JOHANNESBURG: South Africa’s intelligence services said today that they are investigating who was behind a chartered plane that landed in Johannesburg on Thursday with more than 150 Palestinians from war-ravaged Gaza.

The passengers, who did not have proper travel documents, were held onboard on the tarmac for about 12 hours as a result, the country’s president said on Friday.

SEXUAL MISCONDUCT: Brazil’s federal police formally accused President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s former human rights minister Silvio Almeida of sexual misconduct after he was fired over the allegations last year, a police source said Saturday.

Lula fired Mr Almeida last September after MeToo Brazil, an organisation that defends women victims of sexual violence, said that it had received complaints of sexual misconduct by the former minister.

MEXICO: Several thousand people took to the streets of Mexico City on Saturday to protest against crime, corruption and impunity in a demonstration organised by members of a youth group called Generation Z, which won backing from older supporters of opposition parties.

Some protesters attacked police with stones, fireworks, sticks and chains, grabbing police shields and other equipment.

The capital’s security secretary, Pablo Vazquez, said that 120 people were injured, 100 of them police officers. Twenty people were arrested.

NORTH MACEDONIA: Thousands of people took to the streets of North Macedonia’s capital Skopje on Saturday demanding justice for the victims of a nightclub fire — the deadliest blaze in the country’s history — ahead of the trial next week of the club owner and others.

The March 16 fire and the ensuing stampede killed 63 people, most of them young revellers, and injured more than 200.