A major refuelling issue at Perth Airport that caused the cancellation of at least 59 international and domestic flights has been resolved, an airport spokesperson has confirmed.

The airport is now working with airlines to clear a backlog of flights after thousands of passengers were suddenly stranded this morning.

The delays were caused by an outage due to "low pressure" in the fuel systems, the airport spokesperson said.

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"Perth Airport has worked with external experts to resolve the issue," the spokesperson said.

"We will continue to monitor the situation closely in the event of any further issues".

The issue meant that aircraft arriving at the airport were unable to be refuelled or depart from the Western Australian city.

"We again thank both passengers and our airline partners for their patience and understanding," the spokesperson said.

Earlier the airport acknowledged that it had been a difficult and frustrating morning for passengers.

Passengers are being told to contact their airlines for information about their flights.

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Earlier a spokesperson said airlines had been advised not to send aircraft to Perth Airport until further notice unless they had sufficient fuel to make a return flight.

9News confirmed hundreds of travellers had been affected, many of whom have said they wanted to be compensated because the ordeal has cost them thousands of dollars.

Perth Airport's online departure board showed the first flight to be affected was a Singapore Airlines flight to Singapore had been due to depart at 1.10am.

It comes after Perth Airport announced a $5 billion deal with Qantas to upgrade the airport with a new terminal and runway yesterday.

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Marian Shields Robinson, the mother of former US First Lady Michelle Obama who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died. She was 86.

Robinson's death was announced by Michelle Obama and other family members in a statement that said "there was and will be only one Marian Robinson. In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life."

She was a widow and lifelong Chicago resident when she moved to the executive mansion in 2009 to help care for granddaughters Malia and Sasha. In her early 70s, Mrs. Robinson initially resisted the idea of starting over in Washington, and Michelle Obama had to enlist her brother, Craig, to help persuade their mother to move.

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"There were many good and valid reasons that Michelle raised with me, not the least of which was the opportunity to continue spending time with my granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, and to assist in giving them a sense of normalcy that is a priority for both of their parents, as has been from the time Barack began his political career," Robinson wrote in the foreword to A Game of Character, a memoir by her son, formerly the head men's basketball coach at Oregon State University.

"My feeling, however, was that I could visit periodically without actually moving in and still be there for the girls," she said.

Robinson wrote that her son understood why she wanted to stay in Chicago but still used a line of reasoning on her that she often used on him and his sister. He asked her to see the move as a chance to grow and try something new. As a compromise, she agreed to move, at least temporarily.

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Granddaughters Malia and Sasha were just 10 and seven, respectively, when the White House became home in 2009. In Chicago, Robinson had become almost a surrogate parent to the girls during the 2008 presidential campaign. She retired from her job as a bank secretary to help shuttle them around.

At the White House, Robinson provided a reassuring presence for the girls as their parents settled into their new roles, and her lack of Secret Service protection made it possible for her to accompany them to and from school daily without fanfare.

"I would not be who I am today without the steady hand and unconditional love of my mother, Marian Shields Robinson," Michelle Obama wrote in her 2018 memoir, Becoming.

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"She has always been my rock, allowing me the freedom to be who I am, while never allowing my feet to get too far off the ground. Her boundless love for my girls, and her willingness to put our needs before her own, gave me the comfort and confidence to venture out into the world knowing they were safe and cherished at home."

Robinson gave a few media interviews but never to White House press. Aides guarded her privacy, and, as result, she enjoyed a level of anonymity openly envied by the president and first lady.

It allowed her to come and go from the White House as often as she pleased on shopping runs around town, to the president's box at the Kennedy Center and for trips to Las Vegas or to visit her other grandchildren in Portland, Oregon.

She attended some White House events, including concerts, the annual Easter Egg Roll and National Christmas Tree lighting, and some state dinners.

White House residency also opened up the world to Robinson, who had been a widow for nearly 20 years when she moved to a room on the third floor of the White House, one floor above the first family. She had never traveled outside the US until she moved to Washington.

Her first flight out of the country was aboard Air Force One in 2009 when the Obamas visited France. She joined the Obamas on a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana later that year, during which she got to meet Pope Benedict, tour Rome's ancient Colosseum and view a former slave-holding compound on the African coast.

She also accompanied her daughter and granddaughters on two overseas trips without the president: to South Africa and Botswana in 2011, and China in 2014.

Craig Robinson wrote in the memoir that he and his parents doubted whether his sister's relationship with Barack Obama would last, though Fraser Robinson III and his wife thought the young lawyer was a worthy suitor for their daughter, also a lawyer. Without explanation, Craig Robinson said his mother gave the relationship six months.

Barack and Michelle Obama were married on October 3, 1992.

One of seven children, Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born in Chicago on July 30, 1937. She attended two years of teaching college, married in 1960 and, as a stay-at-home mother, stressed the importance of education to her children. Both were educated at Ivy League schools, each with a bachelor's degree from Princeton. Michelle Obama also has a law degree from Harvard.

Fraser Robinson was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department who had multiple sclerosis. He died in 1991.

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Mexico's drug cartels and gangs appear to be playing a wider role than before in Sunday's elections that will determine the presidency, nine governorships and about 19,000 mayorships and other local posts.

The country's powerful drug cartels have long staged targeted assassinations of mayoral and other local candidates who threaten their control. Gangs in Mexico depend on controlling local police chiefs, and taking a share of municipal budgets; national politics appear to interest them less.

But in the runup to Sunday's vote, gangs have increasingly taken to spraying whole campaign rallies with gunfire, burning ballots or preventing the setting up of polling stations, and even putting up banners seeking to influence voters.

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Security analyst David Saucedo says it's likely some drug gangs will try to force voters to cast ballots for their favoured candidates.

"It it is reasonable to assume that the cartels will mobilise their support bases during Sunday's elections," Saucedo said.

"They have loyal voters who they have won over through the distribution of food packages, cash, medicine and infrastructure projects. They will use them to support narco-candidates."

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In some places, it appears the gangs are encouraging people to vote while discouraging voting in areas controlled by their rivals.

On Friday, electoral authorities reported that assailants burned a house where ballots were being stored ahead of Sunday in the violence-wracked town of Chicomuselo, in the southern state of Chiapas. While they did not say who was behind the attack, the town is completely dominated by two warring drug cartels, Jalisco and Sinaloa.

On May 14, gunmen apparently linked to a cartel shot and killed 11 people in a single day in Chicomuselo. On May 17, five people were killed along with a mayoral candidate when gunmen opened fire on a crowd in the town of La Concordia, Chiapas, about 75km east of Chicomuselo.

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Targeted assassinations of local candidates continued. On Wednesday, dramatic video images showed a mayoral candidate in the southern state of Guerrero being shot in the head at point-blank rage with a pistol. A total of 31 candidates, almost all running for mayorships, have been killed this year.

But mass attacks on campaign rallies, once exceedingly rare in Mexico, are becoming common, and have killed many more supporters than candidates this year. The effect is intimidating.

On Wednesday, the last official day of campaigning, unidentified gunmen opened fire a couple of blocks away from a mayoral candidate's final campaign rally in the western state of Michoacan, sending hundreds of people scrambling for safety.

"It seemed like a normal evening, like the campaign closers of other candidates," said Angélica Chávez, a homemaker who was at the rally in Cotija. "Then there were gunshots, several rounds of gunfire very close. And then people started running and diving to the ground, crouching."

Chávez was hurt in the stampede and had to take refuge in a local church.

In Celaya, a city in Guanajuato, gunmen opened fire on a campaign event in April, killing a mayoral candidate and wounding three of her supporters.

Saucedo, the analyst, sees the shootings as a sign that narco gangs are no longer willing to see their handpicked candidates lose.

"Rather than allow the victory of a candidate who is not in line with their criminal interests, or allow a candidate linked to a rival drug gang to win, they use this tactic," Saucedo said. "What we're seeing in the final stretch is pretty desperate strategy on the part of some groups of drug traffickers."

Saucedo said that such attempts at narco-control of local politics had been seen previously in some particularly violent states, like Tamaulipas. "What was once limited … is now spreading to include the whole country," he said.

The National Electoral Institute says it has had to cancel plans for 170 polling places, mostly in Chiapas and Michoacan and mostly because of security problems. In Chiapas, electoral authorities say there are places they can't even go to. While that's a tiny fraction of the country's 170,858 polling places, it's disturbing.

And in the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo, a shadowy group that local media reports link to the dominant Northeast drug cartel has put up posters claiming one mayoral candidate is linked to the rival Gulf drug cartel.

Authorities have not confirmed the origin of the crude poster, which includes a photoshopped image of the candidate waving an assault rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest with the Gulf cartel's insignia.

In the state of Morelos, just south of Mexico City, residents awoke this week to find a banner strung over a road claiming a gubernatorial candidate was tied to rival drug gangs. The banner was signed by a local drug boss whose name is unknown, "the Commander of the Three Letters."

Another apparently gang-related banner threatened that anyone trying to buy votes would be "punished severely." That banner was signed by "Those who have always called the shots here."

Such events appear to indicate that past calculations by the cartels — take out the strongest candidate you don't like, and the remaining major-party candidate will win by default — have become more complicated.

In one town in Michoacan, Maravatio, the gangs apparently tried to eliminate any doubts as to who will win this year; they killed off three candidates for town mayor who were apparently not to their liking.

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A Florida sheriff has fired a deputy who fatally shot a US airman at his home while holding a handgun pointed to the ground, saying the deputy's life was never in danger and he should not have fired his weapon.

Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden fired Deputy Eddie Duran, who fatally shot Senior Airman Roger Fortson on May 3 after responding to a domestic violence call and being directed to Fortson's apartment.

Duran shot Fortson, 23, multiple times two seconds after he opened his door. Fortson was holding his legally owned gun in his right hand, body camera video shows. It was pointed directly at the ground. Fortson was Black. Duran, 39, listed himself as Hispanic on his voter registration.

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A sheriff's internal affairs investigation released Friday concluded that, "Mr Fortson did not make any hostile, attacking movements, and therefore, the former deputy's use of deadly force was not objectively reasonable." Outside law enforcement experts have also said that an officer cannot shoot simply because a possible suspect is simply holding a gun if there is no threat.

"This tragic incident should have never occurred," Aden said in the statement.

"The objective facts do not support the use of deadly force as an appropriate response to Mr Fortson's actions. Mr Fortson did not commit any crime. By all accounts, he was an exceptional airman and individual."

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No criminal charges have been filed, but a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation is ongoing.

Duran did not return a voicemail left at a number listed to him. Email and phone messages seeking comment from his attorney John Whitaker were not immediately returned.

According to the internal affairs report, Duran told investigators that when Fortson opened the door, he saw aggression in the airman's eyes. He said he fired because, "I'm standing there thinking I'm about to get shot, I'm about to die."

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"It is him or me at this point and I need to, I need to act as opposed to react," he told investigators.

Attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Fortson's family, said in a statement that Duran's firing "is a step forward, but it is not full justice for Roger and his family."

"The actions of this deputy were not just negligent, they were criminal," Crump said.

Sabu Williams, president of the Okaloosa County NAACP, applauded Aden's action.

"We appreciate what the internal investigation has shown and what the sheriff has done to this point," Williams told The Associated Press. "We don't think this is the end of it, obviously."

He said the NAACP has a good relationship with the Republican sheriff.

"Some of us may have wanted things to happen a lot quicker, but I know due diligence has to take place," Williams said.

Duran is a law enforcement veteran, his career beginning as a military police officer in the Army. He was hired by an Oklahoma police department in 2015 after his military discharge. He Joined the Okaloosa County sheriff's office in July 2019, but resigned two years later. He rejoined the sheriff's office 11 months ago.

The apartment where Fortson lived is about 13km from Hurlburt Field, where Fortson was assigned to the 4th Special Operations Squadron as a special missions aviator serving on an AC-130J Ghostrider gunship.

One of his roles was to load the plane's 30mm and 105mm cannons during battles. He earned an Air Medal with combat device, which is typically awarded after 20 flights in a combat zone or for conspicuous valour or achievement on a single mission.

The events leading to the shooting began shortly after 4pm on May 3 when a tenant who lived near Fortson in Fort Walton Beach's Elan Apartments called the management office to say she heard what sounded like an argument coming from his apartment.

The woman, whose name has not been released, told investigators after the shooting she believed Fortson was in a relationship because she often heard a woman's voice coming from the apartment. She said she had heard previous arguments, but none like the one that Friday afternoon.

"Before it was just, usually banter back and forth," she told investigators. "Nothing was ever to the extent it was on (May 3)." She also thought a child was present.

But Fortson, who had no criminal record, lived alone and had no guests that afternoon. He was on a video call with his girlfriend, who told investigators they had not been arguing. She said Fortson was playing a video game.

An apartment complex manager called the sheriff's office at 4.24pm and Duran arrived three minutes later. He met the manager in the parking lot and she directed him to Fortson's fourth-floor apartment, telling him there are frequent arguments, body camera video shows.

However, 911 records show deputies had never been called to Fortson's apartment previously but they had been called to a nearby unit 10 times in the previous eight months, including once for a domestic disturbance.

When Duran arrived outside Fortson's door, he stood silently for 20 seconds outside and listened, but no voices inside are heard on his body camera.

He then pounded on the door, but didn't identify himself. He then moved to the side of the door, about 1.5 metres away. He told investigators he feared that the person inside might fire through the door or open the door and push him over the rail and to the ground about 12 metres below.

He waited 15 seconds before pounding on the door again. This time he yelled, "Sheriff's office — open the door!" He again moved to the side. A muffled voice can be heard on the video — Duran said he heard someone cursing at the police.

Less then 10 seconds later, Duran moved back in front of the door and pounded again, announcing himself once more.

Fortson's girlfriend told investigators that the airman asked who was there but did not get a response. She said Fortson told her he was not going to answer the door because no one comes to his apartment. She said neither of them heard the deputy yell that he was with the sheriff's office.

After the third knock, she said Fortson told her, "I'm gonna go grab my gun because I don't know who that is."

When Fortson opened the door holding his gun, Duran said "Step back," and then immediately began firing. Fortson fell backward onto the floor.

Only then did the deputy yell, "Drop the gun!"

Fortson replied, "It's over there."

The deputy called for paramedics, but Fortson died a short time later at the hospital.

When other deputies arrived, Duran walked into the breezeway outside the unit and struck a wall with his right fist, the internal affairs report said.

"F—," he yelled.

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Firefighters are tackling a large blaze spewing out thick black smoke.

Two influential advisory firms have urged shareholders to vote against Elon Musk's contentious $USD51 billion ($76.54 billion) pay package and raised concerns about the CEO's numerous side projects.

On Friday, Institutional Shareholder Services called the package "excessive" and noted that shareholder concerns "have not been sufficiently mitigated" since the package was first approved in 2018.

While recognising Tesla's growth and profitability, ISS said Musk's pay package — first approved in 2018 and thrown out by a judge in January — "was considered outsized from the start" and has "failed to accomplish certain of the board's stated objectives," including focusing Musk "more closely on the Tesla organisation, as opposed to his other businesses".

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That warning came a few days after Glass Lewis, another prominent advisory firm, published a 71-page report that criticised the size of the compensation plan and warned about Musk's "slate of extraordinarily time-consuming projects" that are unrelated to Tesla, such as X, the company formerly known as Twitter.

Musk pushed back against the Glass Lewis report on Wednesday, telling shareholders in a letter that the firm "omits key considerations, uses faulty logic, and relies on speculation and hypotheticals".

The letter urges shareholders to approve the pay package as well as the board's proposal to formally move Tesla's headquarters to Texas from Delaware.

The move to Texas, where Musk also operates SpaceX, was proposed shortly after a Delaware Chancery Court judge sided with Tesla shareholders who challenged the legality of the 2018 pay package.

Those shareholders also argued that the directors on Tesla's board were not truly independent and were too close to Musk to protect shareholders' interests.

The board is putting the same 2018 package up for a revote at Tesla's annual shareholder meeting on June 13.

WARNING: Some images below may be disturbing.

A man stabbed several members of a group that describes itself as opposing "political Islam" on a central square in the German city of Mannheim overnight, authorities said. Six people were wounded, including a police officer who intervened.

Police quickly put an end to the attack by shooting the assailant, who also was wounded.

The attack happened shortly after 11.30am Friday local time (7.30pm Friday AEST) on the Marktplatz, a downtown square in the southwestern city of Mannheim.

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The assailant stabbed participants in an event organised by the Pax Europa group, wounding five members of the organisation, police and prosecutors said in a statement. The police officer was stabbed several times from behind in the head, they added.

Another officer fired a shot at the assailant, bringing an end to the attack. The wounded were taken to various hospitals, where some of them underwent operations.

Several hours later, authorities said they couldn't yet give information on the severity of the injuries. They also said the assailant's identity hadn't yet been established.

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Pax Europa describes itself as an organisation that informs the public about the dangers posed by the "increasing spread and influence of political Islam".

It said that Michael Stürzenberger, an anti-Islam activist who is one of its leading figures and has spoken at its events, was among those wounded.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that it's up to the investigation to determine a motive. She said in a statement that "if the investigation shows an Islamist motive, that would be another confirmation of the great danger from Islamist acts of violence that we have warned of."

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Thomas Strobl, Faeser's regional counterpart in Baden-Wuerttemberg, where Mannheim is located, said that "we can't say anything yet about the perpetrator's motive".

Chancellor Olaf Scholz posted on X that "the pictures from Mannheim are terrible" and that "violence is absolutely unacceptable in our democracy".

Mannheim, a city of about 300,000 people, is located south of Frankfurt.

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