The ASX fell by 1.7 per cent, wiping $36billion off the market amid fears the outbreak will reduce the number of tourists visiting from China.

Qantas has suspended all of its flights to China as the deadly coronavirus becomes a global emergency.  

Qantas said on Friday it will cut more international flights this month including to Japan and New Zealand amid falling bookings because of coronavirus fears. 

The British comedian announced on Monday he decided to cancel his sell-out gig in Perth after a woman who attended the venue was found to have contracted the deadly illness.

The Department for Transport (DfT) last month revealed the electric scooters, capable of 30mph, will be trialled in select cities as part of plans for a 'transport revolution'.

Tim Smith, Liberal member for Kew in Melbourne's east, said the premier was 'fear mongering' despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison releasing a national roadmap to ease lockdown restrictions.

The virus, linked to cases of the microcephaly birth defect, has spread in Latin America and the Caribbean, leading athletes to consider whether to attend the Games.

Ministers believe 'The Blob' - an army made up of political opponents and union barons - is colluding to politicise the coronavirus outbreak, The Mail on Sunday has learned.

The latest employment figures have defied the bleak predictions made three years ago by former chancellor George Osborne as one million jobs have been created across the economy.

EXCLUSIVE BY OLIVER HOLT AND ROB DRAPER: The dissident Premier League clubs arguing against a quick return to football will urge a delay to Project Restart.

South Korea's capital closed down more than 2,100 bars and other nightspots Saturday because of a new cluster of coronavirus infections, Germany scrambled to contain fresh outbreaks at slaughterhouses, and Italian authorities worried that people were getting too friendly at cocktail hour during the country's first weekend of eased restrictions. The new flareups and fears of a second wave of contagion underscored the dilemma authorities face as they try to reopen their economies. Around the world, the US and other hard-hit countries are wrestling with how to ease curbs on business and public activity without causing the virus to come surging back. In New York, the deadliest hot spot in the US, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said three children died from a possible complication of the coronavirus involving swollen blood vessels and heart problems. At least 73 children statewide have been diagnosed with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease a rare inflammatory condition and toxic shock syndrome. ..

Character assassination, social and economic ostracisation and even assault, seem to have become the standard responses to all who protest against the culture of violence against women in West Bengal. Shikha Mukerjee reports on the ground realities in the state.

Worldwide, the virus is confirmed to have infected nearly 4 million people and killed more than 276,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University based on data reported by governments.

Top government sources told ANI that at the time of the incident, Pakistan was already carrying out an aerial exercise about which India also had information. "Soon after the death of the Colonel, the Pakistani Air Force increased its patrols involving its mix of fighter aircraft including the F-16s and the JF-17 which were being constantly monitored by our surveillance platforms," they said.

Around the world, the US and other hard-hit countries are wrestling with how to ease curbs on business and public activity without causing the virus to come surging back.

Fire tenders were dispatched to the spot along with an NDRF team and rescue operations are underway.

Many of those who fled during the violence are still fearful about returning.

'I am jobless and don't have savings to sustain. Better I go home and do farming. If I am lucky, I will survive'

Post-reopening cases in South Korea, Germany spark 2nd wave fears - Times of India

'Having lived through cancer, through so many ups and downs, I'm not particularly attached to attention or success -- it's lovely if it's there, it's fine if it's not.'

"Deepfakes" are digitally altered images that make incidents appear real when they are not. Such altered files could have broad implications for politics.; Credit: /Marcus Marritt for NPR

Sophisticated fake media hasn't emerged as a factor in the disinformation wars in the ways once feared — and two specialists say it may have missed its moment.

Deceptive video and audio recordings, often nicknamed "deepfakes," have been the subject of sustained attention by legislators and technologists, but so far have not been employed to decisive effect, said two panelists at a video conference convened on Wednesday by NATO.

One speaker borrowed Sherlock Holmes' reasoning about the significance of something that didn't happen.

"We've already passed the stage at which they would have been most effective," said Keir Giles, a Russia specialist with the Conflict Studies Research Centre in the United Kingdom. "They're the dog that never barked."

The perils of deepfakes in political interference have been discussed too often and many people have become too familiar with them, Giles said during the online discussion, hosted by NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.

Following all the reports and revelations about election interference in the West since 2016, citizens know too much to be hoodwinked in the way a fake video might once have fooled large numbers of people, he argued: "They no longer have the power to shock."

Tim Hwang, director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, agreed that deepfakes haven't proven as dangerous as once feared, although for different reasons.

Hwang argued that users of "active measures" (efforts to sow misinformation and influence public opinion) can be much more effective with cheaper, simpler and just as devious types of fakes — mis-captioning a photo or turning it into a meme, for example.

Influence specialists working for Russia and other governments also imitate Americans on Facebook, for another example, worming their way into real Americans' political activities to amplify disagreements or, in some cases, try to persuade people not to vote.

Other researchers have suggested this work continues on social networks and has become more difficult to detect.

Defense is stronger than attack

Hwang also observed that the more deepfakes are made, the better machine learning becomes at detecting them.

A very sophisticated, real-looking fake video might still be effective in a political context, he acknowledged — and at a cost to create of around $10,000, it would be easily within the means of a government's active measures specialists.

But the risks of attempting a major disruption with such a video may outweigh an adversary's desire to use one. People may be too media literate, as Giles argued, and the technology to detect a fake may mean it can be deflated too swiftly to have an effect, as Hwang said.

"I tend to be skeptical these will have a large-scale impact over time," he said.

One technology boss told NPR in an interview last year that years' worth of work on corporate fraud protection systems has given an edge to detecting fake media.

"This is not a static field. Obviously, on our end we've performed all sorts of great advances over this year in advancing our technology, but these synthetic voices are advancing at a rapid pace," said Brett Beranek, head of security business for the technology firm Nuance. "So we need to keep up."

Beranek described how systems developed to detect telephone fraudsters could be applied to verify the speech in a fake clip of video or audio.

Corporate clients that rely on telephone voice systems must be wary about people attempting to pose as others with artificial or disguised voices. Beranek's company sells a product that helps to detect them and that countermeasure also works well in detecting fake audio or video.

Machines using neural networks can detect known types of synthetic voices. Nuance also says it can analyze a recording of a real known voice — say, that of a politician — and then contrast its characteristics against a suspicious recording.

Although the world of cybersecurity is often described as one in which attackers generally have an edge over defenders, Beranek said he thought the inverse was true in terms of this kind of fraud detection.

"For the technology today, the defense side is significantly ahead of the attack side," he said.

Shaping the battlefield

Hwang and Giles acknowledged in the NATO video conference that deepfakes likely will proliferate and become lower in cost to create, perhaps becoming simple enough to make with a smartphone app.

One prospective response is the creation of more of what Hwang called "radioactive data" — material earmarked in advance so that it might make a fake easier to detect.

If images of a political figure were so tagged beforehand, they could be spotted quickly if they were incorporated by computers into a deceptive video.

Also, the sheer popularity of new fakes, if that is what happens, might make them less valuable as a disinformation weapon. More people could become more familiar with them, as well as being detectable by automated systems — plus they may also have no popular medium on which to spread.

Big social media platforms already have declared affirmatively that they'll take down deceptive fakes, Hwang observed. That might make it more difficult for a scenario in which a politically charged fake video went viral just before Election Day.

"Although it might get easier and easier to create deepfakes, a lot of the places where they might spread most effectively, your Facebooks and Twitters of the world, are getting a lot more aggressive about taking them down," Hwang said.

That won't stop them, but it might mean they'll be relegated to sites with too few users to have a major effect, he said.

"They'll percolate in these more shady areas."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Attorney General William Barris pictured at a coronavirus task force meeting at the White House on March 23. The Justice Department is looking to crack down on coronavirus-related fraud.; Credit: Alex Brandon/AP

The coronavirus pandemic has brought out the good side of many Americans, but certainly not all Americans. Officials say that fraud related to COVID-19 — like hoarding equipment, price gouging and hawking fake treatments — are spreading as the country wrestles with the outbreak.

"It's a perfect ecosystem for somebody like a fraudster to operate in," said Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey and the head of the Justice Department's COVID-19 price gouging and hoarding task force.

"People want to believe that there's a magic pill that they can take or that if they buy a certain kind of mask or a certain kind of protective gear that it's going to protect them and their families," he said. "That creates opportunities for the types of people that prey upon scared people. They prey upon their fear."

A month ago, Attorney General William Barr instructed federal prosecutors around the country to aggressively investigate and prosecute scams and other crimes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. He also created the price gouging and hoarding task force and put Carpenito in charge of it.

From that perch, Carpenito has one of the best views of virus-related crime nationwide.

"Instead of seeing that tremendous support from all aspects of society, we're still seeing that sliver, that that dark underbelly, that small percentage of folks who instead of putting the interests of the country and support for those medical professionals that are putting themselves at risk in the forefront, they're finding ways to try and take advantage of this situation and illegally profiteer from it," he said. "And it's despicable."

The most prevalent kind of fraud that federal authorities are seeing at this point, he and others say, is tied to personal protective equipment like N95 masks, gloves or face shields.

In one notable case, prosecutors brought charges against a Georgia man, Christopher Parris, for allegedly trying to sell $750 million worth of masks and other protective equipment to the Department of Veterans Affairs but with a sizable advance payment.

The problem, prosecutors say, is the masks and other items didn't exist, at least not in the quantities Parris was offering.

Steven Merrill, the head of the FBI's financial crimes section, says the bureau refers to these sorts of operations as advance-fee schemes.

"We're getting many complaints that different entities are entering into these agreements, paying money upfront, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, and may or may not get any masks or other PPE ordered at all," Merrill said. "So our guidance to the public is to please be wary of these frauds and solicitations."

Other problems, such as hoarding and price gouging, can arise even when the medical gear does exist.

The FBI is trying to identify individuals who are stockpiling protective equipment and trying to sell it at exorbitant markups, sometimes 40 to 70 times the value, Merrill said.

A few weeks ago, the FBI seized nearly 1 million respirator masks, gloves and other medical gear from a Brooklyn man who was allegedly stockpiling them and selling them to nurses and doctors at what officials say was around a 700% markup.

The man, Baruch Feldheim, has been charged with lying to the FBI about price gouging. He's also been charged with allegedly assaulting a federal officer after he coughed on agents and claimed he had COVID-19.

The confiscated items, meanwhile, have been distributed to medical workers in the New York area.

Carpenito said the Justice Department has more than 100 investigations open into price gouging. It has hundreds more, he said, into other crimes tied to the pandemic, including fake treatments and cures.

In one case out of California, prosecutors charged a man who was allegedly soliciting large investments for what he claimed was a cure for COVID-19.

"He was doing so by broadcasting this scheme via, notably, YouTube, where had thousands of hits and views," Merrill said.

In a separate case out of Florida last week, the Justice Department got a court order to stop a Florida church from selling on its website an industrial bleach that was being marketed as a miracle treatment for the virus.

To be clear, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no cure at this point for the virus.

More than a month into this crisis, there's no sense COVID-related crime is going to slow down.

In fact, Carpenito and Merrill say that with the massive $2 trillion economic relief package beginning to be doled out, they expect to see even more fraud in the weeks and months ahead.

"What we're worried about is that not only do we have these existing conditions, but we are awaiting — like everybody in the country — the arrival of $2 trillion to hit the streets," Merrill said. "And anytime there's that much money out there, you can just multiply the amount of frauds that are going to take place. So we're preparing for many more complaints to come in and new schemes to arrive on a daily basis."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Reluctance to use cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in environmental decision making in Germany stems from a preference for traditional approaches and a fear that it leads to loss of influence. This is suggested by new research based on interviews with those responsible for water policy management.

Samsung has created an ecommerce platform in partnership with Benow.in along with mobile phone retailers across the country that will allow them to sell and deliver smartphones. Offline stores are also being used to fulfil orders placed on Samsung’s e-store for television and appliances.

THE small pool of houses for sale in Greater Hobart is getting smaller.

Many people are angry at Sony Pictures, calling out the filmmakers of "Peter Rabbit" for portraying the dangers of food allergies irresponsibly.

Confirming a bit of conventional wisdom, a new study finds that people who fear being single often settle for less in love.

A team of researchers restored "lost memories" in the brains of mice.

A new study on religious leanings and death anxiety reveals some surprising findings.

An earless rabbit allegedly born near Japan's severely damaged Fukushima nuclear plant has become the latest poster child for the side effects of radiation expo

Which shortlisted bridge proposal for Tintagel Castle would King Arthur himself choose?

This company takes its treats to the next (green) level.

New animated short 'Piper,' about a sandpiper with hydrophobia, will appear before the highly anticipated 'Finding Dory.'

Rule No. 1: You're never too old or too young to learn to code.

Environmental advocates worry that proposed titanium mining could permanently impact the Okefenokee Swamp.

In a speech in Indonesia, Secretary of State John Kerry also derided "head in the sand" climate change deniers.

It may be subliminal, but you transmit your fear to your dentist.

Scientists discover how entire ecosystems benefit from wolves keeping herbivores on edge.

Fox News' resident rightwing rodeo clown pulls out a heaping dose of hypocrisy when he accuses world leaders gathered in Copenhagen of 'fear mongering'.

Handmade 'cuddlebatz' wraps swaddle distressed baby bats and make you forget all about vampires.

Studies show we emit chemicals that communicate emotion, and whether we realize it or not, our brain responds to fear alarms.