10 things you need to know this morning in Australia

Happy Wednesday, folks.

1. The Wuhan coronavirus could cost Australia's economy more than $2 billion, as its spread blitzes global markets. Analysis by PwC puts the initial cost at $2.3 billion as Chinese tourists and students cancel trips to Australia and restrict spending. It comes at a pretty poor time, as the economy struggles with bushfire recovery and a flagging retail sector.

2. Compounding the above, the Chinese government has taken the unprecedented step of banning its citizens from international group travel as it tries to contain the coronavirus. To put that in perspective, the Chinese tour group segment alone constitutes 350,000 annual visitors to Australia who spend in the region of $4 billion. That's a lot of tourism dollars.

3. But there's some good news! Experts at Melbourne's Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity became the first researchers outside of China to create a lab-grown version of the coronavirus. This is instrumental to the development of a vaccine. They will now share it with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Europe, which will distribute it to labs working on a vaccine. The University of Queensland contains one such lab.

4. Ash Barty is the first Australian woman to reach the Australian Open semifinals in 36 years, after beating Petra Kvitova on Wednesday. No other Australian woman has achieved an Australian Open semifinal appearance since the tournament moved to its current location at Melbourne Park in 1988.

https://twitter.com/AustralianOpen/status/1222003911210332161?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1222003911210332161&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com.au%2Fash-barty-australian-open-semifinal-2020-1

5. Australian retailers are banding together and fighting against 'tap and go' fees. You may not realise it, but international payment networks charge fees every time you go contactless – and the costs run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Four retailer bodies have joined up to fight the fees, claiming Australian banks simply need to open up access to an existing low-cost alternative, named Least Cost Routing.

6. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the crash which killed Kobe Bryant and nine others, but there's still a lot we don't know. Here's our timeline of the fatal accident – including the open questions which still linger about what exactly happened.

7. Apple has another record-smashing quarter. The company surpassed Wall Street’s expectations in its fiscal first quarter earnings on Tuesday, posting revenue, earnings per share, and second quarter revenue guidance that surpassed analyst estimates. It announced $US91.8 billion in revenue, whereas analysts expected $US88.37 billion. That's an all-time record for Apple.

https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/1222271811636940803

8. All the way back in 2018, Facebook announced an ambitious plan: the establishment of a $130 million 'supreme court' which would make the ultimate judgement on matters of content moderation. On Tuesday, that oversight board got its first leader: Thomas Hughes. In his previous role, which he left in early January, Hughes served as the executive director of Article 19, a British human rights group that focuses on freedom of information and expression.

9. Your daily Trump impeachment update, for those still paying attention. The president's former chief of staff, John Kelly, has sided with former national security advisor John Bolton, who apparently alleges in his upcoming book that Trump told him personally about withholding military aid from Ukraine “If John Bolton says that in the book, I believe John Bolton,” Kelly, a retired general who also served as Trump’s secretary of homeland security, told an audience in Florida on Monday night.

10. Here's something spooky for you. An exec at shadowy data analytics firm Palantir says the company's big project, which uses AI to identify enemy combatants, is “this generation’s Manhattan Project" – i.e. the project that made the nuclear bomb. The comments, made during a January all-hands meeting, come as the company expands its work on “Project Maven,” a US department of defence project, which Google stopped working on in March following protests inside of the company.

BONUS ITEM
A very important update from the Democratic campaign trail.

https://twitter.com/chrisjollyhale/status/1222257575250579458