Wednesday's news in 5 minutes.

1. Father who was on ride that killed four at Dreamworld says he was terrified when his seatbelt would not hold in his 2-year-old daughter yesterday.

A man who was on the Thunder River Rapids ride yesterday an hour before four people were killed has expressed concerns that the ride was malfunctioning before the horror incident.

Jesse Lovett, from Victoria told The Gold Coast Bulletin he rode the Thunder Rapids ride earlier that day at Dreamworld with his two-year-old sitting on his lap and said the velcro strap was ineffective.

“I was on the rapid river ride with my two-year-old an hour before those poor people passed away and was concerned a velcro strap was holding my daughter on my lap and I thought she was going to fall out,” he said. “It’s so rough and you had to hold it really tight.”

“It was my favourite ride and now with my daughter I was pretty scared to go on it.

“All that was holding her in securely was me. The strap did nothing and easily came undone because it was wet.”

Kate Goodchild, 32, her brother Luke Dorsett, 35,  his partner Roozi Araghi, 38, and an unnamed 42-year-old woman were on the ride when they were killed approximately 2.20pm yesterday.

Queensland Ambulance Service acting senior operations supervisor Gavin Fuller said two people were ejected from the ride and the other two were caught in the ride.

“They were assessed by Queensland Ambulance personnel and had all sustained injuries that were incompatible with living,” he said.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who was in Brisbane when the tragedy occurred, said last night his “thoughts and prayers” were with the family.

“Theme parks are a place for family fun and happiness, not tragedy,” the PM said.

“This is a very, very, sad, tragic event. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who lost their lives.

“This is a very sad day, and we trust there will be a thorough investigation into the causes of this accident over the days to follow.”

2. Mother of Nikki Coslovich denies point blank she killed her daughter.

Peta-Ann Francis, the mother of murdered toddler Nikki Coslovich, yesterday told a court room she did not murder her daughter.

Ms Francis was on the stand at the trial of her former partner John Torney.

Torney confessed to hiding Nikki’s body in the ceiling of her Oram Court home last year but claims the toddler was killed by Ms Francis.

Ms Francis admitted lying at least four times during her 000 call about when she last saw Nikki and who had put her to bed.

She also admitted to lying about key facts in her police statements, reports The Herald Sun.

Torney’s defence barrister, Julie Condon accused Ms Francis of carrying out the murder.

“You know what happened to her because it was at your hand that she died,” Ms Condon alleged.

“No,” Ms Francis replied.

3. School where teacher had sexual relationship with student named as Sydney Grammar.

A teacher who had a sexual relationship with a student earlier this year has failed in her bid to have the name of the Sydney school where she works suppressed.

The pregnant teacher was working at Sydney Grammar School, at Darlinghurst, when she is alleged to have committed six counts of sexual intercourse with the student.

The woman has not entered a plea to six counts of having sexual intercourse with a person under care between 17 and 18 years, and one count of indecent assault.

It is alleged the teacher commenced a relationship with the boy in January this year.

The Daily Telegraph reports that some of the offences took place at the woman’s home where she is alleged to have had sex with the boy twice, and indecently assaulted him by kissing him sometime between January 1 and February 1 this year.

Court documents also alleged the teacher had sex with the student four times at the school between February 1 and March 31 this year.

4. Census issues could have been avoided if someone just turned the router on and off again.

Computer giant IBM has admitted the issues surrounding the census outage could have been avoided if someone had turned one of its routers off and on again beforehand.

A senate committee inquiry looking at the botched handling of August’s census heard that one of two routers experienced difficulties when it was rebooted on August 9, the night of the census.

The ABC reports that that the router was rebooted after experiencing a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) cyber attack from overseas, but then mistakenly gave out information suggesting that census data was being compromised.

BM senior engineer Michael Shallcross said, “We tested the router failure by simulating it, which is relatively easy to do and repeatable.”

“That would have discovered earlier that we had that reboot and configuration loading problem.”

5. Paedophile Robert Ellis sentenced to 15 years jail time in Bali.

Australian paedophile Robert Andrew Fiddes Ellis has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for sexually abusing 11 girls aged under 18 in 2014 and 2015 in Bali.

Ellis said via his lawyer he objected to the sentence and would appeal, reports Fairfax Media.

Ellis told media, “I am 70 now, it will take me to 85. I don’t know if I will live for that long.”

The court heard that Ellis admitted to the digital anal penetration of some of the girls while bathing them in his rental property in the Bali town of Tabanan, where he had lived since 2013.

He told police that the girls were his “friends”.

Ellis told reporters last week he would give the girls a “mandi”, the Indonesian word for bath for a price of 200,000 to 300,000 rupiah ($20-30) .

“If you don’t want it that’s ok,” Ellis said he told them.

Ellis said: “I haven’t murdered anybody and none of my friends want me in prison I am sure of that. None of them want me in here.”

6. Father dead after jumping from bridge holding his two sons while sons survive.

A father has died after jumping off a bridge with his two children.

John Spincken, 37, leaped from an overpass in New Jersey in the US on Monday night while holding his two young sons. He was pronounced dead at the scene, but miraculously the boys aged 2 and 4 survived.

The children were taken to St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Paterson where “they are being treated for serious, but non-life-threatening injuries”, reports CBS.

The man had been involved in a domestic dispute with his wife and told her he was going to harm their children.

7. Islamic State massacres dozens of civilians in battle for Mosul.

Islamic State fighters have reportedly massacred scores of people near Mosul in the past week, a UN human rights spokesman said.

Three women and three girls were reportedly shot dead because they were trailing 100 metres behind IS fighters because one of the children was disabled.

IS reportedly killed 50 former police officers being held in a building outside Mosul on Sunday and Iraqi security forces discovered the bodies of 70 civilians in houses in a village south of Mosul last Thursday.

Iraqi government forces are battling to regain the IS stronghold of Mosul.

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