Supply Chain Woes Could Worsen as China Imposes Covid Lockdowns

WASHINGTON — Companies are bracing for another round of potentially debilitating supply chain disruptions as China, home to about a third of global manufacturing, imposes sweeping lockdowns in an attempt to keep the Omicron variant at bay. The measures have already confined tens of millions of people to their homes in several Chinese cities and contributed to a suspension of connecting flights through Hong Kong from much of the world for the next month. At least 20 million people, or about 1.5 percent of China’s population, are in lockdown, mostly…

The importance of being allowed to act up | Brief letters

The inconclusive ending of David Baddiel’s article (‘Why don’t Jews play Jews?’ – David Baddiel on the row over Helen Mirren as Golda Meir, 12 January) is unavoidable, because the only way to achieve consistency is to revert to the assumption that actors can act. Take the case of the late Richard Griffiths’s posh gay Uncle Monty in Withnail and I. He came from an underprivileged background and was married to a woman. To have disqualified him on the basis of the latter but not the former seems risibly arbitrary.Peter…