 1965, the Grateful Dead is synonymous with San Francisco and its counterculture. Members lived in a dirt-cheap Victorian in the Haight and later became a significant part of 1967’s Summer of Love.

That summer eventually soured into bad acid trips and police raids, and prompted the band’s move to Marin County on the other end of the Golden Gate Bridge. But new Deadheads kept cropping up — even after iconic guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia ’s 1995 death — aided by cover bands and offshoots like Dead & Company.

“There are 18-year-olds who were obviously not even a twinkle in somebody’s eyes when Jerry died, and these 18-year-olds get the values of Deadheads,” said former Grateful Dead publicist and author Dennis McNally.

Fitting in, feeling at home

Deadheads can reel off why and how, and the moment they fell in love with the music. Fans love that no two shows are the same; the band plays different songs each time. They also embrace the community that comes with a Dead show.

Sunshine Powers didn’t have friends until age 13, when she stepped off a city bus and into the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

“I, all of a sudden, felt like I fit in. Or like I didn’t have to fit in,” says Powers, now 45 and the owner of tie-dye emporium Love on Haight. “I don’t know which one it was, but I know it was like, OK.”

Similarly, her friend Taylor Swope, 47, survived a tough freshman year at a new school with the help of a Grateful Dead mixtape. The owner of the Little Hippie gift shop is driving from Brooklyn, New York, to sell merchandise, reconnect with friends and see the shows.

“The sense of, ‘I found my people, I didn’t fit in anywhere else and then I found this, and I felt at home.’ So that’s a big part of it,” she said of the allure.

Magical live shows

Sometimes, becoming a Deadhead is a process.

Thor Cromer, 60, had attended several Dead shows, but was ambivalent about the hippies. That changed on March 15, 1990, in Landover, Maryland.

“That show, whatever it was, whatever magic hit,” he said, “it was injected right into my brain.”

Cromer, who worked for the U.S. Senate then, eventually took time off to follow the band on tour and saw an estimated 400 shows from spring 1990 until Garcia’s death.

Cromer now works in technology and is flying in from Boston to join scores of fellow “rail riders” who dance in the rows closest to the stage.

Aberdeen, 62, saw his first Dead show in 1984. As the only person in his college group with a driver’s license, he was tapped to drive a crowded VW Bug from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, to Syracuse, New York.

“I thought it was pretty weird,” he said. “But I liked it.”

He fell in love the following summer, when the Dead played a venue near his college.

Aberdeen remembers rain pouring down in the middle of the show and a giant rainbow appearing over the band when they returned for their second act. They played “Comes a Time,” a rarely played Garcia ballad.

“There is a lot of excitement, and there will be a lot of people here,” Aberdeen said. “Who knows when we’ll have an opportunity to get together like this again?”

Fans were able to see Dead & Company in Las Vegas earlier this year, but no new dates have been announced. Guitarist Bob Weir is 77, and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann are 81 and 79, respectively. Besides Garcia, founding members Ron “Pigpen” McKernan on keyboards died in 1973 and bassist Phil Lesh died last year at age 84.

Multiple events planned for Dead’s 60th

Mayor Daniel Lurie, who is not a Deadhead but counts “Sugar Magnolia” as his favorite Dead song, is overjoyed at the economic boost as San Francisco recovers from pandemic-related hits to its tech and tourism sectors.

“They are the reason why so many people know and love San Francisco,” he said.

The weekend features parties, shows and celebrations throughout the city. Grahame Lesh & Friends will perform three nights starting Thursday. Lesh is the son of Phil Lesh.

On Friday, which would have been Garcia’s 83rd birthday, officials will rename a street after the San Francisco native. On Saturday, visitors can celebrate the city’s annual Jerry Day at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater located in a park near Garcia’s childhood home.