Map showing areas of Pocatello where absolutely no fireworks are allowed.

People in Pocatello were also reminded of regulations regarding fireworks within city limits.

“Anything that says ‘explosion’ on the firework itself — they will talk about leaving the ground — those are illegal fireworks,” says Dean Bullock, Assistant Fire Chief of the Pocatello Fire Department.

Jeb Harrison is a local firework shop owner and attended the meeting to express frustration with illegal fireworks being sold.

“We do things the right way. We do things the legal way…” said Harrison. “It’s very frustrating for me when I see people go up the road 15 minutes, and they come back with aerials, roman candles, bottle rockets, firecrackers, all of which are illegal. I provide a safe legal product at a very fair price. If I could sell those kinds of products, I’d make ten times the money.”

Another Pocatello resident spoke up about neighbors who fire aerials above her home.

“We literally sit on our patio, and it showers into our backyard, on our patio,” she said. “They shoot ’em across the street. It’s unbelievable.”

Safety tips

City officials requested the help of locals in ensuring the Fourth of July is safe for everyone in the community. They encourage people to report illegal fireworks to the police if they see them.

The city of Pocatello provided these tips for firework management and safety:

Light all fireworks outside in a clear open area away from structures and flammable materials

Have a water source available

Never allow children to light fireworks

Don’t try to relight malfunctioning fireworks

Allow adequate time for fireworks to cool down before disposing of them

Never store fireworks inside your home

Fireworks should be kept away from children and pets

Pets and fireworks don’t mix — Keep pets safe and secure so they can’t run away

Never throw or shoot fireworks at another person

Pocatello has a greater chance of wildfires than 98% of other communities in the United States. In the wake of other local fires, city and county officials are focused on fire prevention and management and ask the same of the citizens of Pocatello.

CNN

By Mike Valerio, Yoonjung Seo, and Gawon Bae, CNN

Seoul (CNN) — Kim Jong Un personally cut the ribbon on a new resort hailed by state media as a “national treasure-level tourism city” — a lavish seaside development set against what human rights observers describe as stark realities of hunger and hardship across North Korea.

According to the country’s official KCNA news service, Kim opened the sprawling Kalma beachside resort with waterparks, high-rise hotels, and accommodation for nearly 20,000 guests — a sweeping display of extravagance in one of the world’s most reclusive nations.

The Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone, unveiled in a ceremony on June 24, is on North Korea’s eastern coast. KCNA reported “service for domestic guests will begin July 1,” but gave no details on eligibility or transportation.

Earlier this month, North Korea announced the opening of Kalma train station, reporting it was built to “ensure a high level of convenience for travelers to the coastal tourist area.” The Kalma beach resort is next to an international airport, another indication the project is aimed at attracting foreign currency.

International attendance at the ribbon-cutting was limited to the Russian ambassador and staff, a nod to Pyongyang’s growing alignment with Moscow amid deepening isolation from the West under Kim’s authoritarian regime.

In 2024 UN human rights chief Volker Turk described North Korea under Kim’s rule as “a stifling, claustrophobic environment, where life is a daily struggle devoid of hope.”

Last year, small groups of Russian tourists visited North Korea for three-day ski holidays at Maskiryong resort, which has been a long-standing tourist attraction since its opening in December 2013. These, like all tourist experiences in North Korea, were heavily monitored and controlled by the government.

Returning tourists told CNN that they were subject to strict rules about what they could and could not photograph and were required to watch a choreographed dance performance by North Korean children in addition to the outdoor activities.

“Wonsan-Kalma is open to just North Koreans for now, but we should not be surprised to see Russians at the resort in the not-too-distant future,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a non-resident fellow with the 38 North program at the Stimson Center.

“More broadly, the opening of a major beach resort like Wonsan-Kalma helps to reinforce the state media narrative of Kim’s people-first policy and helps to balance out his greater focus on building up national defense,” Lee added.

In a country where international tourism has been open mostly to Russian nationals since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and where domestic travel is heavily restricted, the new development raises familiar questions about access, audience, and economic feasibility.

“The initial target for this resort is going to be the privileged domestic elite of Pyongyang, such as party officials and other high-ranking figures,” said Lim Eul-chul, a professor of North Korean Studies at South Korea’s Kyungnam University.

“The ceremony of the Wonsan-Kalma resort reflects Kim Jong Un’s vision of ‘socialist civilization’ and is part of his strategic effort to seek economic breakthroughs through the tourism industry.”

North Korea’s most notable experiment with international tourism came in the late 1990s, when it opened the scenic Mount Kumgang area on its southeastern coast to visitors from South Korea.

The project was hailed as a rare symbol of inter-Korean engagement during a period of cautious rapprochement.

Nearly two million South Koreans traveled to the site over the next decade, providing Pyongyang with a critical stream of hard currency.

But the initiative came to an abrupt halt in 2008, after a North Korean soldier fatally shot a South Korean tourist who had reportedly wandered into a restricted military zone – an incident that underscored the fragility of cross-border cooperation and led Seoul to suspend the tours indefinitely.

Many of the sites were demolished in 2022, including the Onjonggak Rest House hotel which had hosted cross-border family reunions. Kim had previously called the area “shabby” and “backward” during a visit.

Indeed, a central question surrounding the new resort is if one of the world’s most secretive and repressive countries is prepared to make a greater foray into international tourism, potentially adding to its foreign cash reserves and prestige.

So far, Russians appear to be the only foreign tour groups granted access to the beach resort. Vostok Intur, a Vladivostok-based travel agency, is promoting three tour packages – one in July and two in August – priced at around $1,840.

According to its website, the first tour is scheduled to begin on July 7 and will last eight days. Travelers will fly from Pyongyang to Wonsan, spend four nights at the resort, and visit the nearby Masikryong Ski Resort.

Kim said an expansion of North Korea’s tourism zones would be formalized during the ruling party’s next congress, likely in the next few months. The lessons learned at Kalma would also be used to develop “promising large-scale tourist and cultural zones” in other parts of the country, Kim noted.

The personal investment of North Korea’s leader was underscored by at least seven visits to the Kalma construction site, where Kim offered what state media called “on-the-spot guidance” and pushed for “world-class” standards.

For Kim’s regime, the resort’s completion is perceived at home as a significant win and opportunity to showcase development amid stiff international sanctions. In another dimension of symbolism, the nation’s leader was joined by his wife, Ri Sol Ju, and daughter, believed to be named Kim Ju Ae, who is widely seen as his likely successor.

“The apparent full attendance of Kim Jong Un’s family at the event implies that the project is intended to carry forward the legacy of his predecessors and be sustained for future generations,” explained Lim of Kyungnam University.

Plans for the resort were first announced in 2013 as part of Kim’s broader vision to transform Wonsan, a historically significant port city, into a hub of economic and leisure activity.

The project was delayed several times, most recently because of the pandemic and international sanctions targeting North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

Despite the projections of glamour across the new resort and images of an enigmatic leader touring wave pools and waterslides, experts expressed skepticism about the destination’s prospects.

“Whether this resort will provide Kim Jong Un with his much-needed economic gain in the long-term, however, remains to be seen: Wonsan-Kalma is hardly a tourist hotspot in the first place,” said Dr. Edward Howell, a North Korea expert at the University of Oxford.

“Of note, since 2020, Kim Jong Un has adopted an increasingly severe approach towards social control; quashing any signs of the virus of outside information and ideologies entering the DPRK,” Howell emphasized.

“If any Western tourists do come to the resort, the ruling regime will no doubt want to ensure that their actions and movements remain regulated and controlled.”

The-CNN-Wire

™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

ISLAND PARK, Idaho (Idaho Fish and Game)—On June 26, Idaho Fish and Game, in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, euthanized an adult male grizzly after it had become food-conditioned from consistently receiving food rewards in an Island Park neighborhood. The bear began frequenting the Pinehaven area early last week, where it received multiple food rewards from unsecured garbage cans, and broke into vehicles used to store garbage.

The large bear was consistently seen on doorbell cameras and tracks were seen throughout the neighborhood, accessing garbage, and pushing against buildings. Due to the bear’s consistent seeking of unnatural food and habituation to residential areas, it was captured and euthanized in the interest of human safety.

Because Island Park is home to both grizzly and black bears, residents and visitors who fail to properly store attractants are putting their neighbors and bears at risk. All residential garbage containers should be stored inside a garage or locked shed to prevent these types of situations from occurring. Garbage containers should only be put out the morning of pick-up, not the night before, and never left out in the open. Use of certified bear-resistant containers is also recommended. Storage of garbage in trucks or other vehicles is not a suitable storage solution and has been an ongoing problem.

Bears are extremely adaptable and can learn very quickly to associate people with food. The presence of unsecured food sources of human origin, such as residential garbage, bird seed, dog food, beehives, domestic poultry, or fruit trees have long been documented as sources of human-bear conflicts. Food-conditioned bears can rapidly lose their fear of humans, resulting in bears approaching people and ultimately putting the lives of both humans and bears at risk.

Grizzly bears in Idaho are federally protected under the Endangered Species Act and management actions are therefore done in consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

(CNN) — Catherine Tondelli was standing underneath the Trevi Fountain, on a summer’s evening in Rome, about to throw three coins into the fountain’s waters.

Growing up in the US, Catherine had seen romance movies set in Italy. She’d read books about Rome. She’d heard the city’s famous fountain was impressive. But nothing could have prepared her for the first view of the marble figures, illuminated by moonlight.

“Suddenly, there it was — a massive, breathtaking fountain,” Catherine tells CNN Travel today. “It was a blue moon that night, which was really beautiful. The fountain was gorgeous.”

Catherine was standing with her mother, Mary Lee, watching the water cascading over the statues. Catherine’s mom encouraged her to embrace the tradition of throwing coins into the Trevi Fountain and making a wish — or three.

Mary Lee took three coins from her purse and pressed them into her daughter’s palm.

“Honey,” she said, “You took me on this beautiful trip. I think it’s time you met someone special. Make a wish.”

While Catherine was happily single, she enjoyed the idea of embracing this Roman tradition. So, smiling at her mother, she went ahead and threw each coin over her shoulder, with her right hand.

“Just like in the movies,” recalls Catherine. “Then, all of a sudden, I heard this voice just saying, ‘If you want the wish to come true, you must throw with the left hand, because it’s closer to your heart.”

Catherine turned around and there he was: Fausto Mezzana. An Italian stranger who was about to change her life.

A Trevi Fountain connection

When Catherine met Fausto in front of the Trevi Fountain, it was the summer of 1999.

Back then, Catherine was 39 and based in California. After a couple of difficult relationships, she’d resigned herself to the idea she might never find a life partner who could support her dreams and cheerlead her ambition.

But Catherine was happy with her life. She enjoyed being single. She felt fulfilled.

“I didn’t really care,” Catherine says today. “I had my cats, I had a great job.”

Catherine’s job involved working for a major cosmetics company, selling high-end products to luxury hotels.

And through a stroke of good luck, it was via this company that Catherine won a trip of a lifetime, to Italy.

When her name got picked for the Italy excursion for two, Catherine knew right away who she wanted to accompany her: her mom, Mary Lee, a retired airline accountant.

“There was no one else in my life I’d rather take,” says Catherine.

The resulting trip was “beautiful,” says Catherine.

“We went to Venice, and we went to Florence, and then the last night was in Rome, and my mom said, ‘Let’s go to the Trevi Fountain,’” recalls Catherine.

That’s how Catherine found herself throwing three coins in the fountain and then standing, face-to-face, with Fausto Mezzana for the first time.

After explaining the lure of throwing the coins with the left hand, Fausto asked Catherine and her mother if they knew what each of the three coins in the Trevi Fountain symbolize.

When the American women said no, Fausto offered up the explanation:

“The first coin, you come back to Rome. The second coin, you find your love in Rome and the third coin … you marry a Roman,” he said, smiling.

Catherine and her mother looked at Fausto, then each other and laughed. Ice broken, Fausto introduced himself — he was from Rome, he explained, and worked for an Italian airline. He said he was out for an evening stroll around his home city, because summer evenings in Rome were his favorite.

Catherine’s mom, Mary Lee, immediately bonded with Fausto over their shared aviation jobs. Soon, the two were deep in conversation about the travel industry.

But as Mary Lee and Fausto talked about airplanes and airports, Fausto kept making eye contact with Catherine. Catherine couldn’t take her eyes off him, either.

“He was very cute. He was very handsome, he was very funny. He made me and my mom laugh so much,” says Catherine. “There was an immediate connection… They say, you know, ‘colpo di fulmine’ in Italian, which is ‘the love at first sight.’ And I really believe that. I think I looked at him and was like, ‘Oh, my God, this fountain works magic.’”

And while Catherine didn’t necessarily believe all of the coins’ wishes were about to come true, she did feel like “destiny, whatever you want to call it” had suddenly intervened.

“Suddenly, it felt like fate,” she says.

A tour of Rome at night

Like Catherine, Fausto Mezzana wasn’t sure if he’d ever find love, back in 1999.

He was 45. He’d had a few relationships, but none had lasted long. He enjoyed his airline job and moonlighting as an actor working in television commercials. But he wanted someone to share his life with.

“I said, ‘My God, I think in my life something must change, because I can’t continue like that,’” he tells CNN Travel today.

When he met Catherine at the fountain, Fausto felt like she was a “present from the sky.”

He liked her mother, too.

“He was so sweet to her,” says Catherine. “They were both airline people. So airline people sort of find each other. They always have this common bond.”

Looking back, Fausto jokes it’s the “best strategy to attack the mother to conquer the daughter.”

But he genuinely enjoyed Mary Lee’s company — as much as he was also struck by Catherine from the moment he saw her throwing the coins into the Trevi Fountain.

“The first impression, for me, was the beauty,” says Fausto of Catherine.

Right away, he says, he knew it was about to be “a magic night.”

It helps, Fausto adds, that Rome is such an incredible backdrop for romance.

“The night in Rome in summertime is so beautiful,” he says.

Catherine, Fausto and Catherine’s mother talked for some time that evening, standing as a trio in front of the Trevi Fountain.

When Catherine and Mary Lee told Fausto they’d just arrived in the city, he suggested he could take the two of them on a tour of Rome, stopping off at all his favorite spots. Fausto suggested reconvening in the Piazza Navona a little later that evening.

Catherine’s mother enthusiastically agreed, but Catherine was a little more hesitant.

Sure, she was charmed by Fausto — but he was also a stranger.

“I said, ‘Mom, we just met him. Maybe he’s a fountain hanger. Maybe just hangs around fountains picking up women,’” recalls Catherine.

Her mother dismissed this suggestion.

“She goes, ‘Oh, no, honey, I can tell. Mothers can tell.’ She was convinced that he was this great guy,” recalls Catherine.

So Catherine and her mother reunited with Fausto at the Piazza Navona later that night.

“When they arrived, I was in a big Audi,” Fausto says. “They were both surprised. The mother said, ‘Oh my God, a four-door car.’ So maybe she was thinking I’d arrive like Gregory Peck, you remember, with a little motorbike …”

Despite her initial disappointment at the lack of “Roman Holiday” vibes, Catherine’s mother was glad to see the car — they’d been walking around all day. She happily got inside.

Catherine was still more hesitant. But her nerves soon dissipated as Fausto drove around Rome, pointing out everything from the Coliseum — illuminated under that blue moon — to his favorite jazz bar.

She was charmed by the attention Fausto showed Mary Lee. And found herself fascinated by his stories of his life in Rome.

“Thank God I listened to my mother,” Catherine says today. “He took us on this whole trip and showed us everything.”

Later, when Catherine’s mother retreated to the hotel to sleep, Catherine and Fausto stayed out for several more hours.

They bar hopped, talking and laughing into the next morning.

Already, “something had happened so fast,” as Fausto puts it. Catherine felt the same way, especially when Fausto took her to his house and played his piano.

“Oh my God, it was so beautiful,” says Catherine. “I’m a musician too. I play trumpet. So it was like, ‘Oh my God. We both love music. We both love the arts. We both love the culture.’”

“It was a very magic night,” says Fausto.

“We just had so much fun,” adds Catherine. “I didn’t want the night to end … It was a night you remember forever.”

The next day, Fausto invited Catherine and her mother out for dinner. Catherine enthusiastically agreed, but her mother declined, with a knowing glance between Catherine and Fausto.

“She said, ‘I can see that you have a connection with each other, and I really would love to give you guys the night together to get to know each other better,’” recalls Catherine.

When Catherine protested — sure, she wanted time with Fausto, but she also wanted to spend the vacation time with her mother — her mom feigned tiredness.

“She was completely lying,” says Fausto today, laughing.

But Catherine and Fausto were grateful for more time together. That evening they stayed up late again, talked about their past relationships, their passions, their family, their hopes for the future.

And then, when it came time for Catherine to travel home to the US the next day, she gave Fausto her business card.

“I knew that I wanted to be in touch with him. I knew that I was going to be more than this, and I wanted it to be,” she says. “We kissed under the hotel window.”

A surprise plane ticket

Catherine reluctantly returned to California, hopeful she’d hear from Fausto but unsure what the future held.

“The whole flight back home I was very sad and didn’t talk much to my mom,” she recalls.

But she’d barely been back in the US a few days when Fausto got in touch.

“He sent me a ticket and asked me to come back for four days — to see if our chance encounter was real or if it was just that I was on holiday,” recalls Catherine. “He told me he had never felt this way before and wanted to know if I felt the same.”

Catherine had to negotiate extra vacation time with her boss. She was honest with her manager: “If I don’t go,” she said, “I’ll always regret it.”

He reluctantly agreed to four days off, warning Catherine any more vacation and she’d lose the job.

“So I went, I took the risk, and it was great. It was four beautiful days,” says Catherine.

Over those extra days in Italy, Catherine and Fausto became more and more sure they wanted to be together.

“I finally found somebody that I was really attracted to — not just physically, but also mentally. And for me, someone who can make me laugh is so important, and he was really entertaining and charming,” says Catherine.

Though, there was a catch:

“I’m like, ‘Finally, I meet someone I really, really want to be with and he lives, you know, 14 hours away on a plane,’” says Catherine, laughing.

But Catherine was determined to “fight for this one,” as she puts it, and Fausto was too. The two committed to a long-distance, cross-continental relationship.

“Every month commuting from Rome to California. California to Rome, Rome, California…” recalls Fausto.

This mammoth journey was made a little easier by Fausto’s job offering complimentary airline tickets.

“Thank God, that helped us keep the relationship going,” says Catherine.

Nevertheless, “the first year was very hard,” says Fausto. He really struggled with the regular farewells. In the end, they stopped using the word “goodbye.”

“I would say, ‘I’ll go left,’” he recalls. “She said, ‘I go right.’”

Then, after about a year of long distance, Catherine found herself at a work conference.

She was speaking to a guy in her industry, who mentioned he was looking for a marketing executive willing to relocate to London.

Catherine’s ears perked up — the UK was one step closer to Italy. But it also wasn’t as intense as moving to Rome. She put herself forward for the London role.

“I was not lucky in love — lucky in my job, but not in love. And I didn’t want to make another mistake,” says Catherine today. “So I said, ‘I really want to take this one slower, and I’m going to move to London … Every weekend, we will be together.’”

‘You’re thinking about moving for this man you met at a fountain?’

While Catherine thought moving to the UK over Italy was the pragmatic choice, her California friends and loved ones still raised an eyebrow at the decision.

“My girlfriends were like, ‘You are crazy. What are you doing? You’re thinking about moving for this man you met at a fountain, throwing your coins?’” she recalls.

Catherine’s twin sister was especially dubious. She’d never met Fausto, and wasn’t sure what to make of him.

“She was mad at him,” says Catherine. “She’s like, ‘You can’t take my twin away from me.’ Because twins are sort of like one unit. And so when he came in, it was very hard for her. It took her a long time to really start to love him and get to know him, and she finally did, but I had a lot of resistance from a lot of people.”

The night before Catherine was due to leave California, she woke up in a sweat, these voices of resistance reverberating around her head.

“It’s a major step in your life,” she says today. “You’re leaving your family, you’re leaving your career, you’re leaving your country that you’ve lived in … It wasn’t just moving to another state, it was moving to another country.”

But Catherine’s mother Mary Lee encouraged the move — even as she feared the distance. She’d seen how Fausto made her daughter light up. How the two of them worked as a team. She knew leaving California was the right step for Catherine.

Catherine moved to London on August 10, 2000. Compared to the trek across the Atlantic, Catherine and Fausto found navigating the distance between London and Rome easy. Due to differences in pet quarantine laws in the UK and Italy, Catherine’s beloved cats settled in Rome with Fausto. Every other weekend, she’d visit Rome to see Fausto — and the cats.

“He started feeding them prosciutto and mortadella, and of course, he fell in love with them,” Catherine says.

As the couple became more and more committed, Catherine and Fausto started talking through what their future could look like.

Catherine had always wanted children and Fausto also loved the idea of being a father.

“But, by the time we met, I was almost 40, so then we tried … but at that point, as a woman, you have this clock,” says Catherine.

Catherine says the couple’s view on kids became: “If we have them, great. If we don’t, it’s okay too. We have a great life.”

A new chapter in Rome

One evening, while visiting Catherine in London, Fausto broached the idea of Catherine moving to Rome, permanently.

“He said ‘I would like to spend the rest of my life with you,’” recalls Catherine. “‘You are a lioness and I am a lion … we need to be together. Neither one of us could be with a sheep.’ He said, ‘I love that you are a lion. I have been waiting for my lioness my whole life.’”

Catherine was touched. And she felt seen.

“I loved that because I always seemed to be with men that were intimidated of me or my career and he fully embraced my independence, strength, career, etc,” she reflects.

And in another twist of fate, that same weekend, Catherine saw a listing for a hotel company in Rome looking for a marketing director.

“I went to Rome the next week and interviewed and got the job,” she says.

In fall 2002, Catherine moved to Rome. She and Fausto bought a house together.

It was an exciting step, but adapting to life in Italy was also a “long learning curve” for Catherine, who by then had spent a lot of time in Rome, but had still to master the Italian language.

Catherine and Fausto adopted a system: they’d spend one month speaking to one another exclusively in Italian and then one month in English, switching it up each month.

This method seemed to work. Soon, Catherine became more confident speaking Italian. Adjusting to Italian life was also made easier by Fausto’s family and friends embracing her with open arms.

“It was a warm welcome that I had here, a beautiful welcome,” says Catherine. “It would have been much more difficult had they not been so accepting of me.”

If language was Catherine’s biggest struggle when she moved to Rome, for Fausto, living with a romantic partner for the first time was his biggest adjustment.

On top of cohabitation being a new experience for Fausto, his relationship with Catherine was the “merge of two different cultures, two different traditions, two different feelings,” as he puts it.

Their differences led to occasional clashes. But the foundation of love never wavered. The relationship grew stronger as they settled into Roman life.

In September 2004, Catherine and Fausto decided to get married in Vitorchiano, which Catherine describes as a “breathtaking medieval town” in Viterbo, central Italy.

“We took over the entire place — a 14th-century church for the ceremony, and the reception in a former convent that had been converted into a hotel,” she recalls.

Catherine’s family — including her twin sister and beloved mother — all gathered in Vitorchiano for the ceremony. Catherine loved having them all there to celebrate with her.

As for Fausto, he always loved spending time with Catherine’s family, especially her mother Mary Lee. Their early bond over their love of aviation in front of the Trevi Fountain blossomed into a great relationship. Mary Lee often visited Italy, and Catherine and Fausto made regular trips to California.

‘Sometimes wishes come true’

Today, over 25 years since Catherine and Fausto crossed paths at the Trevi Fountain, they still live together in Rome.

The couple never had children.

“I wish we could have, but it didn’t happen in the end,” says Catherine.

Fausto reflects that had he and Catherine met earlier, they may have had kids. But he also thinks their relationship thrived because they met a little later in life, when they knew exactly what they wanted.

“Sometimes there is the destiny to life,” he says. “If this story happened when we were 25, 30 years old, I think we wouldn’t be here now.”

“Maybe not,” agrees Catherine. “I think we had to get to a point where we really knew what we wanted.”

Both Catherine and Fausto remain passionate about work, and encourage each other in their professional pursuits. Catherine has her own meeting and event agency and serves as the president of the Professional Women’s Association in Rome, while Fausto works as an actor and musician.

The couple are primarily based in the Italian capital, but they’ve also been busy renovating a home in green, hilly Umbria over the past few years.

“It is finally finished,” says Catherine. “We love our home, just outside of Orvieto.”

Fausto still plays piano and Catherine still plays the trumpet. They enjoy playing together — usually for fun, just the two of them, but occasionally for an audience.

“We open up our house in Umbria for summer concerts where the village bring their chairs and sit in our backyard to hear our music,” says Catherine. “We project images of the songs on our house, so it’s kind of like ‘Cinema Paradiso’ but with our own music and film.”

In between work and concerts, the couple can also be found biking together, cooking, playing tennis, working on house projects and doting on their cats.

These shared interests are a big part of their relationship, says Catherine, but what’s even more important is their shared value system.

“We generally have similar morals, and make each other laugh,” she says. “We respect each other, we give each other independence, he is good to my family, I am to his.”

Fausto and Catherine always enjoy recalling Catherine’s fateful 1999 trip to Italy and the moment the couple met for the first time, after Catherine threw the coins in the Trevi Fountain.

“I can remember every detail about that night,” says Catherine. “I look back … and I still get excited. The first night being with him. Even today, 25 years later, I go, ‘Wow.’ It brings up a lot of emotion for me, and happiness. I never looked back.”

As for Fausto, he remembers the night just as vividly, especially the moment he first saw Catherine and thought she was “a present from the sky.”

“It’s a moment that remains in my mind like yesterday,” he says.

On that first night, Mary Lee took a photo of Catherine and Fausto in front of the Trevi Fountain. They’d only just met. But Mary Lee had a feeling this was going to be a moment they’d want captured for posterity.

She was right. And almost every year since, on the anniversary of their meeting, Catherine and Fausto have returned to the fountain and recreated the picture, arm in arm in front of the stone statues.

“I would never in a million years think one day I would be marrying the man I met at a fountain and moving to Rome and living here. But it happened,” says Catherine. “Sometimes wishes come true.”

The-CNN-Wire

™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

(CNN) — Actor Rick Hurst, best known for playing Deputy Cletus Hogg in the hit sitcom “The Dukes of Hazzard,” has died at age 79.

His death was confirmed by Ben Jones, his co-star on the show, who posted a message on the Facebook page of the Cooter’s Place museum, which is dedicated to the show, on Thursday.

“It doesn’t seem right that Rick Hurst passed away this afternoon. When something so unexpected happens, it is ‘harder to process,’ as the current expression goes,” wrote Jones.

“I have known Rick for over 45 years and there wasn’t a minute of that time that he didn’t leave me smiling or laughing. Sure he was a professional comedian, but mostly he just had a heart as big as Texas,” he added.

“He was a fine actor, a splendid comic, and a wonderfully supportive colleague,” said Jones, who recalled how “everything clicked” when Hurst joined the “Dukes of Hazzard” cast.

“He fit right in and never stopped making people smile until this afternoon. And since the Dukes is still playing all over the planet, he will continue to make us laugh!” he wrote.

“I don’t know about y’all but I believe in an afterlife, and I can see Rick up there in Heaven with Jimmy Best and Sorrell Booke and Denver Pyle, putting on the funniest show inside those Pearly Gates,” he said, referring to other “Dukes of Hazzard” cast members who have died.

“Rest in Peace, old friend!” added Jones.

Hurst had some success early in his acting career, including appearing in 24 episodes of TV series “On the Rocks” from 1975 to 1976, but it was “The Dukes of Hazzard,” which follows the fast-driving Duke brothers as they attempt to outrun the authorities in the fictional Hazzard County, that made him a household name.

Hurst appeared in 55 episodes of the CBS series from 1979 to 1982, before leaving to appear in “Amanda’s,” a US remake of the popular British TV series “Fawlty Towers.”

In the decades that followed, he appeared in various TV shows and movies, making his last appearance in a TV short called “B My Guest” in 2016.

The-CNN-Wire

™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.