Daily News Roundup

THURSDAY, August 16

The husband of Dreamworld victim Cindy Low says he and his family were just “unlucky” and he does not blame the ride attendants for what happened that day.

On October 25, 2016, Mrs Low, Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi were killed when the Thunder River Rapids ride malfunctioned.

Mathew Low’s son Kieran was also on the ride and survived.

Mr Low told ABC’s 7.30 program that despite reports Kieran had been thrown from the raft, he believed his son was helped off the raft by an attendant.

Mr Low said he feels for the ride attendants who were working that day.

“They were just doing their jobs as they’d been trained, and thinking that they were doing the right thing through this process,” he said.

“I don’t have any ill feelings towards any of the ride attendants on that day.

“They were put in an awful situation, and they’d never been trained on how to deal with that situation.”

Mr Low said he attended the coronial inquest into the incident every day “for Cindy, and to hear the truth”.

Dreamworld declined the opportunity to be interviewed for this story. Its parent company, Ardent Leisure, is preparing a statement for 7.30.

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Madonna will celebrate her 60th birthday on Thursday, following a long career of reinvention and controversy.

The US pop provocateur continues to make a mark on music, fashion, film and pop culture but will celebrate her milestone birthday in a different role – as a supportive mother.

She recently moved to Portugal so her youngest son David, 12, who she adopted from Malawi, can attend a soccer academy.

It is likely she will celebrate the occasion there with her children, including twins Estere and Stella, who she also adopted from Malawi, and daughter Mercy James.

She is also mother to daughter Lourdes, with her ex Carlos Leon, and son Rocco John, whose father is her former husband Guy Ritchie.

She has been anticipating her birthday on Instagram, where she has been posting photos counting down to the big day.

On Tuesday she wrote: “Today I am wearing C A K E on my head!! 2 More days…………….”

After bursting into the public consciousness with her first international top 10 hit Holiday in 1983, Madonna became one of the most influential women in the world and her music videos, spawned many of the fashion trends of the 1980s.

Like A Virgin, released in 1984, was the first album by a woman to sell more than five million copies in the US. Its controversial title track and accompanying video spawned the kind of scandal Madonna would become

Conservative groups complained the song promoted pre-marital sex – which was also the criticism levied at her song Papa Don’t Preach – but her performance of the song at the MTV Music Video Awards, in which she wore a wedding dress and writhed suggestively on the floor, went down in MTV history.

It would not be the last time she left audiences aghast at her antics on an awards show stage.

In 1998 she returned to the VMAs stage to perform Ray Of Light with a Hindu-themed rendition complete with holy markings on her face, but angered the World Vaishnava Association, which objected to the explicit routine.

At the same ceremony in 2003, she caused scandal again when she kissed both Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera on stage.

Her Like A Prayer music video featured burning crosses and a black Jesus and it sparked outrage from religious groups, while the Justify My Love video, which was considered to be close to pornographic, was banned by MTV.

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Italian rescuers are continuing the search for survivors among towering slabs of concrete wreckage in Genoa, as the death toll from the bridge collapse rose to 39 and a state of emergency was declared.

The 50-year-old Morandi bridge, part of a toll highway linking the port city of Genoa with southern France, collapsed during a violent storm on Tuesday, sending dozens of vehicles crashing onto a riverbed, a railway and two warehouses.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte declared a state of emergency for Genoa, whose main land corridor with France has effectively been severed.

Meanwhile, fears mounted that another part of the bridge could also come crashing down, prompting authorities to widen an evacuation zone and force around 630 people out of apartments in nearby buildings.

Italian Transport Minister, Danilo Toninelli, raised the possibility that the evacuees may never again live there, saying the need to rebuild a new bridge on the city’s key artery could require the destruction of nearby residential buildings.

As the city of 600,000 reeled from the tragedy, about 1,000 rescue workers kept up the search for victims, picking through tons of broken concrete slabs, smashed vehicles and twisted steel.

At least two more bodies were pulled out.

Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio blamed the bridge collapse on a lack of maintenance by the private company that operates many of the nation’s toll highways.

Speaking in Genoa, Mr Di Maio said he was looking at revoking highway concessions.

“Instead of investing money for maintenance, they divide the profits. And that is why the bridge falls,” Mr Di Maio said of the holding company that controls Autostrade per L’Italia.

Mr Toninelli also pointed the finger at Autostrade, saying its leaders should resign, and Mr Conte said Italy would look for another company to maintain much of the nation’s highway system and would demand “more stringent” rules about maintenance.

This daily news roundup has been curated with stories from ABC News.