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The Infodemic: China is angry with Australia; controversial legislation in Eastern Europe; fake news leads to more violence in India

Hello. We're tracking the global spread of coronavirus disinformation, and what is being done to combat it. Below you’ll find a few narratives - real and fake - that have grabbed our attention.

Let’s start in Eastern Europe where two governments in Hungary and in Poland are taking advantage of the pandemic to push through very different but equally controversial legislation:

• In Budapest, parliament is classifying the details of its most expensive infrastructure deal in history: a $2 billion railroad project with China to upgrade its Budapest-Belgrade route.
• The project is China’s first major railway project in the EU, but bizarrely, local news outlets are reporting that the deal will take 130 years to pay off in a best-case scenario, 2,400 years in a more realistic one. The headlines say it all “All Aboard the Secret Express.”

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party is pushing for new measures to toughen access to abortions.

• The new measures would ban the termination of pregnancies with malformed fetuses. Another bill up for debate would criminalize "the promotion of underage sex," which rights groups say could lead to a ban on sex education in schools.
• Amid strict social distancing measures, Polish women are finding creative ways to protest: bringing posters outside grocery stores and other essential businesses still open and protesting while standing in line. 
• “Attempting to pass these recklessly retrogressive laws at any time would be shameful, but to rush them through under the cover of the Covid-19 crisis is unconscionable,” says Amnesty International’s Draginja Nadazdin.

Meanwhile nearby, the Czech Republic is reporting a strange series of cyberattacks: