India plans database to help informal workers access state aid
Mumbai, IndiaThomson Reuters Foundation India unveiled plans on Monday to create a database registering hundreds of millions of informal workers, many of whom have struggled to access state aid during the COVID-19 pandemic because they are undocumented. Announcing the annual budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said 1.3 billion rupees ($US20.5 million) would be spent to […]
Big stories
Why are we not as unified as we seemed in the past? What is your ‘big story’? PICTURE: Samantha Sophia/Unsplash French sociologist Émile Durkheim argued it is a community’s shared overarching stories that defined a society; quite literally the stories constructed society. If we all have the same story – The Exodus, Dreamtime or Easter […]
Catholic Church: German bishops’ summit considers women and lay roles as answer to abuse crisis
CLAIRE GIANGRAVÉ, writing for Religion News Service, reports on the resumption this week of deliberations among German Catholic bishops on some of the most controversial issues facing the church, not only in Germany, but across the globe…
In the US, some Southern Baptist pastors are calling Kamala Harris ‘Jezebel.’ What do they mean?
RNS It didn’t take long after the inauguration of the nation’s first woman vice president for some pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention to start comparing her to the Bible’s most nefarious woman. Two days, to be exact. Then Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event on Tuesday, 27th October, […]
Essay: Reconciliation needs truth
Sojourners founder JIM WALLIS, writing in the US context, says it’s time for time for an American version of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission…