Good morning from the Financial Times.

Today is Friday, August 20th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

The chip shortage is back, and it's hitting the car industry in a big way.

The Taliban's rule in Afghanistan is raising the specter of new refugee flows.

We'll talk to a correspondent in Germany, where memories of the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis

are still fresh in people's minds.

Experts who know about the situation with migration say that any parallels with 2015 are completely misplaced.

And, in the last of our summer book chats, we'll talk about the titles that made the long list

for this year's FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.

I'm Joanna Gao, in for Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Three of the world's biggest car makers yesterday announced their production would be disrupted

because they don't have enough semi-conductor chips.

Now, this comes as COVID sweeps across Southeast Asia, where many chips are made.

One of the car makers, Ford, said one of its plans would halt assembly of the popular F-150 pickup

truck for a week, starting Monday. General Motors added or extended downtime at production lines

in North America. In Toyota, said it would slash global production by 40% starting next month.

Here's the FT's Tokyo correspondent, Kana Inagaki.

Toyota is blaming the sudden surge in coronavirus cases.

I'm the two big countries that have been affected is Vietnam and Malaysia,

which have critical roles in producing electronics, as well as packaging and testing components.

It's going to affect basically all the plans across the world, but the biggest area that will be

hit is home market in Japan, where 14 out of the 15 plans will be affected.

...