Woodbury Days – a three-day festival expected to attract thousands of people – starts on Friday.

The 46-year-old event will be held in Ojibway Park, near Woodbury High School. It will include a fireworks show, carnival games, a parade, bands, a car show, food vendors, games and other free entertainment. There also will be a basketball tournament, a business fair and robotics demonstrations.

One note: There will be no Woodbury Farmers’ Market on Sunday due to the Woodbury Days parade.

With Central Park under construction, the Farmers’ Market location has been temporarily relocated to Red Rock Elementary School, which is where the Woodbury Days parade starts. “While this has been known since the start of the season, we want to remind Farmer’s Market visitors in advance,” said Jason Egerstrom, a spokesman for the city.

The Grande Parade starts at 11 a.m. Sunday, and the route runs from Red Rock Elementary School (staging area) and continues along Commonwealth Avenue from Radio Drive west to Sherwood Road west to Woodlane Drive north to the Woodbury High School parking lot.

The entire parade route will be closed to motorists from 10:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sunday, but emergency access will be maintained to homes along the route at all times, Egerstrom said.

For more information, go to woodburydays.org.

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Christopher Yang and Melinda Thao had been trying to conceive for three years — and got a positive test in April.

The married couple, who were high school sweethearts, went to their first ultrasound on June 18 and found out their baby was 9 weeks and 2 days old. On July 13, they got back the baby’s gender — and decided to learn together while sitting in their vehicle during Yang’s lunch break.

Yang pulled up the results on his phone, looked over at his wife and took a deep breath.

“Don’t say anything,” Thao said during the gender reveal, which they recorded on video. “Just show me.”

Yang turned the phone in her direction.

“It’s a girl!” she said, then laughed.

“It’s a girl!” he said.

On Sunday, just five weeks after the happy moment, tragedy struck: Thao, 26, and the unborn child they had named Leona died after a driver, who was allegedly drunk, crashed into the couple’s car at a Coon Rapids intersection.

Gender reveal video

Yang posted the gender reveal video to YouTube on Tuesday, the same day that Makayla April Sua Richardson, 20, of Mounds View, was charged with causing the crash. A preliminary breath test at the scene showed Richardson had a blood-alcohol concentration more than twice the legal limit to drive, the charges say.

In a GoFundMe post Wednesday, Yang wrote about the couple’s struggles to become parents.

“Melinda was so excited, she waited until I went on lunch break so we (could) look at the results together,” he said. “To our surprise, it was a GIRL! We were honestly happy regardless of the gender, we were more happy that the baby was healthy.”

He said their due date was Jan. 19, Melinda’s birthday.

They’d been together since 2013 and got married five years later after finishing college, finding stable jobs and buying a home in Coon Rapids, he said.

“Melinda worked so hard to uplift our lives to be filled with joy, love, and security,” he said. “She worked hard for us to buy a home, conceive a child, and have careers. This is just the tip of the iceberg of our story and it pains me to, now, explain why I am on this page to request for everyone’s help.”

Yang said any funds raised will go toward a funeral service, burial lands, tombstones and “everything else needed to send two beautiful souls to a better place.”

Criminal complaint

According to Tuesday’s criminal complaint:

Police were dispatched to the crash at the intersection of Coon Rapids Boulevard and Springbrook Drive just before 9:30 p.m. Sunday and found Thao injured in the front seat of a Toyota Highlander and Yang injured behind the wheel.

Officers learned that the couple was turning left onto Springbrook Drive on a green arrow when Richardson, who was headed west on Coon Rapids Boulevard in a Ford Super Duty F-350 pickup with a trailer behind, plowed into them. Witnesses confirmed the couple had a green arrow and that Richardson went through the intersection against a red light.

Makayla April Sua Richardson (Courtesy of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office)

Thao was pronounced dead at a hospital, as was the child. Yang suffered three broken ribs.

“Prior to everything, I remembered what we did, ate, and purchased,” Yang said in the fundraising post. “It pains me to be reminded that we bought baby clothes that morning, and now I don’t have Melinda or Leona.”

Richardson admitted to having drunk alcohol before driving, telling officers she had one drink. She also acknowledged driving above the posted speed limit and only having an instruction permit to drive.

An empty can of an alcoholic beverage was found inside the pickup. She submitted to field-sobriety tests, which she failed, and blew a 0.18 BAC on a preliminary breath test. The legal limit to drive in Minnesota is 0.08. A warrant was executed, taking a sample of her blood; results are pending.

Richardson has been charged with one count each of criminal vehicular homicide while under the influence of alcohol and DWI, and two counts of criminal vehicular operation while under the influence of alcohol.

She was released from the Anoka County Jail on Wednesday after posting bond and is scheduled to return to court on Sept. 12.

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The Vikings have less than a week to finalize their initial 53-man roster for the season.

All the hard work from the past few months will culminate on Tuesday afternoon when players find out whether they made the team.

Though some players on the Vikings have more than likely already done enough to secure their roster spot heading into the preseason finale against the Eagles, other players could benefit from a solid effort on Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia.

Here are five players on the Vikings with something to prove:

Lewis Cine

After the best performance of his career Saturday in the preseason game against the Browns, the third-year safety still finds himself on the bubble. He’s currently buried on the depth chart behind fellow safeties Harrison Smith, Cam Bynum, Josh Metellus and Theo Jackson, and it’s hard to envision Cine supplanting any of those players.

If he can make a few plays this weekend in the preseason finale against the Eagles, however, it might be enough for the Vikings to consider keeping him around. The fact that the Vikings selected Cine in the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft works in his favor. Nobody likes to give up on a player after spending so much draft capital on him.

Jaren Hall

This is a tough evaluation because the decision on the second-year quarterback might have less to do with what he does on the field and more to do with whether the Vikings think they can sneak him onto the practice squad. Though he would certainly help his cause with another good showing this weekend, Hall could end up being at the mercy of the numbers elsewhere on the roster.

If the Vikings decide to cut Hall next week, he would have to clear waivers before he could be signed to the practice squad. After working hard to develop Hall, head coach Kevin O’Connell might not want to take the risk of somebody else claiming him.

Dwight McGlothern

The competition for a roster spot got even tougher for the undrafted cornerback this week with the signing of veteran cornerback Stephon Gilmore. The only locks to make the team at this point aside from Gilmore are fellow cornerbacks Shaq Griffin and Byron Murphy Jr.

The good news for McGlothern is he played well last weekend, recording an interception in the red zone, then popping up to his feet and nearly returning it for a touchdown. If he can add another interception to his résumé this weekend, it could go a long way toward him making the team.

Bo Richter

The undrafted edge rusher has endeared himself to the fan base throughout training camp. Has he endeared himself to the front office? That remains to be seen. His athleticism is off the charts and he has shown the ability to generate pressure with a pair of sacks in the exhibition slate.

The biggest problem facing Richter is that he’s competing for playing time with fellow edge rushers Jonathan Greenard, Andrew Van Ginkel, Dallas Turner, Pat Jones II and Jihad Ward. It’s hard to see the Vikings cutting any of those players, so Richter is facing an uphill climb heading into this weekend.

Taki Taimani

This name will more than likely come out of left field to most people. That said, the undrafted defensive tackle has quietly put himself in a position to make the team, even garnering praise from defensive coordinator Brian Flores this week.

It’s not a coincidence that Flores brought up Taimani in conversation. He was among the highest-graded players on the Vikings against the Browns, according to Pro Football Focus, and if he can repeat that this weekend, it could be hard to deny him a roster spot.

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LONDON (AP) — Two weeks after organizers scrubbed Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna amid a foiled terror plot, the singer issued her first statement on the cancellation.

“Having our Vienna shows cancelled was devastating,” she wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on Wednesday. “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows.”

She thanked authorities — “thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives,” she wrote — and said she waited to speak until the European leg of her Eras Tour concluded to prioritize safety.

“Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows,” she wrote.

In the wake of the cancellations, Swift’s representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Associated Press and other news organizations and her social media pages had gone dormant.

“In cases like this one, ‘silence’ is actually showing restraint, and waiting to express yourself at a time when it’s right to. My priority was finishing our European tour safely, and it’s with great relief that I can say we did that,” she added.

Concert organizer Barracuda Music had said it canceled the three-night Vienna run that would have begun Aug. 8 because the arrests made in connection to the conspiracy were too close to showtime. Authorities said a 19-year-old suspect had planned to target spectators outside the Ernst Happel Stadium with knives or homemade explosives, hoping to “kill as many people as possible.”

That suspect and another 17-year-old were taken into custody on Aug. 6, the day before the shows were announced as canceled. A third suspect, 18, was arrested Aug. 8.