Melbourne, Australia — The only emperor penguin known to have swum from Antarctica to Australia was released at sea 20 days after he waddled ashore on a popular tourist beach, officials said Friday.

The adult male was found on Nov. 1 on Ocean Beach sand dunes in the town of Denmark in temperate southwest Australia – about 2,200 miles north of the icy waters off the Antarctic coast, the Western Australia state government said. He was released from a Parks and Wildlife Service boat on Wednesday.

The boat traveled for several hours from the state’s most southerly city of Albany before the penguin was released into the Southern Ocean, but the government didn’t give the distance in its statement.

He had been cared for by registered wildlife caregiver Carol Biddulph, who named him Gus after the first Roman emperor Augustus.

“I really didn’t know whether he was going to make it to begin with because he was so undernourished,” Biddulph said in video recorded before the bird’s release but released by the government on Friday.

“I’ll miss Gus. It’s been an incredible few weeks, something I wouldn’t have missed,” she added.

Biddulph said she had found from caring for other species of lone penguins that mirrors were an important part of their rehabilitation by providing a comforting sense of company.

“He absolutely loves his big mirror and I think that has been crucial in his well-being. They’re social birds and he stands next to the mirror most of the time,” she said.

Gus gained weight in her care, from 47 pounds when he was found to 54 pounds. He is 39 inches tall. A healthy male emperor penguin can weigh more than 100 pounds.

The largest penguin species has never been reported in Australia before, University of Western Australia research fellow Belinda Cannell said, though some had reached New Zealand, nearly all of which is farther south than Western Australia.

The government said that with the Southern Hemisphere summer approaching, it had been time-crucial to return Gus to the ocean where he could thermoregulate.

Emperor penguins have been known to cover up to 1,000 miles on foraging journeys that last up to a month, the government said.

They are among the species directly threatened by the rising temperature of the oceans and seas across the world. According to The World Wildlife Foundation, about three-quarters of the world’s breeding colonies of emperor penguins are vulnerable to fluctuations in the annual sea ice cover in the Antarctic, which have become far more erratic due to climate change.

The penguins breed and live on sea ice, but the Antarctic Sea ice is disappearing as our planet warms up.

“They show up at the breeding season and the ice isn’t there, so they have nowhere to breed,” Dr. Birgitte McDonald, an ecologist at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, which is funded and administered by San Jose State University, told CBS San Francisco last year. 

An analysis by scientists at Cambridge University, published last year in the journal Science News, found that “ice in one area was melting especially early in the year,” putting emperor chicks at extreme risk.

Georgia’s top health official dismissed all members of a state committee that investigates pregnancy-related maternal deaths after the leak, presumably by a committee member, of information about two such deaths.

In a letter first reported by ProPublica and dated Nov. 8, state public health commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey said whoever shared the information violated state law and a confidential agreement signed by committee members. An agency investigation wasn’t able to identify the leaker.

ProPublica reported in September that internal reports showed the Georgia Maternal Mortality Review Committee determined the deaths of two women were preventable, but found that doctors were hesitant to perform a procedure that could have saved their lives because of the state’s strict abortion policies.

ProPublica said the dismissal of the board members came as a result of it obtaining the internal reports on the two deaths, those of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller. 

 The cases drew national attention and became a central theme in Vice President Kamala Harris ‘ presidential campaign. Harris has been outspoken on abortion rights ever since the Supreme Court’s decision more than two years ago that overturned Roe v. Wade.

The Georgia committee works to identify what caused women to die during pregnancy or soon after childbirth, seeking to prevent other deaths or health crises.

The decision to disband the committee seems “very abrupt,” said Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, one of the groups that sued Georgia over the state’s abortion ban beyond six weeks of pregnancy. A judge initially struck down the ban, but Georgia’s Supreme Court halted the ruling in October, restoring the law.

“To have any time where we don’t have this committee in place is difficult to fathom, realizing that we may lose access to really important data and information that could help us make better decisions and organize better around what we need for the state,” Simpson said.

Toomey wrote that reconstituting the committee “will not result in a delay” of the committee’s responsibilities.

The Georgia Department of Public Health will open applications for new members in the “coming weeks,” Toomey said in the letter, but will work to make sure there is more oversight and confidentiality in its review of cases.

“This is a scare tactic meant to stop full investigations into the circumstances of pregnant women’s deaths across the state,” Alicia Stallworth, Director of Georgia Campaigns at Reproductive Freedom for All, said in a statement. “Now more than ever, it’s important to mobilize against anti-abortion extremists like Governor Kemp, who are responsible for these deadly bans.”

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp doesn’t appoint or release members of the committee because it’s overseen by the Department of Public Health, Kemp spokesperson Garrison Douglas said. Kemp signed into law in 2019 a ban on abortions once the fetal heartbeat is detected, which can be as early as six weeks.

A spokesperson for the health department declined to provide additional comment and said the letter “speaks for itself.”

A Georgia woman convicted of killing her 20-month-old son and dumping his body in a trash bin was sentenced Thursday to life in prison.

Leilani Simon was spared the maximum punishment of life without a chance of parole. Her sentencing hearing in Chatham County Superior Court came a month after a trial jury found Simon guilty of malice murder and 18 other charges in the death of her son, Quinton Simon.

Simon called 911 the morning of Oct. 5, 2022, to report her son was missing from his indoor playpen at their home outside Savannah. After police spent days searching the home and surrounding neighborhood, Chatham County Police Chief Jeff Hadley said that investigators believed the child was dead. He also named Simon as the sole suspect.

Police and FBI agents focused their investigation on a landfill two weeks after the boy was reported missing. They sifted through trash for more than a month before finding human bones, which DNA tests confirmed belonged to Quinton.

Murder carries an automatic life sentence under Georgia law. Because prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, the main decision for Judge Tammy Stokes was whether to grant Simon a chance of someday being released on parole. The judge imposed another 10 years in prison for concealing the child’s death.

During Thursday’s sentencing hearing, prosecutors doubled down that Simon has not taken accountability, CBS affiliate WTOC-TV reported.

“She just doesn’t seem sorry at all. She really doesn’t seem sorry. She seems sorry that she got caught. She seems sorry that she had to stand trial,” said Special Assistant District Attorney Tim Dean.

During the hearing, the case’s lead detective, Marian Lemmons, revealed new details not included in trial, the station reported. Lemmons said Simon implicated innocent people and was out drinking the night investigators announced the landfill search for Quinton’s body.

Simon did not testify at her sentencing hearing. She did speak to give consent for the judge to release her son’s remains to her family. Authorities had kept them in case further forensic tests were ordered.

“My son’s been through enough,” Simon said. “I want my baby home.”