Event: Samuel

Late summer rain is causing havoc across Australia, with South Australia on flood watch, Victoria cleaning up after a downpour, and Sydney issuing a shark warning after heavy falls.Almost all of South Australia, much of western Victoria and parts of western NSW were on flood watch as a slow-moving pressure system from central Australia moved east. Queensland had also seen severe rainfall.Parts of Victoria received more than double their average February rainfall overnight on Friday.Meanwhile, sustained rain in Sydney over the last few days led to official warnings that murky water conditions can increase bull shark activity.The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, warned residents to prepare as heavy falls of 50-100mm were forecast for much of the state, with flash flooding possible in Adelaide when the system arrived in the capital on Saturday.“It is not unusual in South Australia or metropolitan Adelaide to see a 10-millimetre rain event,” he said.“But when we start to see rain events north of 50, 60, 80mm, that starts to represent the sort of conditions where we will see flash flooding.“If we see that volume of rain in a short period of time, then we should anticipate flash-flooding events throughout the state.”Sign up: AU Breaking News emailThe Eyre Peninsula has had severe falls since Friday morning, with 71mm falling in Ceduna, 68mm at Wudinna and 98mm at Minnipa, the Bureau of Meteorology said.Moomba in the state’s north-east had close to 100mm this week and has had 189mm in February – exceeding its annual average rainfall of 176mm.The senior meteorologist Dean Narramore said the rain was badly needed for large parts of the state, which have been battling long-term rainfall shortages.“South Australia has been so dry for so long, this would mostly be welcome,” he said.“I think generally it’s a good news story apart from the…

The American private prison operator running Australia’s immigration network used an unsecured and unmodified Kia Carnival to transport a detainee who allegedly stabbed two of its staff during the journey and fled.Guardian Australia can also reveal that concerns about the vehicles being used by Management and Training Corporation (MTC) had prompted an intervention by the department of home affairs and warnings from almost 500 detention centre staff.In 2023, the Australian government awarded a $2.3bn contract to Secure Journeys, a local subsidiary of private prison company MTC, to run its onshore immigration detention centres.The contract was awarded despite serious questions about MTC’s history in the US, where it has been accused of defrauding the state of Mississippi, as well as egregious security failures that led to the alleged gang-rape of a female detainee and the murder of two retirees by an escaped prisoner.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailAustralian staff have already begun airing concerns about the centre’s operations, including claims MTC is severely understaffing detention centres.Now, Guardian Australia can reveal that the company is also facing serious questions about the potentially dangerous method it is using to transport detainees to and from immigration detention centres.The company has at times used standard, unmodified people-movers such as Kia Carnivals and Hyundai Starias, which lack basic safety modifications, including Perspex barriers, to protect staff.In one case in May last year, MTC used a Kia Carnival to transport detainee Paea Teu from Villawood to Sydney airport for deportation.The detainee allegedly stabbed two MTC staff and fled the vehicle, sparking a manhunt. He now faces a string of criminal charges in the NSW local court.Video and images from the scene show the Kia Carnival he was transported in had no protective barriers for staff.Vehicle registration records show the car MTC was using was insured as a…

The photo is haunting: A tiny baby boy, his minute legs pulled toward his visibly ribbed chest, one hand resting on his bottom, the other pulled up to his face. He appears to be sucking his thumb, perhaps to console himself. He is dying. “This is baby Samuel,” wrote South Australian pro-life activist Dr. Joanna Howe in an Instagram caption. “Born alive after an abortion at 16 weeks, he sucked his thumb in the Butterfly Room at a [Queensland] hospital. He lived for over 30 minutes. He was perfectly healthy prior to his abortion. He was left to die. No one picked him up, wrapped him, or gave him any medical care to alleviate his pain and suffering.” In a sane, moral society, this photograph—despite being slightly blurred and clearly taken on a cell phone—would be for the abortion wars what the photo of the young girl Kim Phúc, fleeing naked and in terror after a 1972 napalm attack, was for Vietnam. Both highlight the suffering of children; both expose the horrific cost behind our polite public defenses of our public policy. These photos stir the conscience. But we are not a sane or moral society. After Howe published the photo of baby Samuel, which she says was given to her by a whistleblower who took it in the room for grieving parents at Townsville University Hospital in Queensland, the authorities swiftly set to work to suppress it, and the hospital has launched an investigation into how it was shared. The photo went viral in Australia, and then around the world. The Guardian noted with concern that the “distressing picture of a foetus being called ‘baby Samuel’ is now being used by a broad range of anti-abortion activists,” but did not explore why the photo of the dying child was…