COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France — Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.

Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.

Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commemorated the anniversary of the D-Day landings, in which American soldiers played a leading role, with veterans at the American Cemetery overlooking the shore in the village of Colleville-sur-Mer.

The June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France used the largest-ever armada of ships, troops, planes and vehicles to breach Hitler’s defenses in western Europe. A total of 4,414 Allied troops were killed on D-Day itself.

In the ensuing Battle of Normandy, 73,000 Allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded. The battle — and especially Allied bombings of French villages and cities — killed around 20,000 French civilians between June and August 1944.

The exact German casualties are unknown, but historians estimate between 4,000 and 9,000 men were killed, wounded or missing during the D-Day invasion alone.

“The heroism, honor and sacrifice of the Allied forces on D-Day will always resonate with the U.S. Armed Forces and our Allies and partners across Europe,” said Lt. Gen. Jason T. Hinds, deputy commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa. “So let us remember those who flew and fell.

“Let us honor those who survived and came home to build a better world. And let us ensure that their sacrifice was not in vain by meeting today’s challenges with the same resolve, the same clarity of purpose, and the same commitment to freedom.”

Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed on D-Day.

Of those, 73,000 were from the United States and 83,000 from Britain and Canada. Forces from several other countries were also involved, including French troops fighting with Gen. Charles de Gaulle. The Allies faced around 50,000 German forces.

More than 2 million Allied soldiers, sailors, pilots, medics and other people from a dozen countries were involved in the overall Operation Overlord, the battle to wrest western France from Nazi control that started on D-Day.

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Several agencies responded to a water-rescue call in Stillwater on Thursday afternoon after the Stillwater Lift Bridge tender called authorities to report that a group of young women thought they had seen a young man go into the St. Croix River and not surface.

Law enforcement officers searched the river in boats using sonar scanners, and divers from the Washington County Fire Rescue Dive Team searched the bottom of the river, but no one was found, said Washington County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Kevin Jadwinski.

The initial report, which came in around 4:40 p.m., said the young man was thought to have gone into the river from the undercarriage of the pedestrian bridge, just east of the bridge tender’s building, Jadwinski said.

“Boats with scanning technology searched the river for about two hours and did not see anything,” he said. “Divers were in the river searching the bottoms of the river for 30 to 40 minutes, and they didn’t find anything.”

In addition, crews from the Minnesota Department of Transportation scanned footage from cameras located at the top of the bridge and the bottom of the bridge “going back 30 minutes prior to the call coming in and never located anyone falling or jumping off the bridge,” Jadwinski said.

Law enforcement cleared the scene at 6:36 p.m., he said.

“We always take these types of calls seriously,” Jadwinski said. “We are going to throw all the resources that we have at it if it means saving someone’s life until we can deem that no one is in the water.”

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Just a few months after the National Collegiate Hockey Conference held its final neutral site postseason tournament at Xcel Energy Center, the hockey people in St. Paul got some good news about another major college tournament coming to town.

On Thursday, officials from the Western Collegiate Hockey Association announced that the 2026 WCHA Final Faceoff will be hosted by the University of St. Thomas and held at the new state-of-the-art Lee & Penny Anderson Arena. The four-team tournament, which crowns the postseason champion in the nation’s premiere women’s hockey conference, will be played on the St. Thomas campus March 5-7, 2026.

“We are excited for the best of the WCHA to be showcased at the brand-new state-of-the-art Lee & Penny Anderson Arena in 2026 on the University of St. Thomas campus,” said league commissioner Michelle McAteer, in a statement. “The staff from St. Thomas is committed to providing a first-class experience for our student-athletes and fans. The facility will soon be one of the most impressive in college hockey, and this event will help put it on the map.”

The four teams advancing to the tournament will be determined by a quartet of best-of-three series which begin on Feb. 27. The tournament winner receives the WCHA’s automatic bid into the 11-team NCAA women’s tournament.

This will be the first time hosting the tournament for St. Thomas, which is the newest member of the eight-team conference. Ridder Arena in Minneapolis has hosted the Final Faceoff 17 times, with Bloomington, Blaine, Duluth, Bemidji and Grand Forks, N.D., also hosting the tournament since the inaugural event in 2000.

Wisconsin won the 2025 WCHA tournament, beating the Gophers in Duluth on the way to the Badgers besting conference rival Ohio State in the NCAA title game.

A former Metro Transit worker is suing the Metropolitan Council, claiming religious discrimination and workplace retaliation drove him out of his job.

A lawsuit filed Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court alleges Jihad Hamoud, who is Muslim, left his job in 2022 after repeated questioning of his religious accommodations, discrimination based on his faith, and disciplinary measures from management after reporting problems.

It also claims management sent police with Hamoud to pray after repeatedly declining his requests to do so during a 2021 discipline meeting with management.

The Met Council can’t comment on ongoing litigation, spokesman John Schadl said in a statement. Metro Transit is just one service run by the regional planning organization.

The lawsuit comes after an investigation by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights found probable cause that the Met Council violated state antidiscrimination law and retaliated against Hamoud.

The council appealed the November 2024 ruling, but Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero reaffirmed her decision in January this year.

Minneapolis law firm Storms Dworak brought the lawsuit on Hamoud’s behalf.

Hamoud had been an employee of the Met Council since 2010, when he was hired as a Metro Transit bus driver, according to court documents.

He transferred to a job cleaning and maintaining Metro Transit facilities in 2019. Work was based out of a central hub in St. Paul.

While in that position, Hamoud experienced multiple incidents of religious discrimination, the lawsuit claims.

In one incident detailed in the lawsuit, a supervisor blamed the bathrooms becoming dirty on Muslims “‘who pray in there and wet up the whole place and throw tissue and paper towels all over the place and get the toilets clogged.’” Hamoud told the supervisor Muslims must pray in clean settings, the lawsuit said.

In another incident, according to the lawsuit, a Met Council janitor told Hamoud that Muslims were creating problems and leading to a conflict with Christianity.

Problems continued, but when Hamoud met with managers to discuss his concerns about religious discrimination, he was placed on administrative leave, according to the lawsuit.

When Hamoud returned to work, a manager accused Hamoud of driving past him and the janitor to intimidate him, and later called Hamoud into a meeting with two police officers present, according to the lawsuit. The manager allegedly accused Hamoud of insubordination.

As they waited for a union representative, Hamoud asked to pray, which, as a practicing Muslim, he is required to do five times a day. The manager allegedly directed the two police officers to “keep an eye on” Hamoud while he prayed, causing him to, among other things, feel “degraded, humiliated, disrespected, vilified, and discriminated against.”

Hamoud was placed on a five-day suspension without pay and escorted off the premises. In a later meeting between Hamoud’s union and Met Council, the group’s assistant director of Facilities Maintenance said the situation was “blown out of proportion,” and “border[ed] on ridiculous,” the lawsuit claims.

Hamoud returned to work, but continued to experience discrimination and eventually resigned in May 2022.  He is seeking a total of $100,000 in damages and any other relief a court deems appropriate.

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