Free Republic

Texas Baptists elected an ordained female clergywoman as convention president this week for the first time ever. Debbie Potter, children’s pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, was chosen as president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas in a race with Kevin Burrow, pastor of First Baptist Church of Eastland, Texas. The vote was 430 to 320. The BGCT is the largest and oldest of the two state Baptist conventions in Texas that relate to the Southern Baptist Convention. The other, Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, was formed in 1998 by conservatives who thought the BGCT was not...

BREXIT blowhard Nigel Farage finally exploded under the weight of his own pomposity yesterday. After delivering his last-chance ultimatum to Boris Johnson at the start of the election campaign, Mr Farage crumpled yesterday and ran away. He ordered the PM to dump his newly negotiated EU deal and give the Brexit Party a clear run in 150 strong Remain seats. Unless BoJo did as he was told, Farage threatened to split the pro-Brexit vote by standing in every constituency. But the PM just ignored him and watched poll support for the Brexit Party tick steadily downwards into single figures. Now...

According to a report in the Financial Times, a team of researchers from Google led by John Martinis have demonstrated quantum supremacy for the first time. This is the point at which a quantum computer is shown to be capable of performing a task that’s beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional supercomputer. The claim appeared in a paper that was posted on a NASA website, but the publication was then taken down. Google did not respond to a request for comment from MIT Technology Review.