Four astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after hustling to the International Space Station five months ago to relieve the stuck test pilots of Boeing’s Starliner.

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Pacific off the Southern California coast a day after departing the orbiting lab.

“Welcome home,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.

Splashing down were NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov. They launched in March as replacements for the two NASA astronauts assigned to Starliner’s botched demo.

Starliner malfunctions kept Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams at the space station for more than nine months instead of a week. NASA ordered Boeing’s new crew capsule to return empty and switched the pair to SpaceX. They left soon after McClain and her crew arrived to take their places. Wilmore has since retired from NASA.

It was SpaceX’s third Pacific splashdown with people on board, but the first for a NASA crew in 50 years. Elon Musk’s company switched capsule returns from Florida to California’s coast earlier this year to reduce the risk of debris falling on populated areas. Back-to-back private crews were the first to experience Pacific homecomings.

The last time NASA astronauts returned to the Pacific from space was during the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, a détente meet-up of Americans and Soviets in orbit.

Fatal storms displace inmates in Nebraska

Strong storms before dawn Saturday in eastern Nebraska killed one person and seriously injured another in a state park and displaced hundreds of inmates after two prison housing units were damaged, officials said, even as other Midwest states also braced for bad weather.

The Waterloo Volunteer Fire Department was called to Two Rivers state park just before 7 a.m. Saturday, where first responders found a vehicle crushed by a large cottonwood tree. The tree had toppled as the storm brought gusts higher than 80 mph to the area, according to the National Weather Service. A woman in the vehicle was declared dead at the scene, while a man was trapped inside, the fire department said in a news release.

High winds caused widespread damage across eastern Nebraska, toppling trees, damaging roofs and pulling down electrical lines. Thousands of people were left without power in the immediate aftermath.

In the state capital of Lincoln, the storms damaged two housing units at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, displacing 387 prisoners, the state Department of Correctional Services said in a statement.

“There are no reported injuries, and all staff and incarcerated individuals are safe and accounted for,” the agency said.

Strong storms also moved through parts of eastern Wisconsin on Saturday, bringing gusts of 60 mph to the state’s Door Peninsula, the National Weather Service said.

Commercial fishing off again in nature area

Commercial fishing that recently resumed in a vast protected area of the Pacific Ocean must halt once again, after a judge in Hawaii sided this week with environmentalists challenging a Trump administration rollback of federal ocean protections.

The remote Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument is home to turtles, marine mammals and seabirds, which environmental groups say will get snagged by longline fishing, an industrial method involving baited hooks from lines 60 miles or longer.

President Donald Trump’s executive order to allow this and other types of commercial fishing in part of the monument changed regulations without providing a process for public comment and rulemaking and stripped core protections from the monument, the groups argued in a lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Micah W. J. Smith granted a motion by the environmentalists on Friday. The ruling means boats catching fish for sale will need to immediately cease fishing in waters between 50 and 200 nautical miles around Johnston Atoll, Jarvis Island and Wake Island, said Earthjustice, an environmental law organization representing the plaintiffs.

U.S. Justice Department attorneys representing the government did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

French firefighters still fighting blazes

About 1,400 firefighters were deployed Saturday in France’s southern Aude region to prevent the country’s largest wildfire in decades from reigniting, as all residents were allowed to return to their homes.

Aude prefect Christian Pouget said the fire has been contained since Thursday after burning this week more than 62 square miles in the wooded region, known for its wineries. All roads have been reopened but authorities issued a strict ban on accessing the forest, Pouget said at a news conference on Saturday.

“The fight is continuing, firefighters are still working on (fire) reignition,” he said.

The blaze left one person dead and 25 people have been injured, including 19 firefighters, Pouget said.

High temperatures in the coming days are expected to complicate firefighters’ efforts.

“The fire won’t be extinguished for several weeks,” Col. Christophe Magny, director of the Aude fire department, said, pointing to several “hot spots” that are being closely monitored.

In neighboring Spain, firefighters continued to battle a wildfire in Avila province, over 62 miles west of Madrid. Víctor Fernández, a technician at the advanced command post, told reporters Saturday the fire was being contained but warned the next hours would be “critical.”

Police arrest protesters supporting banned group

British police said they arrested 365 people in central London on Saturday as supporters of a recently banned pro-Palestinian group intentionally flouted the law as part of their effort to force the government to reconsider the ban.

Parliament in early July passed a law banning Palestine Action and making it a crime to publicly support the organization. That came after activists broke into a Royal Air Force base and vandalized two tanker planes to protest against Britain’s support for Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Backers of the group, who have held a series of protests around the U.K. over the past month, argue that the law illegally restricts freedom of expression.

More than 500 protesters filled the square outside the Houses of Parliament on Saturday, many daring police to arrest them by displaying signs reading “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” That was enough for police to step in.

But as the demonstration began to wind down, police and protest organizers sparred over the number of arrests as the organizers sought to show that the law was unworkable.

Thousands oppose plan for Siciliy bridge

Thousands of people marched in the Sicilian city of Messina on Saturday to protest a government plan to build a bridge that would connect the Italian mainland with Sicily in a massive 13.5-billion-euro ($15.5 billion) infrastructure project.

Protesters staunchly oppose the Strait of Messina Bridge project over its scale, earthquake threats, environmental impact and the specter of mafia interference.

The idea to build a bridge to connect Sicily to the rest of Italy has been debated off and on for decades but always delayed due to these concerns. The project, however, took a major step forward when a government committee overseeing strategic public investments approved the plan this week.

The proposed bridge would span nearly 2.2 miles with a suspended section of more than 2 miles, becoming the longest suspension bridge in the world.

Still no landfall expected for Henriette

Henriette regained tropical storm strength in the Pacific Ocean well east of Hawaii on Saturday, but forecasters said it was still not expected to pose a threat to land.

The storm was located about 450 miles east-northeast of Hilo, Hawaii, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center, and was on a northwest heading at 14 mph.

Its maximum sustained winds were at 40 mph, just above the 39 mph threshold to be a tropical storm.

— From news services