That gender-trumps-biology demand requires government to silence women when men who claim they are women parade into women’s’ bathrooms and showers, sports contests and civic groups, or into fashion and status displays or into feminist advocacy groups.

The ideology also requires that men keep quiet when women claim they are men, and demands that parents and doctors, reporters, researchers and surgeons all stay silent in face of growing evidence that the ideology and associated medical treatments are hazardous to the subjects’ lifetime physical health and to personal stability.

But its woes are only a harbinger of what’s to come. The SPD’s political competitors face similar questions over the coming years and will need to reinvent themselves to remain relevant. It’s a process of internal change that could have serious consequences for Germany’s European and global engagement.  The demise of social democracy across Europe has caught up with Germany, and has put a serious question mark over the future shape of the country’s political left. 

The SPD is desperate to avoid the fate of its counterparts in the Netherlands (the Labor Party) and France (the Socialist Party), which were obliterated in recent polls. Currently polling at historic lows — between 17 to 19 percent according to recent figures — the party knows it urgently needs to change direction. 

It’s no secret that a significant faction within the CDU has taken inspiration from Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his right-wing coalition and wants the party to take a turn to the right. 

If, as seems most likely, SPD members back the coalition next month, Germany will settle in for another four years of “grand coalition.” The news will calm the waters and create the illusion of steadiness. But the ground is shifting under Germany’s feet. The next four years will be a major test for its major political forces.

For example, through the use of what Amazon calls “skills”, Alexa can perform the role of an entertainer that plays music and reads bedtime stories, a teacher who answers homework questions, and even a tutor that teaches children a foreign language. It may, therefore, seem like a good idea to expose children to AI technology from a young age, but it’s not yet clear how interactions with artificial intelligence can affect the ways in which children think and behave.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Dr Allison Druin, a child development expert, explained that AI-enabled digital assistants “don’t have emotional intelligence.” She pointed out that young children are naturally inclined to anthropomorphize objects by attributing human qualities to non-human objects and forming emotional connections to these entities.

Studies show that children are, just like adults, biased to learn from sources that are familiar and look and sound similar to them. This means that children are more likely to accept the information offered by a friendly digital home assistant that they “know” without questioning the answers or asking for evidence.

Unfortunately, the same large Silicon Valley companies and people who have been accused of censorship and discrimination against conservatives are developing these algorithms that answer kids’ questions about the world. In doing so, they are introducing their own ideological biases into AI systems like Alexa or Google Assistant.

When popular conservative commentator Steven Crowder posted a video of himself posing political and religious questions to Amazon’s Alexa home assistant in November 2017, many of his viewers were surprised to learn just how “helpful” Alexa tried to be — by telling him that there were more than two genders and that Jesus Christ was a fictional Biblical character.

If AI developers are mostly progressive liberals, is it a good idea to expose our children to it, and if so, how much?

Writing in a blog on the website of the £33,960-a-year Gresham's School in Holt, Norfolk, Mr Robb said he was worried that some young people lacked "grit" and "look down their noses" at certain jobs. Mr Robb added: "Grit is not a new idea, nor even a new buzzword. Grit remains, however, something that schools and parents seem to have failed to engender in large swathes of young people." His blog went on: "Among this generation there is an underlying sense of entitlement. I don't blame them.

"They have been advertised to since birth; they have had credit and loans on a plate; they have been overly molly-coddled; and they have been overwhelmed by a strange combination of fictional sit-com characters, reality TV and social media stars, who paint a picture of perfection to be achieved.

"They have even been encouraged by governments to believe that they deserve 'more' than their parents and grandparents had (capitalism, after all, requires consumers to always want to have 'more')."

Rezaei said, “If they [Israel] carry out the slightest unwise move against Iran, we will level Tel Aviv to the ground and will not give any opportunity to Netanyahu to flee.”  He was quoted as saying in an interview with Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar News: “The US and Israeli leaders don’t know Iran and don’t understand the power of resistance and therefore they continuously face defeat. Today, the situation of the US and Israel indicate their fear of the Zionist regime’s collapse and the US decline,” Rezaei added.

Israel came in direct conflict with Iran on February 10, when an Israeli Air Force attack helicopter shot down an Iranian-operated drone and later took out its command center in Syria. According to the Iranian Mehr News Agency, which is run by the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization, Rezaei also said that while Iran supports what it calls the “Resistance Front” stretching from Tehran to Gaza, the regime does not interfere in the Palestinian territories or in Lebanon but merely offers advisory help.

He added that Iran does not want to dominate the countries in the region, but wants them to stand on their own feet. Rezaei’s pointed comments came in response to Netanyahu’s warning to Iran “not to test Israel’s resolve.” Netanyahu said at the Munich conference, which was attended by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, that Israel “will act not just against Iran’s proxies that are attacking us, but against Iran itself.”

The scientific breakthrough could potentially save the lives of thousands of people who are in a dire need of vital organ transplants. While many patients die before they move up to the top of a queue, organs grown inside a sheep, like a pancreas, can not only save a life but also cure a chronic illness such Type 1 Diabetes, the researchers say.

This week, the team from Stanford University was able to grow a sheep embryo injected with adult human stem cells for 28 days, including 21 days inside a sheep, it announced at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Austin, Texas, the Guardian reports. The experiment had to be terminated, as the law prohibits developing cross-species embryos, called chimera, for more than 28 days.

In a passionate speech, he claimed that Islam would soon 'knock on Central Europe's door' from both the west and the south. Orban, who is seeking a third consecutive term in April's elections, called for a global alliance against migration.   

In his speech, he insisted that Western Europe is being overtaken by Muslims, before claiming that 'born Germans are being forced back from most large German cities, as migrants always occupy big cities first.' He made the claims as his right-wing populist Fidesz party began campaigning for an April 8 election in which it is expected to win a third consecutive landslide victory. 

He is popular in Hungary but is increasingly at odds with mainstream European Union politicians. Orban has seemingly thrived on controversy, including repeated clashes with Brussels.  Those conflicts are mostly centred on migration, since people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa flooded into Europe in 2015.  They have recently intensified as the elections approach, with Orban posting himself as a saviour of Europe's Christian nations.