Just over a day after blasting off, a SpaceX crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, delivering the replacements for NASA’s two stuck astronauts.

The four newcomers — representing the U.S., Japan and Russia — will spend the next few days learning the station’s ins and outs from Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Then the two will strap into their own SpaceX capsule later this week, one that has been up there since last year, to close out an unexpected extended mission that began last June.

Wilmore and Williams expected to be gone just a week when they launched on Boeing’s first astronaut flight. They hit the nine-month mark earlier this month.

The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift.

While the seven space station residents prepared for the new arrivals, one of the Russians — Ivan Vagner — briefly put on an alien mask in a lighthearted moment. Wilmore swung open the space station’s hatch and rang the ship’s bell as the new crew floated in one by one and were greeted with hugs and handshakes.

Serbian officials deny weapon use

Serbian officials denied Sunday that the country’s security forces used a military-grade sonic weapon to disperse and scare protesters at a huge anti-government rally in the capital.

Opposition officials and Serbian rights groups claimed that the widely banned acoustic weapon that emits a targeted beam to temporarily incapacitate people was used during the protest Saturday. They say they will file charges with the European Court of Human Rights and domestic courts against those who ordered the attack.

Serbia has not denied that it has the acoustic device in its arsenal.

At least 100,000 people descended on Belgrade on Saturday for a mass rally seen as a culmination of months-long protests against Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic and his government.

The rally was part of a nationwide anti-corruption movement that erupted after a concrete canopy collapsed at a train station in Serbia’s north in November, killing 15 people.

Almost daily demonstrations that started in response to the tragedy have shaken Vucic’s decade-long firm grip on power in Serbia where many blame the crash on rampant government corruption, negligence and disrespect of construction safety regulations, demanding accountability for the victims.

New Canadian PM looks to Europe for allies

New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading to Paris and London on Monday to seek alliances as he deals with U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada’s sovereignty and economy.

Carney is purposely making his first foreign trip to the capital cities of the two countries that shaped Canada’s early existence.

At his swearing-in ceremony on Friday, Carney noted the country was built on the bedrock of three peoples, French, English and Indigenous, and said Canada is fundamentally different from America and will “never, ever, in any way shape or form, be part of the United States.”

A senior government government official briefed reporters on the plane before picking up Carney in Montreal and said the purpose of the trip is to double down on partnerships on with Canada’s two founding countries. The official said Canada is a “good friend of the United States but we all know what is going on.”

Netanyahu aims to remove official

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he will seek to dismiss the head of the country’s internal security service this week, deepening a power struggle focused largely on who bears responsibility for the Hamas attack that sparked the war in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s effort to remove Ronen Bar as director of the Shin Bet comes as the security service investigates close aides of the prime minister. Netanyahu said he has had “ongoing distrust” with Bar, and “this distrust has grown over time.”

Bar responded by saying he planned to continue in the post for the near future, citing “personal obligations” to finish “sensitive investigations,” free the remaining hostages in Gaza and prepare potential successors.

Bar also criticized Netanyahu’s expectation of a personal loyalty that contradicts the public interest. But he emphasized that he would respect any legal decision regarding his tenure.

Remnant ordnance kills in Syria

Ordnance from Syria’s 13-year conflict exploded in the coastal city of Latakia, collapsing a building and killing more than a dozen people, the Syrian Civil Defense said Sunday.

The paramedic group known as the White Helmets said it worked overnight, searching through debris and recovered 16 bodies, including five women and five children, and that 18 others were injured. The group and residents said the explosion occurred in a metal scrap storage space on the ground floor of the four-story building.

Elsewhere, the Syrian Defense Ministry late Sunday accused the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group of crossing the Lebanon-Syria border and killing three Syrian soldiers. Hezbollah denied any involvement in the killing that took place near northeastern Lebanon, where clashes between Syrian forces and Lebanese clans happened last month.

Electricity returns to Cuba after blackout

Electricity service in Cuba was gradually restored Sunday, more than 36 hours after a substation failure left the entire island in the dark.

Union Electrica, the state agency responsible for the electric grid, reported that most of the capital, Havana, and eastern parts of the country had power. It expected service to return to western areas on Sunday, too.

The massive blackout that began Friday night was the fourth in the last six months as a severe economic crisis plagues the Caribbean country. The Ministry of Energy and Mines attributed it to a failure at a substation in the suburbs of Havana.

— From news services