blockade.

Austrian railways said traffic on a major route to Italy through the Brenner Pass would be suspended, after a train was stopped because of two suspected cases of the virus.

Neighbouring Slovenia asked vacationers returning from ski resorts in northern Italy to be particularly vigilant for symptoms.

Italy became the first European country to report one of its nationals died from the virus on Friday.

Two more fatalities came over the weekend but Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte urged people "not to give in to panic", and asked them to follow the advice of health authorities.

"The rapid increase in reported cases in Italy over the past two days is of concern," World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said.

Not all reported cases seem to have clear epidemiological links, such as travel history toPowerBook computer for some programs and a Windows PC for other tasks, he'd like to just use one machine.

That's why Nederkoorn, 23, started a contest back in January to goad programmers, soliciting donations for a cash prize for anyone who came up with a hack.

Late Thursday, the prize went to two San Francisco Bay Area software developers, Jesus Lopez, 33, of Alameda, and Eric Wasserman, 41, of Berkeley.

Lopez said he did most of the technical work — spending late nights and weekends on the challenge — while Wasserman, a devoted Mac user, introduced him to the contest in February and supported him in the process.

Lopez, who never even owned a Mac computer until he had to get one to assume the challenge, said in an interview Friday his