lockdown

The Disney resort in Shanghai, China was set to resume partial operations after the end of two grueling months of lockdown, but a new set of covid cases proves it won’t be so easy to return to normal for the city’s attractions.Photo: Hu Chengwei (Getty Images)Little more than a week after Shanghai, China crawled out of one of the most severe and taxing covid lockdowns anywhere in the world, the city is once again on notice for covid spread while millions are being told to hole up and prepare for mass testing.Reuters…

HONG KONG—As Shanghai tries to get back to work this week after a two-month anti-Covid shutdown, companies are beginning to bring back employees and restore supply chains.For many workers, there was a different sense of relief: They finally got to go home after weeks spent living and sleeping in stores, offices and factories to keep the economy turning. “I’m very happy to go back home. Living and working at the office was a very unusual experience,” said Lily Hui, who spent almost two weeks hunkered down with around 20 of…

A patient who received a donated liver that had been stored for three days in a new type of machine that mimics the human body is healthy one year on from surgery, according to a study in Nature Biotechnology.The technology could significantly increase the number of livers suitable for transplant, the authors claim, both by enabling donor livers to be preserved for longer than the current standard, and by making it possible to repair organs that are available but too damaged to transplant as is.Although further research…

David Sedaris lives in West Sussex – where he has attained local treasure status thanks to his proclivity for late-night litter-picking – but spent the Covid lockdowns in New York. As a self-confessed attention junkie, the enforced hiatus hit him hard. Of the live audiences he misses, he writes: “It’s not just their laughter I pay attention to but also the quality of their silence” – and you can’t replicate that over Zoom. In this new memoir, Sedaris recounts his lockdown experience with his customary blend of wry…

A study conducted at the Paris Brain Institute has revealed our creativity increased despite the lockdown.How the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown influenced our creativityCovid-19 caught us off guard, and the unusual circumstances of the initial lockdown demanded extraordinary adaptability, particularly from our brains. A new study from the Paris Brain Institute (Inserm/CNRS/Sorbonne University/AP-HP) has revealed how human creativity developed throughout this time period and the variables that may have impacted it.…

Over the past two years, very few heads of government anywhere in the world remained unscathed by the ravages of the worst pandemic the world had seen in a century. Many saw their reputation in tatters, and some were swept out of government by the bitter anger of their devastated people. It is therefore in the fitness of things for a book length examination of why and how India’s Narendra Modi represents that rarest phenomenon -- an already overwhelmingly popular leader whose approval ratings not only did not fall but…

Alibaba on Thursday beat expectations for fourth-quarter revenue, as growing demand for some of its niche online shopping services in China offset weakness at its main marketplaces caused by the country's COVID-19 lockdowns.US-listed Alibaba shares, which have lost roughly a third of their value so far this year, were up about 5 percent in premarket trading.Revenue in Alibaba's cloud computing division rose 12 percent to 18.97 billion yuan (roughly Rs. 21,845 crore) in the reported quarter. At the core commerce unit, its…

In the past few months, the Chinese government imposed strict lockdown measures in response to a new wave of COVID-19. The restrictions impacted production and logistics in the region. Apple’s suppliers were also affected, with the iPhone maker having already warned that it expects to lose up to $8 billion in the June quarter. We wondered whether the iPhone 14 would see launch delays following the lockdowns, even though development seemed to be on schedule. A brand new report from Asia indicates that at least one…

Apple has told its suppliers to speed up iPhone development after China's strict COVID-19 lockdowns hampered schedule for at least one of the new phones, Nikkei reported on Wednesday, citing multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.Lockdowns due to China's zero-COVID policy led iPhone assembler Pegatron to suspend operations at its Shanghai and Kunshan plants last month.Financial hub Shanghai remains largely paralysed by a city-wide lockdown, which is now in its seventh week, while Beijing has ramped up quarantine…

Guangzhou-based Xpeng is one of several Chinese electric car companies that's started to expand overseas.Feature China | Future Publishing | Getty ImagesBEIJING — In a sign Chinese drivers are still willing to buy electric, start-up Xpeng said that demand for its cars has shaken off the impact of price hikes.From Nio to Tesla, electric car companies in China have raised prices in the last few months, citing the impact of rising commodities costs such as those for battery components.After hiking prices by a few thousand…