One way out of Redbank Plains is via the prisons. There are six of them built side-by side along the motorway back to Brisbane. The two youth detention centres rarely have spare beds.

On Thursday at the African village centre at Redbank Plains, one by one, women from the local community approach Beny Bol and ask to speak to him privately. They are weeping.

“They said: ‘God bless you, we want … to sit down with you to express our feelings about our children that we brought here hoping they will have a better future,’” says Bol, a South Sudanese refugee and the president of the Queensland African Communities Council.

“They said: ‘They’re finishing somewhere between prison and death. We do not have light any more.’”

A few hundred metres down the road, at the new Town Square shopping centre, is a growing memorial to Vyleen White, 70, who was stabbed and killed in the underground carpark last Saturday, in front of her six-year-old granddaughter.

Police have charged five teenage boys from the area in relation to the incident, including a 16-year-old who is accused of White’s murder. Officers allege the motive was to steal White’s car, a light blue 2009 Hyundai Getz.

The killing has exposed familiar sores in Queensland, where youth crime has become a key election issue.

Some commentary has sought to draw attention to the African background of the accused boys. The police union president and some rightwing politicians have called for serious young offenders who aren’t Australian citizens to be deported. Bol says the African community has been “under siege” in recent days, including reports of physical attacks and abuse.

Detention centres filled

“Mum always said: ‘If I died, no one would care,’” says Cindy Micallef, the eldest daughter of Vyleen White.

“Sorry Mum, you’re sort of in a bit of a spotlight now.”

Debate about youth crime in Queensland has tended to escalate sharply following high-profile incidents; many recent situations involving young offenders have prompted punitive shifts from the Labor state government, which last year twice introduced new laws that required an override of protections in the Human Rights Act.

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Combined with aggressive policing tactics – which have involved arrest-focused high-visibility operations, particularly in regional areas – the response has filled youth detention centres, where long lockdowns and solitary confinement have been common. Children are routinely kept in police watch houses – in troubling conditions – waiting weeks for a detention bed.

It is no wonder, youth advocates say, they overwhelmingly reoffend.

And yet each policy shift – designed, the government says, to meet “community expectations” for consequences and punishment – has brought that system under further strain.

The state opposition leader, David Crisafulli, is seeking to remove the international law principle of “detention as a last resort” from the Youth Justice Act. The premier, Steven Miles, rebuffed such calls this week but sources within the government say they are concerned it could be placed on the table in an attempt to alleviate political pressure ahead of an election in October.

At the Town Square, opinions are going cheap. Sandy, a shopkeeper, says she keeps a stick behind the counter. Several people spoke about general concerns about young school students.

“I obviously want more police presence up there,” says Tayla Jefferson, who is campaigning for a permanent police beat.

“Everything I’m looking at is kind of as a preventative measure. I know nothing’s ever going to eradicate the crime.”

Some say things would be better if children faced tougher consequences. One couple, who Guardian Australia has chosen not to name, says the problem is immigrants with “no respect for the police or authority” who have failed to assimilate.

Bol, who has worked with young people here for more than a decade, sees the problem differently. He says the young people from his community involved in criminal activity are almost invariably those raised predominantly in Australia. He has previously described those issues as “a failure within this country”.

“The young people who are contributing to this, they only know Australia,” he says.

“If you look at people who are doing well and contributing positively to Australia, these are people who came here when they were relatively older.

“They know why they came, what happened. They appreciate the opportunity and the past. They work so hard to make sure they are contributing to this country.”

The South Sudanese Community Association posted a “letter of condemnation” on Facebook about the attack, offering condolences to White’s family. The comments in response include death threats and calls for violence against the community.

Prof Rob White, a criminologist at the University of Tasmania, says the trend is towards fewer crimes being committed by migrant and refugee communities.

He says moral panics – especially those targeting visible minorities – can expose people to racist attacks and also generate “resentment and resistance on the part of those targeted”.

“This is especially the case with young people, who may develop a chip on the shoulder and ‘push back’ accordingly,” Prof White says.

“Rather than reaching for the holster, we need to consider how best to bolster. In other words, punitive policies and rhetoric directed against communities does great harm now and into the future, whereas community development and detached youth work go a long way to identifying underlying issues and providing potential immediate and longer-term solutions.”

‘No one is listening’

On Thursday, Micallef and Bol held a joint press conference to call for calm, which they say has already had made a considerable difference.

The idea, which they discussed jointly, was to speak about issues in a way that deliberately excluded politicians and police: to put a focus on the real needs of the community in a way that couldn’t be co-opted.

Micallef says her father, who is blind, was visited by Miles this week. She says the premier offered his condolences, but what the family really wanted was solutions. Miles is “a seat warmer”, she says.

Bol’s frustrations are longstanding. He spent more than a decade working with young people for the charity Youth Off the Streets and says many community services and government programs were not designed or run to meet the needs of community members. Many people “did not trust” those services and risked becoming isolated from support.

“When I was talking about these issues 10 years ago, young people who are now repeat offenders were clean. For many years I’ve been submitting proposal after proposal, model after model. I get so, so frustrated and disappointed that we as a community have taken responsibility … and no one is listening.

“Then when an incident like this happens, then we’re on the front page.”

The Albanese government is under growing pressure to reverse its suspension of funding to the United Nations aid agency for Palestinian refugees, with more than 12,000 people undertaking a coordinated letter-writing campaign to their federal representatives.

Australia was among more than 10 donors who suspended funding to UNRWA after the Israeli government alleged that as many as 12 of its staff members were involved in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 Israelis.

UNRWA is the only UN agency that is mandated to work in Gaza to distribute aid to the two million people currently trapped and starving in the besieged enclave. With 40,000 staff, including 13,000 in Gaza, it is facing a funding shortfall after the exodus of donors.

The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) launched the letter-writing campaign on 28 January, the day after the government announced the pause in funding as the allegations were investigated.

The email calls on the government to “reverse its decision to pause funding to UNRWA, and to reinstate its financial support for the agency so it can continue its life-saving work in Gaza”.

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The president of APAN, Nasser Mashni, said the “strong response” from the community reflected its “alarm” at the government’s decision.

“UNRWA is a vital lifeline to Palestinians across the globe because this agency has, for 75 years, registered and kept records of Palestinian refugees, and legally validated Palestinians’ inalienable right of return to their homeland.”

He said the goal of the campaign was to get the government to reverse its cuts, and to “see the government officially condemn Israel”.

The foreign minister, Penny Wong, told the ABC on Thursday night that she did not have all the evidence about serious allegations regarding the agency before she decided to halt funding, and was working to bring an end to the suspension.

“We saw these allegations. I, along with other countries, made a decision – and it is a decision I made – to pause that because the allegations were serious and because UNRWA itself recognised that those allegations were serious,” Wong said.

Wong also emphasised that the freeze related to $6m in recently announced funding to UNRWA, rather that its regular contributions.

The Israeli intelligence dossier unpinning the allegations has been described as “flimsy” in recent reporting, increasing scrutiny on the decision to pause aid.

On Friday, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, said he followed “reverse due process” in sacking nine staff members accused by Israel of being involved in Hamas’s 7 October attacks. Lazzarini was asked if he had looked into whether there was any evidence against the employees and he replied: “No, the investigation is going on now.”

To date, 27,700 Palestinians have been killed amid the ongoing bombardment Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian health officials. Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble and 1.9 million of its 2.3 million people have been displaced. .

“How many more emails, letters and protests do our representatives need to see, what more do they need Palestinians to do to demonstrate that our lives are as precious as everyone else’s, before they withdraw their support for a state that is plausibly committing genocide?” Mashni said.

In an interim judgment released last month, the international court of justice (ICJ) found there was credible risk of the genocide of Palestinians, and ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent the killing of Palestinians in contravention of the genocide convention.

The Palestine Action Group (PAG), which is behind the weekly pro-Palestine marches in Sydney, announced it will be shifting the focus of the protests towards the funding cuts.

“Rallies will be themed-based on a mix of uncovering Australian complicity and shedding light on new issues and concerns,” Naser said.

“The Australian government has shamefully cut UNRWA funding when Palestinians need it most. This will only expedite the current genocide and we need to make it the forefront of our demands to ensure the government reverses its decision as a matter of urgency.

“It is life or death for the Palestinian people,” she said.

On Friday, the Jewish Council of Australia echoed concerns about the withdrawal of funding for the aid agency, specifically mentioning the lack of “sufficient evidence” about the allegations against UNRWA staff.

Sarah Schwartz, the council’s executive officer, said the decision reflected a lack of rational thinking from the government.

“Minister Wong’s admission that she did not have all the evidence regarding the allegations against UNRWA before deciding to pull funding indicates that decisions on life and death matters for Gazans are not being made rationally by the Australian government.”

“The allegations against UNRWA staff must be independently investigated. However, the decision to pause funding amounts to collective punishment of Palestinians.”

Academic and advocate Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah said the claims against UNRWA have yet to be proven, with an independent review of the allegations due to be published in late March, pointing out that UNRWA had itself sacked the 12 staff members at the centre of the allegations.

“I am just disgusted that the government would seek to punish Palestinians at the very time that they are in desperate and urgent need of support,” she said.

Abdel-Fattah was particularly critical of the timing of the announcement of the allegations, coming shortly after the ICJ issued its ruling in the case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide.

Nino Bucci contributed to this report.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said he followed “reverse due process” in sacking nine staff members accused by Israel of being involved in Hamas’s 7 October attacks.

Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, said he did not probe Israel’s claims against the employees before dismissing them and launching an investigation.

At a press conference in Jerusalem, Lazzarini was asked if he had looked into whether there was any evidence against the employees and he replied: “No, the investigation is going on now.”

He described the decision as “reverse due process”, adding: “I could have suspended them, but I have fired them. And now I have an investigation, and if the investigation tells us that this was wrong, in that case at the UN we will take a decision on how to properly compensate [them].”

Lazzarini said he made the “exceptional, swift decision” to terminate the contracts of the staff members due to the explosive nature of the claims. He added that the agency was already facing “fierce and ugly attacks” at a time when it was providing aid to nearly 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“Indeed, I have terminated without due process because I felt at the time that not only the reputation but the ability of the entire agency to continue to operate and deliver critical humanitarian assistance was at stake if I did not take such a decision,” he said.

“My judgment, based on this going public, true or untrue, was I need to take the swiftest and boldest decision to show that as an agency we take this allegation seriously.”

Israel has claimed as many as 10% of staff are Hamas supporters, and wants the organisation to be disbanded. It has accused a dozen of the agency’s 13,000 staff in Gaza of taking part in Hamas’s 7 October attacks in Israel that killed 1,200 people.

A diplomat at Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs told Lazzarini about the allegations on 18 January and nine of the 12 UNRWA employees were fired (two others were already dead). The allegations prompted the UK, the US, and 14 other nations to freeze about £350m of funding to the agency.

Lazzarini said the Israeli official told him the names of the accused staff members and the allegations they were facing. He said the official read from a “large dossier” but the agency had not been provided with a copy. He said he checked the names against a staff database before making the decision to dismiss them.

“I have seen a large dossier in the room that the person had, coming from their own internal intelligence, and he was reading this and translating for me,” he said.

“There were strong allegations, with names and for each of the name[s] associated to a given activity on that day.”

But he said that Israel did not raise concerns about the individuals when their names were submitted last year for vetting along with all 30,000 of UNRWA’s staff, who work with Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

On Thursday, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, defended the decision to fire the staff before an inquiry was complete, citing “credible” information from Israel, adding: “We couldn’t run the risk not to act immediately as the accusations were related to criminal activities.”

The UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services is investigating the allegations and is due to report its preliminary findings within weeks. A separate independent review of the agency’s risk management processes is being led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna.

Lazzarini said the agency was operating in a “hostile” environment and it had faced new “restrictions” since Israel’s allegations were made public.

He said an Israeli bank account belonging to UNRWA had been frozen and the agency had been warned that its tax benefits would be cancelled. Lazzarini added that a consignment of food aid from Turkey, including flour, chickpeas, rice, sugar and cooking oil, that would sustain 1.1 million people for a month had been blocked at the Israeli port of Ashdod.

He claimed the contractor said the Israeli authorities had instructed the company not to move it or accept any payment from a Palestinian bank.

“The town is not a scary place,” says Snowtown resident Rob Vanderveen. He and his partner, Kryss Black, bought its infamous former bank building in 2012 – decades after bodies were discovered hidden in barrels in its vault.

“It’s nice and quiet,” he says of the South Australian wheat-belt town that became known around the world after the murders were uncovered.

Snowtown is a small place, its population hovering a bit over 400, but there’s an IGA, a soldiers’ memorial, a newsagent and a pub.

“We don’t have peak hour and we’ve got everything here,” Vanderveen says.

“Every day we get tourists. Every day. It doesn’t worry us. We know it gets people into town. We’ve got the pub next door. There are a few shops in town.

“We actually open the bank on weekends and public holidays. To sell bric-a-brac … There’s information, people are interested.”

In May 1999, police found dismembered bodies in barrels filled with hydrochloric acid in the bank’s vault.

John Justin Bunting, Robert Joe Wagner, James Spyridon Vlassakis were convicted over the murders, and Mark Ray Haydon was convicted for helping to cover up the crimes.

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Eight of the 11 killed were found in those barrels, and a twelfth death was linked to the killers.

Most were murdered in the outer suburbs of Adelaide, more than 100km away – just one was killed in Snowtown.

Investigators initially thought the men’s motive was simply to take the welfare payments of their victims, but a more complicated picture gradually emerged.

The court heard Bunting was the ringleader, and that he hated various groups including homosexuals, drug addicts and paedophiles. The murders were “often ritualistic and humiliating” and targeted people connected to the men. Bunting was found guilty of 11 murders, Wagner 10, and Vlassakis pleaded guilty to four murders.

A 2014 study on “dark tourism”, published in the Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, found Snowtown residents were more opposed to tourists the longer they’d lived there. Those who had arrived after the crime was exposed were more welcoming.

Venderveen says the people of Snowtown are mostly relaxed, but hate when the media “goes apeshit [and] make[s] it look like an evil place”.

The media has gone, if not apeshit, a little bananas recently, with the news that one of the men convicted is due for release within months.

The state government is “seeking legal advice” about Haydon’s release – his 25-year sentence ends in May. Attorney general Kyam Maher says they will also seek advice about Vlassakis’ scheduled release next year.

Bunting and Wagner are serving multiple life sentences with no prospect of parole.

Haydon was not convicted of murder, but of helping to cover up seven of the killings.

One of the victims was his own wife, Elizabeth Haydon.

South Australia’s victims of crime commissioner, Sarah Quick, told the ABC in January that she was in regular contact with the victims’ relatives, who continued to suffer “unimaginable trauma”.

“Contemplating the fact that Haydon will be released is very difficult for them,” she said.

“It’s really difficult to reconcile the fact that Haydon might have the opportunity to start a fresh life and that’s certainly something they don’t have the luxury of.”

Maher says the government is looking at whether a high-risk offenders scheme could apply to Haydon and Vlassakis.

“It creates a regime where serious violent or sex offenders can be subject to extra conditions once they’ve finished their entire time in prison,” he says.

“It can be things like electronic monitoring, curfews, the people you can or can’t see.

“We’ve asked for advice – and we expect that in the coming weeks – whether Mark Haydon … meets that statutory definition of serious, violent offenders.”

The government could then apply to the supreme court, which would determine whether there was an appreciable risk. It is also looking at “other levers”.

Asked if the parliament could pass laws to prevent their release, the SA premier, Peter Malinauskas, says the government is exploring all options.

“I, along with a significant number of Australians, would be genuinely concerned about the prospect of release occurring to anyone associated with the Snowtown murders,” he says.

“These were horrific crimes, they were some of the worst we’ve ever seen in the history of the nation. We need to think through our options very carefully, and we are exploring each and every one of them, and as that evolves we will respond accordingly.”

While the government can’t do the job of the courts, he says, it is “actively exploring all options open to us”.

Maher says a standalone offence created in 2022 for concealing or interfering with human remains would have kept Haydon in prison for longer if it had been in place at the time.

Meanwhile, even though only one of the murders actually took place in Snowtown, the name remains synonymous with the crimes.

Maher says the murders were “almost burned into the psyche of SA”.

“No doubt it has had a deep and lasting impact on the victims’ families, but also the communities where these things occurred, particularly the Snowtown community,” he says.

When the bank was advertised for sale, Realestate.com.au spruiked it as a “piece of Australian history” which was a setting for the 2011 Snowtown movie.

“Buyers should note that illegal activities were conducted in the old bank building and you should enquire to the nature of these activities prior to bidding,” the ad read.

It’s a red brick building, with a snub-nosed veranda. The office is at the front, the vault (“with lockable vault door”) at the back, and a four-bedroom house is attached.

Vandeveen says the vault is shut to the visitors that come to see the bank, and shares a picture of the plaque above it, which reads: “In memory of those taken by evil, greed & ignorance”.

Democrats and their allies were shaping a damage control response on Friday to a hastily organized White House press call the night before that appeared to fall short in its mission to reassure voters about Joe Biden’s mental acuity after it was harshly questioned in a prosecutor’s report about his having kept classified documents at the end of his vice-presidency.

Biden already said that his interview with the special counsel Robert Hur last October – in which he was reported to have forgotten the year his son Beau died and precisely when he had been vice-president – came in the days straight after Hamas attacked southern Israel, when Biden was preoccupied with the US response.

Hur’s report concluded on Thursday that Biden would not face criminal charges in the case, despite “willfully” retaining and disclosing classified material, which he would not be open to as a sitting president anyway but also would not be warranted even if he was no longer president.

But Hur then went on to describe at length how he found the US president’s memory to be failing, prompting anger from Biden and, in the following hours and into Friday, Democrats and aides to come to his defense.

“The way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated,” Kamala Harris told MSNBC on Friday.

The vice-president slammed claims of Biden’s failing mental acuity made in the 388-pages report as “gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate”.

Earlier, Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin from the crucial swing state of Wisconsin addressed the conclusions by special counsel Robert Hur that the 81-year-old president’s recall was “significantly limited”, and that Hur would not bring charges over classified documents in part because jurors would see the US president not as a willful criminal but as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.

“I judge a president on what they’ve done and whose side they’re on,” Baldwin told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She pointed to Biden’s “strong record of creating good-paying jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure, and lowering prescription drug prices”.

Tommy Vietor, a former Obama administration staffer, wrote on X that the prosecutor’s comments were “just a rightwing hit job from within Biden’s own DOJ. Wild.”

On MSNBC, which often previews the Democratic party line, the host Joe Scarborough addressed the conclusions by the special counsel that the president’s recall was “significantly limited” and he would not bring charges over classified documents in part because jurors would see Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”, not a criminal.

“So bizarre,” Scarborough said. “Why in the world would [Hur] put his neurological assessment of Joe Biden in his report, and why would [US attorney general] Merrick Garland release garbage like that in a justice department report?”

Dan Goldman, the Democratic congressman from New York, told the station that he did not have “any concerns” about Biden’s age or ability. “Remember, the job of the president is to guide our country. It is not to be a cheerleader for the United States. It is to govern our country,” he said.

Referring to missing Hillary Clinton emails that became an issue on the eve of the 2016 election, Scarborough added: “It sure sounds like James Comey in 2016 when he couldn’t indict Hillary Clinton legally so he indicted her politically.”

Vietor echoed that line, claiming Hur had “clearly decided to go down the Jim Comey path of filling his report absolving Biden of criminal activity with ad hominem attacks”.

The long-shot Democratic primary challenger Dean Phillips, who is campaigning against Biden, said Hur’s report had “all but handed the 2024 election to Donald Trump”.

“The report simply affirms what most Americans already know, that the President cannot continue to serve as our Commander-in-Chief beyond his term ending January 20, 2025,” Phillips said in a statement.

Behind closed doors, some Democrats expressed mounting concerns about a re-election narrative that focuses on Biden’s age. “It’s a nightmare,” a Democratic House member reportedly told NBC News. “It weakens President Biden electorally, and Donald Trump would be a disaster and an authoritarian.”

“For Democrats, we’re in a grim situation,” the anonymous source reportedly added.

Biden hit back at Hur’s characterization of his mental condition during a surprise press conference at the White House on Thursday evening. The president maintained that his memory was “just fine” and in a tense exchange said “I know what the hell I’m doing” and that remarks about his memory had “no place in this report”.

“My memory is fine,” Biden said. “Take a look at what I’ve done since I’ve become president.”

“For any extraneous commentary, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” he added. “It has no place in this report.”

At the end of the interview, he referred to Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, as the “president of Mexico” in a response to a reporter’s query about the current situation in the Middle East. The error came after two other public gaffes this week in which Biden claimed to have spoken recently with two long-dead European leaders, Germany’s Helmut Kohl and France’s François Mitterrand.

Polling has consistently shown that concerns about Biden’s age are seen as his greatest political liability in a rematch with Donald Trump.

A poll by NBC News last month found that 76% of voters had major or moderate concerns when asked whether Biden has “the necessary mental and physical health to be president for a second term”. Asked the same question about the 77-year-old Trump, 48% said they had major or moderate concerns.

Pressure is growing for the New South Wales government to review its out-of-home care providers after it was revealed in court that a faith-based service refused to assess an Aboriginal kinship carer because of her sexual orientation.

The call comes as two of the biggest Aboriginal organisations in NSW claim racism in the child protection system is “rife” and closing the gap measures to reduce the number of Aboriginal children taken into care will fail unless the Minns government overhauls the sector.

AbSec, the peak NSW body for Aboriginal children and families, has called for a “cultural audit” of all out-of-home providers in NSW, following revelations that Anglicare Sydney refused to assess an Aboriginal woman as a kinship carer for her infant niece because she was in a same-sex relationship.

According to court documents, Anglicare Sydney and the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) were aware there were close family members who could be assessed but sought instead to have the child fostered “with a view to adoption in the future” by a non-Indigenous family.

The magistrate presiding over the matter, Tracy Sheedy, was scathing of the conduct of Anglicare Sydney and DCJ.

“It is disturbing that DCJ filed a care plan ignoring the possibility of the potential of a kinship placement,” Sheedy said.

“It is incredibly disturbing that the court could have approved the care plan and made final orders. Those orders would have robbed baby Daisy of the opportunity of being raised within her Aboriginal family, had the DCJ caseworker not found and filed an affidavit stating that Anglicare had refused to assess a close family relative because of her being in a same sex relationship,” she said.

DCJ told the court that Anglicare Sydney is approved by the Office of the Children’s Guardian to provide out-of-home care in NSW. But Sheedy said the DCJ must have known about the policy and “must have known that the application of this policy could lead to decisions being made that are contrary to the best interests of children”.

In December, the court heard probity checks led to a decision by DCJ ruling the woman out as a suitable carer. The case is back before the magistrate in March.

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On Tuesday, the NSW minister for families and communities, Kate Washington, asked for a review of the case “to better understand how the Aboriginal child could have been supported to remain with family”.

Washington also met with Anglicare Sydney and expressed her “concern” with its policy regarding same-sex foster carers, a DCJ spokesperson said.

“The minister was assured by Anglicare that the potential carer was referred to other out-of-home care providers,” a DCJ spokesperson said.

Anglicare Sydney said it was a “Christian Not-For Profit that serves in accordance with the doctrines of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, which believe the best interests of a child are best served by giving access to both mothering and fathering, wherever possible”.

“In cases where Anglicare Sydney does not undertake an assessment of a potential carer for this or any other reason, we consult with DCJ, with DCJ either conducting the assessment themselves, conducted via independent assessment or referred to another Foster Care provider,” an Anglicare Sydney spokesperson said.

That assessment was finalised in December, after being requested by Magistrate Sheedy.

DCJ said it welcomed carers “from all walks of life”.

“The best interests of children are paramount. DCJ supports all eligible families that want to care for children in NSW, including members of the LGBTIQ communities.

“We encourage foster carers from all walks of life to open their homes and hearts to children in need, whether single, in a de-facto or same-sex relationship,” the spokesperson said.

But according to AbSec, this case was “not an isolated incident”. The CEO, John Leha, told Guardian Australia that AbSec had received a number of calls from Aboriginal LGBTQ+ people who said they had been excluded by faith-based organisations as potential carers.

Leha is now calling for a “cultural audit” of out-of-home care providers, to ensure they are “sound and suitable” to provide services to Aboriginal children and families.

“To not recognise LGBTIQ First Nations people as part of that ecosystem is discriminatory,” he said. “And I think the department [should] take a serious look at whether or not these providers are sound and suitable to continue to provide services to the most vulnerable members of our community.

“Child protection is complex, we understand that. But … it’s not enough to just say, it’s so complex. There is an onus and responsibility on all people in child protection to know what they’re doing, to understand and interpret the practice guidelines that are provided by the sector, and to ensure that they are acting in the best interests of children,” he said.

The union representing workers in the child protection sector, the Public Service Association (PSA), said it wanted the Minns government to exclude religious and “for-profit” providers from the out-of-home care system.

The assistant general secretary of the PSA, Troy Wright, said “it’s time to admit the experiment with external providers has failed”.

“At the very least Chris Minns must close the loophole in the state’s laws which allows for ‘legalised homophobia’ against family members who want to care for their nephews and nieces by religious groups in our child protection system,” Wright said.

“Our union supports the review into this case by the Minister for Families and Communities, Kate Washington. This is a good start,” he said.

A DCJ spokesperson said reducing the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in the child protection system was a key priority of the Minns government, and it was working to reform the system in consultation with Aboriginal organisations.

According to DCJ statistics, 47% of all children who entered out-of-home care in 2022-23 were Aboriginal.

The government has signed up to the Closing the Gap target of reducing the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care by 45% before 2031.

“The system remains geared towards removing children rather than investing in early intervention services that could support them to live safely at home with their families,” Leha said.

The Aboriginal Legal Service (NSW/ACT) said it wanted DCJ to reform the way caseworkers respond to prenatal reports.

“When expectant parents are flagged in the system, they should get the culturally appropriate support they need to safely birth their babies and bring them home. It’s the most horrific injustice when the system rips newborns from their mother’s arms in the hospital, and it happens far too often,” the CEO of the Aboriginal Legal Service, Karly Warner, said.

Both the ALS and AbSec said they wanted the NSW government to recognise the key role of Aboriginal community-controlled organisations in supporting families.

“Racism in the so-called child protection system remains rife. Non-Indigenous caseworkers are too often conflating poverty with neglect and failing to appreciate the effects of intergenerational trauma, including the challenges facing parents who were themselves stolen from their families. When does the cycle end?” Leha said.

A protective services officer has opened fire on a man who confronted them with broken glass after reportedly trying to rob people on a tram in the centre of Melbourne.

Police say the officers were responding to an incident on the Princes Street Bridge just after 5.30pm on Friday when they were approached by the man.

When OC spray failed to subdue the man, one protective services officer (PSO) opened fire and the alleged assailant was struck once, police said. He was taken to hospital with what were believed to be non-life-threatening injuries.

Protective services officers are armed and uniformed officers who have the power to apprehend, arrest, search and fine people in public places such as railway stations.

The incident – which forced the closure of Swanston Street in both directions at the bridge – was not terror related, police said, and there was no ongoing danger to the public.

Armed crime squad detectives will now investigate the incident as per standard protocol when a firearm is discharged.

Police said a 27-year-old man was arrested in relation to an attempted robbery and assault.

Officers were told the man initially boarded a tram where he allegedly unsuccessfully attempted to rob passengers before getting off at Princes Bridge.

“It’s alleged the man then assaulted four people with a glass bottle, before he was arrested at the scene,” a police statement said.

A 67-year-old Warneet man, a 56-year-old Collingwood woman, a 24-year-old Kennington woman and a 46-year-old Hoppers Crossing woman were all taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

The arrested man, who was from South Melbourne, was helping police with their enquiries.

A protective services officer has opened fire on a man who confronted them with broken glass after reportedly trying to rob people on a tram in the centre of Melbourne.

Police say the officers were responding to an incident on the Princes Street Bridge just after 5.30pm on Friday when they were approached by the man.

When OC spray failed to subdue the man, one protective services officer (PSO) opened fire and the alleged assailant was struck once, police said. He was taken to hospital with what were believed to be non-life-threatening injuries.

Protective services officers are armed and uniformed officers who have the power to apprehend, arrest, search and fine people in public places such as railway stations.

The incident – which forced the closure of Swanston Street in both directions at the bridge – was not terror related, police said, and there was no ongoing danger to the public.

Armed crime squad detectives will now investigate the incident as per standard protocol when a firearm is discharged.

Police said a 27-year-old man was arrested in relation to an attempted robbery and assault.

Officers were told the man initially boarded a tram where he allegedly unsuccessfully attempted to rob passengers before getting off at Princes Bridge.

“It’s alleged the man then assaulted four people with a glass bottle, before he was arrested at the scene,” a police statement said.

A 67-year-old Warneet man, a 56-year-old Collingwood woman, a 24-year-old Kennington woman and a 46-year-old Hoppers Crossing woman were all taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

The arrested man, who was from South Melbourne, was helping police with their enquiries.

The circulation of the Atlantic Ocean is heading towards a tipping point that is “bad news for the climate system and humanity”, a study has found.

The scientists behind the research said they were shocked at the forecast speed of collapse once the point is reached, although they said it was not yet possible to predict how soon that would happen.

Using computer models and past data, the researchers developed an early warning indicator for the breakdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc), a vast system of ocean currents that is a key component in global climate regulation.

They found Amoc is already on track towards an abrupt shift, which has not happened for more than 10,000 years and would have dire implications for large parts of the world.

Amoc, which encompasses part of the Gulf Stream and other powerful currents, is a marine conveyer belt that carries heat, carbon and nutrients from the tropics towards the Arctic Circle, where it cools and sinks into the deep ocean. This churning helps to distribute energy around the Earth and modulates the impact of human-caused global heating.

But the system is being eroded by the faster-than-expected melt-off of Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic ice sheets, which pours freshwater into the sea and obstructs the sinking of saltier, warmer water from the south.

Amoc has declined 15% since 1950 and is in its weakest state in more than a millennium, according to previous research that prompted speculation about an approaching collapse.

Until now there has been no consensus about how severe this will be. One study last year, based on changes in sea surface temperatures, suggested the tipping point could happen between 2025 and 2095. However, the UK Met Office said large, rapid changes in Amoc were “very unlikely” in the 21st century.

The new paper, published in Science Advances, has broken new ground by looking for warning signs in the salinity levels at the southern extent of the Atlantic Ocean between Cape Town and Buenos Aires. Simulating changes over a period of 2,000 years on computer models of the global climate, it found a slow decline can lead to a sudden collapse over less than 100 years, with calamitous consequences.

The paper said the results provided a “clear answer” about whether such an abrupt shift was possible: “This is bad news for the climate system and humanity as up till now one could think that Amoc tipping was only a theoretical concept and tipping would disappear as soon as the full climate system, with all its additional feedbacks, was considered.”

It also mapped some of the consequences of Amoc collapse. Sea levels in the Atlantic would rise by a metre in some regions, inundating many coastal cities. The wet and dry seasons in the Amazon would flip, potentially pushing the already weakened rainforest past its own tipping point. Temperatures around the world would fluctuate far more erratically. The southern hemisphere would become warmer. Europe would cool dramatically and have less rainfall. While this might sound appealing compared with the current heating trend, the changes would hit 10 times faster than now, making adaptation almost impossible.

“What surprised us was the rate at which tipping occurs,” said the paper’s lead author, René van Westen, of Utrecht University. “It will be devastating.”

He said there was not yet enough data to say whether this would occur in the next year or in the coming century, but when it happens, the changes are irreversible on human timescales.

In the meantime, the direction of travel is undoubtedly in an alarming direction.

“We are moving towards it. That is kind of scary,” van Westen said. “We need to take climate change much more seriously.”

Politicians allied with the former prime minister Imran Khan’s party have defied a military-led crackdown and alleged widespread rigging to win the most seats in Pakistan’s election, but opponent Nawaz Sharif claimed victory and said he would form a coalition government.

Candidates backed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party run by Khan who is now serving sentences of more than a decade in jail, claimed a stunning victory after Thursday’s polls, defying all expectations that Sharif, a three-time former prime minister, and his Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) would win an easy majority.

Khan declared victory in an audio-visual message created using artificial intelligence and shared on his X social media account, calling on his supporters to celebrate a win that was achieved despite what he called a crackdown on his party.

Sharif was seen to have the backing of Pakistan’s military, which has long been the country’s political power broker and has a history of meddling in its elections.

Voters across the country, however, appear to have come out in unprecedented numbers to support PTI and Khan. Given the scale of the votes for PTI-backed candidates, according to sources the military was unable to “manage” the results for Sharif as planned.

With more than three-quarters of the votes counted for the 265 seats in the national assembly, PTI-backed candidates had won more than 90 seats, PML-N 69 and the Pakistan People’s party (PPP) 52.

However, without a simple majority, analysts agreed it would be a challenge for PTI to form a government. Due to an election commission ruling, PTI candidates had not been allowed to campaign under their party name or symbol and so had to be registered as independents.

Despite not leading in the polls, Sharif gave a “victory” speech on Friday night and invited other political parties “to join us to form a government”. It is understood PTI was not included in this offer. Sharif’s comments suggest that if a deal can be reached, the next government will be formed as a coalition of PML-N, PPP and other smaller parties – but without PTI or Khan.

The same parties came together in a coalition in 2020 and ousted Khan as prime minister two years later. They were in government for 16 months, when they were largely unpopular due to the country’s continuing economic crisis.

PTI leaders hit back at Sharif, claiming he had no right to claim victory or form a government. They pointed to widespread allegations of rigging in favour of PML-N candidates and said the true number of seats their party had won was much higher. The vote count was delayed for more than 24 hours in some districts and in some cases reversed overnight against PTI.

Two people were killed after protests against alleged rigging of seats erupted in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, where police are alleged to have retaliated with violence, and PTI supporters also came out on to the streets of Lahore. More rallies against alleged rigging have been planned across the country.

A statement by the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, voiced concern over “significant delays to the reporting of results and claims of irregularities in the counting process”.

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who was prime minister between 2017 and 2018, said he feared that Sharif’s suggested coalition, without the inclusion of PTI, would only bring more resentment and instability to Pakistan at a time of severe economic crisis.

“The legitimacy of these elections has come into serious doubt so they will have no credibility in the eyes of the people,” Abbasi said. “The only way they can obtain legitimacy is to include Imran Khan. Any solution without Khan will not be workable. But the question is: will the [military] establishment accept that?”

The lead for Khan’s party came as a shock to many. He is loathed by many in the military leadership after he had a fallout with senior generals and was toppled from power in 2022.

The military has since led a sustained attack on Khan and his PTI, making it clear it would not tolerate his return to power. Over the course of months, PTI leaders and workers were arrested and their candidates prevented from campaigning. On polling day, the government suspended all mobile services, including internet access, in a move widely seen as intended to hurt PTI’s voter turnout.

Khan was arrested in August and last week he received three separate jail sentences that could keep him behind bars for more than a decade.

His popularity has soared in recent months, however, as voters have become increasingly frustrated at the military’s brazen interference in politics.

The surge in support for Khan on election day was evident at polling stations across Islamabad’s NA-47 district visited by the Guardian. From first-time voters to elderly women born before Pakistan was established, and from labourers to tech workers and lawyers, the overwhelming majority said they were voting for PTI, or as many put it, giving their full backing to Khan.

However, while initial results showed in favour of PTI, allegations of inconsistencies and rigging began to emerge on Thursday night. Declarations of results began to slow down and then stopped altogether. Polling agents began to say they were unable to collect results and then there was a reported “technical error” in counting.

TV stations were said to have received instructions to stop reporting the results. The suspension of mobile internet access, justified on the basis of keeping polling stations safe, continued long into the night after voting had finished.

More votes were said to have been counted than voters registered in Nawaz Sharif’s constituency, while the officer overseeing the count was transferred abruptly on Friday morning, allegedly for medical reasons.

In a Lahore constituency, the PTI candidate Salman Akram Raja went to the high court on Friday to challenge the result in which he lost to a PML-N candidate despite having a significant majority on Thursday night. He alleged that he and his wife had been removed from the polling office as they tried to observe the count.

In NA-47, the central Islamabad constituency visited by the Guardian on polling day, the PTI candidate Shoaib Shaheen said officials had declared him a clear winner on Thursday night with a majority of more than 50,000 votes. By Friday afternoon, however, the seat had been awarded to PML-N, to a candidate who is a close ally of Sharif.

Standing outside the office of the election commission in protest, Shaheen accused it, the judiciary and the military of colluding to rig the election and said he would be challenging the result in the courts.

“We can see clearly how corrupt and broken the system is,” he said. “My constituency is in the heart of the capital; the supreme court, the high court, parliament house, the election commission, all are located here. If they can change and rig the elections here, think what they are doing in the rest of the country.”

Non-PTI candidates also alleged irregularities. Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, who was standing as an independent in Islamabad and had already voiced fears of vote manipulation, said the PTI candidate in his constituency was clearly winning but that the seat had been declared for the PML-N. “This is the worst kind of rigging and playing with fire,” Khokhar said.

A young Louisiana dentist is facing the likely loss of one of her eyes after a former patient went into her office and stabbed her.

The attack which targeted Dr Katherine ‘Katie’ Tran and two of her colleagues – while leading to the arrest of Sharon Stewart – is the latest chilling reminder that US healthcare professionals are suffering more workplace violence injuries than those in any other industry, including law enforcement, as the Associated Press reported last year.

Papers filed by local police in New Orleans’s state criminal courthouse accuse Stewart of going to Tran’s Louisiana dental center office on 7 February and asking to speak to her. One of Tran’s co-workers then heard a loud sound, turned around and saw Stewart standing over the dentist while wielding a knife with a three-inch blade, police alleged.

Another of Tran’s co-workers heard her remark: “I got stabbed in the face” while blood streamed down from around one of her eyes, police added in the documents. Stewart allegedly chased Tran, 32, as the dentist ran into another room and locked herself in there.

Stewart is accused of trying to hurt two more employees at Tran’s office, including one who stepped in to defend the dentist. “She is crazy – she is trying to stab me,” one of the employees whom Stewart allegedly targeted was heard screaming, according to police.

The 55-year-old Stewart ran from Tran’s office before police arrived, but they found and arrested her after canvassing the surrounding neighborhood, the court documents noted. She was jailed on counts of attempted second-degree murder as well as aggravated assault before appearing at a bail hearing Thursday.

At the hearing, a prosecutor said Tran had been stabbed in her left eye and the right side of her neck, the local news outlet Nola.com reported. In all likelihood, Tran will lose the wounded eye, the prosecutor said.

Nola.com added that the prosecutor recounted how – at the time of Tran’s stabbing – Stewart was wanted in connection with allegations that she tried to set a man’s apartment on fire on 31 January.

The victim in that case told police that Stewart had beaten him with a hammer and hurled threats at him in the days before she allegedly approached his home, lit a match and ignited his window. The man put out the blaze with help from a neighbor.

Meanwhile, on 9 January, a woman alleged that she and her daughters were confronted in a beauty store parking lot by Stewart, who also followed them to a nearby pharmacy. The woman asked Stewart to seek counseling after she said Stewart accused the woman of stealing her identity and food stamps – and threatened to come after the accuser’s family “when the time was right”, Nola.com reported.

A civil court judge on 29 January signed an order prohibiting Stewart from contacting or going near that woman.

The judge overseeing Stewart’s bail hearing Thursday in connection with Tran’s stabbing ordered her held without bond until at least 15 February. Police have also booked Stewart with counts of arson and battery in the earlier episodes involving the man whose apartment was allegedly set ablaze.

Court records in Stewart’s case do not address her relationship with Tran. But Tran’s sister, Carolyn, confirmed that Stewart was once Katie Tran’s patient. Carolyn Tran declined to comment further.

An online GoFundMe campaign launched to support Tran in her medical recovery also asserted that the dentist had been “assaulted and stabbed multiple times by a patient she was treating”.

Dr Linda Cao, president of the New Orleans Dental Association, said she expected Tran’s stabbing to prompt difficult discussions about giving any attention to walk-in patients because she did not believe Stewart had an appointment.

She said the case terrified her, reminding her of a New Orleans-area physician’s 2016 shooting death by a former patient whom the doctor had diagnosed with cancer. The patient left the doctor’s office after the slaying there and then died by a suicide at a neighboring fast food restaurant.

Cao said her organization stood at the ready to support Tran however it could, including by offering to provide counseling services. “As a young doctor, my hope is she can regroup from that,” Cao said. “Getting that sense of security back for her – I think that’s more important than anything else.”

Healthcare professionals had endured 73% of all nonfatal workplace injuries in 2018, the most recent year for which figures were available, according to the report conducted by the Associated Press.

Tran graduated in 2021 from New Orleans’s Louisiana State University dental school, where she earned the award for excellence in operative dentistry. She was preparing for her fourth year in practice to begin in May when she was stabbed.

Ozzy Osbourne has called out Kanye West for using a sample of his music without permission.

In a post on X, Osbourne claims he denied a request for a portion of a 1983 live version of the Black Sabbath song War Pigs to be used on West’s new album but heard it was used anyway during a listening party this week.

Osbourne wrote that he “refused permission because he is an antisemite and has caused untold heartache to many”. He added: “I want no association with this man!”

His wife, Sharon Osbourne, recently told the Jewish Chronicle: “Judaism is the only religion I have, and the only one with which I feel comfortable.”

This week’s one-hour event in Chicago saw West, also known as Ye, and Ty Dolla $ign premiere their joint project Vultures. The album was originally set to drop in December. It was reported at the time that the delay was down to Nicki Minaj refusing to let him feature an old collaboration between the two. “Regarding Kanye: that train has left the station, OK?” she said. “No disrespect in any way. I just put out a brand new album. Why would I put out a song that has been out for three years? Come on, guys.”

It was reported that a live feed of the listening party was shut off after West rapped the lyrics: “And I’m still crazy, bipolar, antisemite. And I’m still the king.”

At the end of 2023, West apologised for his previous antisemitic comments, that included praising Adolf Hitler and threatening to go “death con 3” on Jewish people.

His words drew ire from Joe Biden and the Anti-Defamation League, referring to him as a “vicious antisemite” who “put Jews in danger”.

“It was not my intention to hurt or demean, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused,” West wrote on Hebrew on Instagram. “I am committed to starting with myself and learning from this experience to ensure greater sensitivity and understanding in the future.”

West had previously paid tribute to Black Sabbath on Hell of a Life, inspired by the song Iron Man.

West is yet to make a statement in response.