In what could be a major breakthrough for N95 masks production in India, two Rajkot-based engineering firms have developed the machine indigenously to make this medically crucial masks. Most companies making N95 masks have been procuring the manufacturing machines from China, Japan and South Korea.

Amid prevalent chaos and uncertainty over access to the essential services and commodities during the lockdown, we bring you the latest updates from your city.

(This story originally appeared in AhmedabadMirror on May 9, 2020)

Demanding a return passage to their home states, hundreds of agitated migrant workers clashed with the police at Mora village in Gujarat's Surat district on Saturday, an official said.

Did you know that you can access The New York Times via Durham University Library and Collections? As well as access to current articles, via TimesMachine you can access The New York Times archive as far back as 1851. Access The New York Times Access the archive via TimesMachine See what other newspapers and news services are available via Durham University Library and Collections

Our cultural values are making us sad: money, mortality, and fear of missing out.

In a video chat last night, a friend admitted, “I’ve been crying a lot, and I’m not sure why.” COVID-19 has given us many reasons to weep. We’re out of our routines, the stock market has plunged, and we imagine millions dying. This virus and economic crisis punch us squarely where our spiritual armor is weakest: mortality, money, and our fear of missing out.

In 2 Corinthians 7, Paul distinguishes between two kinds of sorrow—a sorrow that “leads to death,” and a “godly sorrow.” The latter “brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret” (v. 10). Godly sorrow, he writes, produces “earnestness,” eagerness to repent, and a “longing” and “readiness to see justice done” (v. 11). The question the church faces now is which kind of sorrow COVID-19 will bring.

We are in the midst of the most widespread societal upheaval that many people alive today have ever experienced. Already our institutions, habits, relationships, and culture are shifting before our eyes. Frank M. Snowden, author of Epidemics and Society, shared with the New Yorker, “Epidemics are a category of disease that seem to hold up the mirror to human beings as to who we really are.” The question we are facing is not whether we will experience sorrow and change; the question is how. As biblical prophets walked with people through catastrophes, their advice was never to just endure until it ends. Instead they focused on proactively changing relationships with each other and with God.

As a cultural anthropologist who grew up in a middle-class white United States home and then lived for much of my adult life in Nicaragua, China, and South Africa, ...

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The unfortunate truth is that even in our ability to retreat into ignorance, we betray the disparity in our experiences and the systemic injustice in our culture.

For many in America, responding to the seemingly-endless shootings of African Americans has become a horrific form of muscle memory. After yet another tragedy like the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery occurs, we see similar patterns: an initial burst of reporting, followed quickly by social media commentary, followed by think-pieces across various platforms, followed by social media commentary on the think-pieces.

Within a week, however, the entire matter is tied up nicely and everyone is able to move on. Most of us forget as we return to being engrossed in our lives, only to be thrust back into this cycle when another new shooting is jarring enough to penetrate the blaring noise of our daily news-cycle.

The fact that Arbery was killed in February and many didn’t know until May speaks to our dependence upon images to incite response—a dependency that, as many have pointed out, dehumanizes victims and establishes a bar of proof we don’t demand of others.

Moreover, the fact that only images push us to take seriously these stories underlines the frenetic nature of our media landscape. So few stories not drenched in the political and culture wars theming our day are able to rise above the chaos to capture our attention. That many are feeling oversaturated and digitally burned out during our current crisis has only exacerbated this problem of ignorance.

The unfortunate truth is that even in our ability to retreat into ignorance, we betray the disparity in our experiences and the systemic injustice in our culture. While this story (despite being so relevant and discussed currently) will fade for most of us, for others this story is their experience. They carry it with them when they wonder if it is safe to go for runs in ...

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Parenting children requires a rich understanding of God’s nature.

Mothers today face an onslaught of mixed messages about how best to parent in the 21st century. Podcasts, blogs, and books on mommy-ing abound, but many of them indulge regularly in shallow parenting advice and fallacies about excessive self-care or “me-time.”

In the midst of the coronavirus quarantine, moms on social media often advise diametrically opposed strategies: Take regular mental health breaks while your children gorge on Netflix, or schedule out every minute of children’s at-home education so they don’t fall behind in productivity. The message seems to be either “love yourself first” or “pour all your energy into your children’s future.”

Neither side answers the more important question: How do we mother like Jesus Christ during this particular cultural moment? In the words of an overused adage, “What would Jesus do?”

In Motherhood: A Confession, Natalie Carnes, associate professor of theology at Baylor University, attempts to answer this question by sharing her personal experience of raising three daughters. She follows the structure and style of Augustine’s autobiography, Confessions, and elevates the conversation about motherhood from the self-centered to the spiritual without ever losing touch with the beauty of the ordinary. Part memoir and part theological study, Motherhood: A Confession explores “how motherhood, infancy, and children disclose what it means to be human in relation to the divine.”

Carnes’s core argument is that mothering imitates God. We birth forth disciples, hand down tradition, and grow our children into the church. By knowing the maternal attributes of God, we better mother our own children, and we also ...

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How the pandemic concentrated pressures on small churches—and how the body of Christ is stepping up to help, one $3,000 grant at a time.

Philadelphia pastor Kevin Cropper’s heart sank last month when he saw a message asking for food among the prayer requests emailed to his church.

“It was a request for something tangible, and we didn’t have it,” Cropper said.

His congregation, Ark of Safety Christian Church, had canceled its weekly food distribution since it ran out of donations when it stopped gathering in March. “It makes you feel bad because isn’t that what our mission is? We want to be able to help in this type of crisis, but we need the resources to do it.”

That’s the problem with being a small, inner-city black church during a pandemic. Black adults are more than twice as likely as whites or Hispanic Americans to know someone who has been hospitalized or died due to COVID-19. Their communities are afraid, grieving, and suffering from the virus themselves; and they are far less likely to have the staff, budgets, or space to help as much as they feel called.

“We are in the city. We don’t have acres, we stay close to each other, and it’s very easy to spread the virus,” said Kato Hart Jr., pastor of Hold the Light Ministries, a Church of God in Christ (COGIC) congregation in Detroit.

American counties with a higher-than-average proportion of black residents now account for half of coronavirus cases and 60 percent of deaths. Even in a church of 50, word keeps spreading of which members have lost relatives to the virus: aunties, uncles, grandparents. Hart has lost fellow brothers in ministry, citing a letter from denominational leadership saying 30 COGIC bishops have fallen to COVID-19—including a dozen in Michigan alone.

“We’re in a fight, and we need help. These megachurches, ...

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(UPDATED) The St. Louis pastor spoke up about the difficulties faced by leaders and critiqued “celebrity culture” in ministry.

Darrin Patrick, a megachurch pastor, author, and speaker, has died.

Patrick was a teaching pastor at Seacoast Church, a multi-site megachurch based in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and the founding pastor of the Journey Church in St. Louis, where he lived.

In a Friday evening update, Seacoast Church stated: “Darrin was target shooting with a friend at the time of his death. An official cause of death has not been released but it appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. No foul play is suspected.”

Patrick’s unexpected death came as a shock to friends and colleagues. Robby Gallaty, pastor of Long Hollow Baptist, in Hendersonville, Tennessee, said that Patrick was scheduled to speak at his church next weekend.

“I just talked to him Tuesday and Wednesday,” said Gallaty. “This is the second close friend I have lost in a year.”

Gallaty first met Patrick in 2015 and had invited him to speak the following year at a men’s ministry event at Long Hollow. Just before the event, he said, Patrick called and said he was leaving the ministry.

At the time, Patrick had been a rising star among Reformed evangelical circles and was serving as vice-president of the Acts 29 church planting network. He was fired from Journey for what church elders called misconduct including “inappropriate meetings, conversations, and phone calls with two women” and an abuse of power.

Despite Patrick’s fall from ministry, the two stayed friends. Patrick admitted his faults and got counseling. He went through a restoration process that lasted 26 months, according to a 2019 blog interview posted at Christianity Today. He returned to the ministry as a preacher but not as a senior pastor of a church. ...

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I wish the world saw me as a Christian first, not as a threat.

I was on my morning run as the sun was rising in the blue California skies. There was hardly anybody out at that time. You learn real young not to run too early in the morning or too late at night.

I guess I forgot the lessons, the safety agenda my parents taught me. They knew what would happen. I brought my identification like my wife tells me to every time I leave. During the run, I wasn’t worried about anything, and I felt good. I couldn’t wait to check my pace on my fitness tracker.

Then it happened. I looked in the distance, and there was this white man on his porch taking photos of me. Every shot he took, I got more confused. I said, “It’s a good morning out here, isn’t it?” as if me being respectable was going to shield me in this situation or get him to finally see me as a human.

He didn’t answer. Here we go again.

My fear quickly turned to rage. I wanted to fight for my dignity in the face of being documented by a stranger and being told I didn’t belong here. Policed by a man standing on his front porch. Right there in Southern California, the ghost of Jim Crow’s “What are you doing here, n—r?” showed up.

But ultimately, I felt powerless. I couldn’t even call the cops because they might’ve mistaken me for the aggressor. This is what black men have to deal with, while others can enjoy their runs. Again and again, year after year. This rage forces me to be angry about our reality and have the faith to believe that better is possible.

But on that day last year, my rage that turned into deep sadness. On the walk home, I stopped, bowed my head, and cried. These were not tears of weakness. I cried because I felt what many of those who looked ...

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