By DARIO ARTALE and DAVID BILLER

FLORENCE, Italy (AP) — James Atkinson and Samantha Fortino toured a Tuscan vineyard and learned to make pasta and a Bolognese sauce alongside their family and friends in Florence. Atkinson discovered a penchant for chianti, while Fortino fell for Italy’s hugo spritz — a cocktail that posed no risk of staining her wedding dress on July 24.

Italy has hosted a number of star-studded weddings in the past decade, most recently Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez ’s extravaganza in Venice. Away from the spotlight, tens of thousands of ordinary Americans have set their sights on the country for their special day in recent years.

“Weddings in America can be a little too grand and a little bit too big and it ends up not really being about the couple,” said Fortino, 28, a neonatal nurse from Skaneateles, New York. “We both just really wanted something intimate and meaningful.”

Over 15,000 foreign couples wed in Italy last year, up 64% from 2019, the year before the pandemic, according to market research from the Center of Tourist Studies of Florence. Growth was led by U.S couples, who account for almost one-third of that total.

Italy was the top international destination for American couples after Mexico, according to Maryland-based wedding planning website The Knot.

For many Americans, Italy embodies the simple, beautiful romance of a bygone era. Weather is balmy and its varied landscapes, from the sea to the mountains, stunning. The food is familiar and crowd-pleasing. But perhaps the biggest driver of the recent uptick is ample opportunity for a range of outings, which together with the wedding event are alluring for those on a quest for unique, memorable moments — part of a consumer trend termed “the experience economy.”

“In the United States, everything is just more expensive for one night and we wanted to make an experience, so we did two nights here,” said Atkinson, 31, who owns a concrete company. “It just seemed like way more worth it to us to do that and make a trip out of it with our family, our loved ones.”

‘Nobody cancels’

One guest who had never visited Italy was ecstatic about the invite, and took advantage to tack on side trips, first to Venice and then with the wedding crew to Cinque Terre. Another, Gary Prochna, nearly didn’t attend because of work piling up at his paving company. He eventually came around and was floored by the venue — a 15th-century villa with a sweeping view over Florence and its famous Duomo.

“I got married in the United States and our venue was very nice. I thought — until this moment — we had the best wedding,” said Prochna, 68, adding that he now hopes his daughters will get hitched abroad.

More than half of Americans surveyed by Mastercard in January 2024 said they prefer to spend their money on memory-making experiences, and more than a third said they’d plan a whole trip around one particular experience.

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Marcy Blum, a prominent luxury event planner based in Manhattan, said almost 90% of the weddings she plans abroad are in Italy.

“The reason Italy is so popular is because that’s where your guests want to go,” she said. “You send an invitation that you’re getting married in Capri or Positano and everybody comes. Everybody. They want to come. Nobody cancels.”

Jack Ezon, CEO of Embark Beyond, a luxury travel and destination event service also based in Manhattan, said 60% of his company’s events were outside the U.S. before the pandemic. Today it’s almost 90%, nearly all split evenly between Italy and France.

The threat of tariffs under President Donald Trump has given destination weddings a boost. Ezon has moved six events from the U.S. to Europe this year, because people were afraid tariffs on alcohol would cause their bar bill to explode.

Cost comparison

The shift to destinations has benefited planners with networks across Italy and local vendors. According to Wedding Italy, the husband-and-wife team who put on the Atkinson wedding, American clients spend three times as much as Italians, due to more elaborate wedding decor and other events in their multiday lineup.

Average spend on hometown weddings in the U.S. was $32,000 last year, according to The Knot. By comparison, foreigners’ weddings in Italy cost an average 61,500 euros ($70,600) and typically have dozens fewer guests, the Center of Tourist Studies of Florence’s data showed.

In the garden where the Atkinsons held their service, cypress trees swayed in the wind as the bride emerged from the chapel, beaming in her lace mermaid-silhouette gown. She walked down the aisle as speakers played the theme song to Star Wars. It was her sneaky trick to make the groom cry, and it worked like a charm.

Before the exchange of rings, before the lovebirds threw their arms around one another, their officiant said:

“Traditionally I would ask: Is there any reason why this couple shouldn’t be married? But for goodness’ sake – we all flew to Italy and can’t get our points back! So instead I’ll ask: Who here approves of this union?”

Cheers all around.

By JOSEPH KRAUSS, Associated Press

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Plans announced by France, the United Kingdom and Canada to recognize a Palestinian state won’t bring one about anytime soon, though they could further isolate Israel and strengthen the Palestinians’ negotiating position over the long term.

The problem for the Palestinians is that there may not be a long term.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects Palestinian statehood and has vowed to maintain open-ended control over annexed east Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and the war-ravaged Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for their state.

Israeli leaders favor the outright annexation of much of the West Bank, where Israel has already built well over 100 settlements housing over 500,000 Jewish settlers. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has reduced most of it to a smoldering wasteland and is pushing it toward famine, and Israel says it is pressing ahead with plans to relocate much of its population of some 2 million to other countries.

The United States, the only country with any real leverage over Israel, has taken its side.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa speaks during a high-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State solution at United Nations Headquarters, on Monday, July 28, 2025 .(AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Critics say these countries could do much more

Palestinians have welcomed international support for their decades-long quest for statehood but say there are more urgent measures Western countries could take if they wanted to pressure Israel.

“It’s a bit odd that the response to daily atrocities in Gaza, including what is by all accounts deliberate starvation, is to recognize a theoretical Palestinian state that may never actually come into being,” said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

“It looks more like a way for these countries to appear to be doing something,” he said.

Fathi Nimer, a policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank, says they could have suspended trade agreements with Israel, imposed arms embargoes or other sanctions. “There is a wide tool set at the disposal of these countries, but there is no political will to use it,” he said.

A resident inspects a torched vehicle following a spree of violent rampage by Israeli settlers overnight that left one dead Palestinian American, a burnt house and several torched vehicles in three Palestinian towns, in the West Bank town of Rammun, east of Ramallah Thursday, July 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

It’s not a completely empty gesture

Most countries in the world recognized Palestinian statehood decades ago, but Britain and France would be the third and fourth permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to do so, leaving the U.S. as the only holdout.

“We’re talking about major countries and major Israeli allies,” said Alon Pinkas, an Israeli political analyst and former consul general in New York. “They’re isolating the U.S. and they’re leaving Israel dependent — not on the U.S., but on the whims and erratic behavior of one person, Trump.”

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Recognition could also strengthen moves to prevent annexation, said Hugh Lovatt, an expert on the conflict at the European Council on Foreign Relations. The challenge, he said, “is for those recognizing countries to match their recognition with other steps, practical steps.”

It could also prove significant if Israel and the Palestinians ever resume the long-dormant peace process, which ground to a halt after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office in 2009.

“If and when some kind of negotiations do resume, probably not in the immediate future, but at some point, it puts Palestine on much more equal footing,” said Julie Norman, a professor of Middle East politics at University College London.

“It has statehood as a starting point for those negotiations, rather than a certainly-not-assured endpoint.”

Israel calls it a reward for violence

Israel’s government and most of its political class were opposed to Palestinian statehood long before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered the war. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Netanyahu says creating a Palestinian state would reward Hamas and eventually lead to an even larger Hamas-run state on Israel’s borders. Hamas leaders have at times suggested they would accept a state on the 1967 borders but the group remains formally committed to Israel’s destruction.

Western countries envision a future Palestinian state that would be democratic but also led by political rivals of Hamas who accept Israel and help it suppress the group, which won parliamentary elections in 2006 and seized power in Gaza the following year.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose authority administers parts of the occupied West Bank, supports a two-state solution and cooperates with Israel on security matters. He has made a series of concessions in recent months, including announcing the end to the Palestinian Authority’s practice of providing stipends to the families of prisoners held by Israel and slain combatants.

Such measures, along with the security coordination, have made it deeply unpopular with Palestinians, and have yet to earn it any favors from Israel or the Trump administration. Israel says Abbas is not sincerely committed to peace and accuses him of tolerating incitement and militancy.

Lovatt says there is much to criticize about the PA, but that “often the failings of the Palestinian leadership are exaggerated in a way to relieve Israel of its own obligations.”

Israeli right-wing activists watch the northern Gaza Strip during a rally calling for the re-establishment of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, near the border in southern Israel, Wednesday, July 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

The tide may be turning, but not fast enough

If you had told Palestinians in September 2023 that major countries were on the verge of recognizing a state, that the U.N.’s highest court had ordered Israel to end the occupation, that the International Criminal Court had ordered Netanyahu’s arrest, and that prominent voices from across the U.S. political spectrum were furious with Israel, they might have thought their dream of statehood was at hand.

But those developments pale in comparison to the ongoing war in Gaza and smaller but similarly destructive military offensives in the West Bank. Israel’s military victories over Iran and its allies have left it the dominant and nearly unchallenged military power in the region, and Trump is the strongest supporter it has ever had in the White House.

“This (Israeli) government is not going to change policy,” Pinkas said. “The recognition issue, the ending of the war, humanitarian aid — that’s all going to have to wait for another government.”

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed.

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ and CHRISTOPHER WEBER, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A researcher at Texas A&M University flying home from abroad was detained for more than a week by immigration authorities at the San Francisco International Airport, sleeping in a chair and living off food sold in the airport, his family and attorneys said Thursday.

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It was unclear why Tae Heung “Will” Kim, who is a legal permanent resident with a green card, was detained July 21, his attorney Karl Krooth said at a news conference. Kim, who went to South Korea to attend his brother’s wedding, is now in removal proceedings to be deported and is being held at an immigration detention facility in Arizona, Krooth said, adding that he has yet to talk to his client.

Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that any green card holder who has a drug offense is in violation of their legal status and can be detained. His attorneys said Kim was charged in 2011 with misdemeanor marijuana possession in Texas, where recreational use is illegal.

His attorneys declined to discuss those charges Thursday. But one attorney told the Washington Post, which first reported on Kim’s detention, that he fulfilled a community service requirement and successfully petitioned for nondisclosure to seal the offense from the public record.

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented campaign of immigration enforcement that has pushed the limits of executive power and clashed with federal judges trying to restrain him. American citizens, legal permanent residents, visa holders and visitors have been stopped at airports and detained for days. Some have faced deportation for minor infractions.

Kim, 40, has spent most of his life in the U.S., arriving at the age of 5. After helping out in his family’s doll-manufacturing business following the death of his father, he recently entered a doctoral program at Texas A&M and is helping to research a vaccine for Lyme disease.

His attorney said holding Kim at the airport denied him his right to due process.

“The airport is not a detention facility. The airport is not in the immigration courtroom. And Customs and Border Protection officers are interrogators, they are not neutral arbiters,” he said.

Krooth said his client was moved between two small rooms in the daytime at the airport.

“He was moved within what’s called secondary inspection at least twice per day from one area where there were no windows,” Krooth said.

At night he was moved to another room where he slept in a chair, Krooth said. An airport spokesperson said in an email that “the airport is not notified when CBP denies entry to a passenger,” referring inquiries to federal officials.

His attorneys were not allowed access and Kim while he was at the airport and he was given only one phone call and periodic texts with his brother. There has been no communication with Kim since he’s been transferred to Arizona, Krooth said.

Kim’s mother, Yehoon “Sharon” Lee, told reporters Thursday through an interpreter that her son has asthma and she worries about him getting proper medical care in detention.

Lee told the Washington Post that she and her husband entered the U.S. on business visas in the 1980s, and by the time they became naturalized citizens, Kim was too old to get automatic citizenship.

Weber reported from Los Angeles.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — SpaceX was back one day after a weather-related scrub and threaded the needle amid threatening clouds to send up the Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station.

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with the Crew Dragon Endeavour lifted off from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A at 11:43 a.m. carrying NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov to space.

“I have no emotions but joy right now. That was absolutely transcendent — ride of a lifetime,” said Cardman, making her first trip to space.

“Boy, it’s great to be back in orbit again,” added Fincke, a veteran of three previous missions. “Thank you to SpaceX and NASA to get us here. What a ride.”

The first-stage booster made its third flight and touched back down for what was SpaceX’s final use of Landing Zone 1 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station sending a sonic boom across the Space Coast.

The rocket shot through a break amid darkening clouds and into space. The previous day, they had their launch scrubbed with one minute and seven seconds on the countdown clock  when a storm cell opened up right over the pad. They actually had to put on raincoats over their spacesuits as they made their way out of the capsule for what turned out to be just a one-day delay.

The quartet, who arrived to KSC on Saturday, were back Friday getting prepped for launch, donning their spacesuits after 7 a.m. at the Neil Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building. They made their walkout after 8 a.m. to ride over to launch pad in black Teslas with license plates that read “Live,” “Laugh” and “Launch.”

By 9 a.m. the had made their way up the launch tower to climb back on board their spacecraft. With an hour to go, all were prepped in their seats with the hatch closed awaiting fueling and arming of the launch escape system.

When it does launch, NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich said it will be groundbreaking for NASA use of a commercial spacecraft.

“We worked very hard with SpaceX to complete all the reuse activities for this vehicle. We had certified the vehicles – the Dragons – for only five flights. Now, we’ve completed all that work, and we’re really ready to go,” he said.

It was the same Crew Dragon that flew the first astronauts for SpaceX back in 2020, now part of a stable of five crew-capable Dragons. With Crew-11’s launch, SpaceX will have flown 74 humans across 19 missions in just over five years.

The mission will relieve the Crew-10 members who have been on board the space station since mid-March, but won’t undock until they complete a short handover period during with the space station population will grow from seven to 11.

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Crew-11 is targeting docking with the station around 3 a.m. Saturday after a 16-hour trip. The crew will be on the station for at least six months, but NASA could stretch the mission to as long as eight months.

For its members, Cardman and Platonov are rookies while Yui is making his second trip having flown to the station a decade ago, and Fincke is making his fourth trip to space having last flown to the station as part STS-134, the last flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour, as well as two previous missions on Soyuz spacecraft.

Cardman had originally been tapped to command the Crew-9 mission, but was bumped after NASA needed space on board to allow for the return flight to the two Boeing Starliner astronauts that were left behind on the station when their spacecraft was sent home without crew because of safety concerns.

Fincke and Yui had both been training to fly future crewed missions of Starliner, but were shifted to this SpaceX mission as Boeing’s beleaguered spacecraft continues to face delays.

With their arrival to the station, the orbiting laboratory will have welcomed 290 people from 26 nations. The station will mark 25 years of continuous human presence in November having began Expedition 1 in 2000. The Crew-11 crew will become of Expedition 73 when they arrive and continue on as part of Expedition 74 that begins in November when the next replacement crew from Russia arrives.