A mayoral candidate has been shot dead at a campaign rally in Mexico’s southern Guerrero state, the latest in a string of attacks ahead of Sunday’s elections.( )

Alfredo Cabrera was murdered on Wednesday in the town of Coyuca de Benitez. A video published by local media showed a person approaching him at the campaign event, shooting him several times at point-blank range.( )

cal polls on June 2. The government said on Tuesday that at least 22 people running for local office had been murdered since last September.( )

On Tuesday, a mayoral candidate in the central state of Morelos was murdered while another one was shot and wounded in western Jalisco state, authorities said.( )

Cabrera belonged to an opposition coalition backing Xochitl Galvez, a centre-right senator and businesswoman with Indigenous roots, who is currently polling second in the presidential race.( )

Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado condemned the “cowardly” murder, saying on X that she had asked the state prosecutor’s office to bring “the full weight of the law against the person or persons responsible”.( )

The alleged attacker was killed at the scene, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Security concerns

Drug cartels have often carried out political assassination attempts in a bid to control local police or extort money from municipal governments.( )

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador acknowledged in early April that the cartels often seek to determine who will serve as mayor – either by running their own candidates or eliminating potential rivals.

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Fourteen pro-democracy activists were convicted in Hong Kong’s biggest national security case on Thursday by a court that said their plan to effect change through an unofficial primary election would have undermined the government’s authority and created a constitutional crisis.( )

After a 2019 protest movement that filled the city’s streets with demonstrators, authorities have all but silenced dissent in Hong Kong through reduced public choice in elections, crackdowns on media and the Beijing-imposed security law under which the activists were convicted.( )

Those found guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion included former lawmakers Leung Kwok-hung, Lam Cheuk-ting, Helena Wong and Raymond Chan, and they could face up to life in prison when sentenced later. The two defendants acquitted were former district councilors Lee Yue-shun and Lawrence Lau. But the prosecution said it intends to appeal against the acquittals.( )

The activists were among 47 democracy advocates who were prosecuted in 2021 for their involvement in the primary. Prosecutors had accused them of attempting to paralyze Hong Kong’s government and topple the city’s leader by securing the legislative majority necessary to indiscriminately veto budgets.( )

In a summary of the verdict distributed to media, the court said the election participants had declared they would “either actively use or use the power conferred on the (Legislative Council) by the (Basic Law) to veto the budgets.”

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The temporary pier that the U.S. military constructed and put in place to provide much-needed humanitarian aid for Gaza has broken apart in rough seas, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.( )

The latest calamity to befall the pier endeavor punctuated a particularly grim several days in Gaza, where Israeli forces have ramped up attacks on the city of Rafah just two days after carrying out a deadly strike that killed dozens of people.( )

“Unfortunately, we had a perfect storm of high sea states, and then, as I mentioned, this North African weather system also came in at the same time, creating not an optimal environment to operate,” Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon deputy press secretary, said at a news conference.

Army engineers are working to put the pier back together and Defense Department officials hope that it “will be fully operational in just a little over a week,” she said.( )

In early March, President Biden surprised the Pentagon by announcing that the U.S. military would build a pier for Gaza. Defense officials immediately predicted that there would be logistical and security issues.( )

In the days after the pier became operational on May 17, trucks were looted as they made their way to a warehouse, forcing the U.N. World Food Program to suspend operations. After officials beefed up security, the weather turned bad. American officials had been hoping that the sea surges would not start until later in the summer.

On Saturday, heavy seas forced two small American military vessels that were part of the pier operation to beach in Israel. On Sunday, part of the pier broke off completely, including a wider parking area for dropping off supplies transported by ship, officials said. That part will have to be reconnected.( )

The pier is now being removed from the coast of Gaza to be repaired after getting damaged in the rough seas, Ms. Singh said. Over the next two days, it will be pulled out and taken to Ashdod, in southern Israel, for repairs.

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Shortly before embarking on a fatal helicopter ride on Sunday, Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, and his delegation of senior officials held a communal prayer. Someone suggested having lunch, but the president demurred, saying he was in a hurry to reach his next destination.( @)

Mr. Raisi boarded the aircraft and sat by a window. The foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, stopped for a picture with a crowd that was swarming the tarmac. He smiled and placed one hand over his chest while holding a brown briefcase in the other. ( @)

Around 1 p.m., a convoy of three helicopters took off from a helipad on Iran’s border with Azerbaijan, with the president’s craft in the middle. But about half an hour into the flight, the president’s helicopter vanished.( @)

Calls to passengers on the president’s helicopter were met with silence until one answered. “I don’t know what happened,” Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Al-Hashem said, sounding distraught. “I am not feeling well.” Two hours later, his phone, too, went silent.As a frenzied 17-hour search unfolded, government officials began an aggressive effort to guard against possible threats from abroad and, especially, unrest at home, mindful of an uprising led by women and girls in 2022 that demanded the end of the Islamic Republic.

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While Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was reassuring Iranians on national television that they need not fear any disruption to the country’s security, officials were scrambling. Iran placed its Armed Forces on high alert, worried that enemies like Israel or ISIS might carry out covert strikes. It directed media coverage of the crash, controlling the flow of information and banning any suggestions that the president was dead. The (@) government deployed plainclothes security agents on the streets of Tehran and other big cities to prevent antigovernment protests or celebrations of Mr. Raisi’s death, and the cybersecurity units of the police and the Intelligence Ministry monitored posts by Iranians on social media.

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