The 16-metre-wide machine is the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) and it's a type of nuclear fusion device called a stellarator. Scientists have been talking about the enormous potential of stellarators for decades, but this is the first time a team has shown that it can produce and control plasma just as well as other fusion reactor designs.

Nuclear fusion occurs when atoms fuse together at incredibly high temperatures and generate energy, and the reason scientists are so excited about it is because it has the potential to produce an almost-unlimited supply of energy from little more than salt water. This is the same process that's fuelled our Sun for the past 4.5 billion years, and is predicted to continue doing so for another 4 billion years.

Unlike nuclear fission, which powers today's nuclear power plants, nuclear fusion also doesn't produce any radioactive waste, and is a whole lot safer. But it's also been incredibly tricky for scientists to achieve, because it requires them to construct a device that can produce and control a 100-million-degree-Celsius blob of plasma.

Probably the first time in modern Britain that Muslims, so named, became the big headline was in 1989. The Ayatollah Khominei’s fatwa called for the death of Salman Rushdie because of his “blasphemous” novel The Satanic Verses. This made waves in the United States too, but my guess is that the question of Islam did not reach the front of the American mind until 11 September 2001.

Fewer than 15 years later, it is the hottest subject. This week, Donald Trump made it hotter still. He wants a “complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s elected representatives can work out what is going on”. How have we reached this plight? Until we know the answer, we shall not begin to be able to decide how to get out of it.

Like all skilled populists, Mr Trump is touching (or rather trampling) on a real problem. If, after all, he had replaced the word “Muslims” with the words “Hindus” or “Christians” or “Jews”, everyone would immediately have concluded that he was, as well as nasty, mad. Politically, that would have been the end of him. Alas, there are two true things lying behind his idiotic policy suggestion. The first is that the problem is about Muslims. The second is that our “elected representatives” do not know what to do about it.

The Security Service Act of 1989 allows MI5 to investigate attempts to “undermine parliamentary democracy” by “political” means as well as violent ones. Islamism is, by self-definition, a political attempt to undermine parliamentary democracy, yet is largely unstudied. If our own spies won’t do it, who can? Public bodies dealing with Muslim organisations are, therefore, fighting blind, having few means of telling the good guys from the bad.

Ultimately, the capacity of a civilisation to resist those who hate it depends on its self-belief. In Europe, this was expressed in what was called Christendom, enriched by the ideas of the Enlightenment. The founders of the European Union wanted it to give Christendom modern democratic form, but this is now nearly invisible.

The leader of the union’s largest Christian Democrat party, Angela Merkel, has let more than a million mainly Muslim immigrants into her country this year alone. The East German pastor’s daughter is surely a much nicer person than Donald J Trump, but I wonder if she is not doing more actual harm to the future of the West.

Even before the Paris attacks and the subsequent bomb scare in Hanover, the tide was already turning in terms of public sentiment. Put simply, it’s not clear that Germans understood what the numbers meant until they came face to face with the influx.

On Saturday, we got the latest example of social and political unrest in Germany when an attempt by leftists to disrupt right wing demonstrations turned violent. As RT recounts, “about 150 members of different far-right organizations marched through the southern part of Leipzig. They included the neo-Nazi party Die Rechte (the Right), xenophobic organization Offensive für Deutschland (OfD) (Offensive for Germany), and a division of the PEGIDA movement called Thugida.”

Elsewhere in Germany, anti-migrant sentiment is becoming readily observable. As Deutsche Welle goes on to report, "asylum seekers arriving at a new container-style shelter in Saxony's town of Jahnsdorf were confronted by 30 people including six persons who threw stones and explosive crackers at their bus," on Thursday, the same day that the "children of refugee families were attacked by fellow school pupils in the town of Wurzen near Leipzig."

Because we couldn't imagine a more accurate way to describe the situation (and indeed we've been saying this for months), we'll simply close by quoting Aydan Özoguz, from the German government's commission for the integration of foreigners, who says he fears the country is descending into a "xenophobic abyss."

As a member of the business friendly Free Democrats (FDP), Bahrmann's seat in the regional council is at the very back and the visitors' gallery is just behind him. The pen must have come from somebody in the audience. When Bahrmann turned around, he found himself looking at a sea of hostile faces. Although there were around 80 visitors in the gallery, nobody admitted to having seen who threw the pen. On the contrary: The FDP representative and his colleagues were later insulted as being "traitors to the German people."

Ever since the regional council discussed transforming the former Hotel Weinböhla into a refugee hostel, the established political parties have been confronted with the hate of many locals. One Left Party representative was spat on as he was walking down the street while another was threatened with violence. Meanwhile, representatives from the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and the neo-Nazi NPD were celebrated for having voted against the refugees in the regional council.

The pen thrown in Meissen may not have garnered much media attention, but it says a lot about the public mood in Germany, a country in which increasing numbers of people are united against the state, its institutions and its elected officials. It is a country in which antipathy towards democracy is gradually increasing while xenophobia is growing rapidly.

And it is a country where incidents of right-wing violence are on the rise and refugee hostels are set on fire almost daily. The 1 million refugees who have arrived in Germany in 2015 are now acting as a catalyst for this new right-wing movement. The fear of foreigners, of being "swamped" by them, is bonding the New Right together and drawing more "concerned citizens" into their ranks every day.

The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service also stressed that taking any pre-emptive measures would be extremely complicated because the radicals outnumber available law enforcement staff. It “takes a lot of people, many of them to track just one,” Maassen said, while it’s impossible to “survey all of them at the same time 24 hours and 7 days a week."

The security chief also warned the number of Salafis who reside in Germany is increasing. “In Germany there are currently around 8,350 Salafis, their numbers have rapidly grown over the past months,” he said, as cited by the Mittelbayerische Zeitung on Friday, adding, “there were 7,900 of them in September.”

A huge number of unknown refugees are coming to Germany,” he told RT. “Nobody knows who are they and where they come from.” “You can’t control millions of people,” Schulze said, adding that the German government “refused to link the high threat level with the number of refugees.” Even though many of them have no links to terrorist organizations from abroad, “they can become radicalized if they cannot integrate successfully into German society,” the professor said.

The minister, who has been tipped as a possible outside candidate for the next Tory leadership race, said he thought freedom of religion was now under threat, citing the case of the advertising company that refused a Church of England cinema commercial promoting the Lord’s Prayer.

In the speech, he claimed the current mood meant “faith gets squeezed further into the margins of public life and religion becomes delegitimised through suspicion, fear or ridicule”. This could have implications for the fight against Islamic extremism, Crabb suggested.

“The answer to the seduction of Isil [Isis] is not a greater dose of secularism that delegitimises their faith in the public space,” he said. “I believe the marginalisation of religion in our national life risks pushing more young Muslims into the arms of Isil.”

In the end, the opposition was as much legal as it was political – indeed diplomats all across Europe have been at pains to stress that they wanted to help the UK de-incentivise our benefits system and remove labour market distortions, but just not that way. There were other methods available – many of which will now be considered – but as recently as two weeks ago Mr Cameron was still demanding the right for Britain to breach the core European principle of equal treatment for all nationalities doing the same job.

Mr Cameron was apparently calculating that a Europe visibly on its knees over the single currency, migration and terrorism would trade away this core principle, rather than risk a British exit and a further unravelling. That was a fundamental miscalculation. ‘No’ said Donald Tusk, the European Council president; ‘No’ said Mark Rutte, the Dutch PM and – when he telephoned to complain and ask for a ruling – ‘no’ said Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor.

On the upside, Mr Cameron’s vault-face now opens the door to a full agreement in February followed by referendum in June that will - one way or the other - end the corrosive uncertainty that currently hangs over Britain’s position in Europe, and indeed, the world. So now, at a dinner with his fellow European leaders in Brussels on Thursday night, the Prime Minister will lay out his vision for a flexible, a la carte Europe that - he will argue – simply reflects today’s ground-realities, not tomorrow’s European pipe-dream.

The success of the Front National in last Sunday’s first round of the French regional elections was not just down to anger at the government’s handling of Islamic extremism. It was also because of disillusion with the old French political class over what is seen as the Brussels-imposed austerity. In truth, France’s economic morass has less to do with Brussels than with the insane socialist policies of François Hollande – though France would greatly benefit from leaving the euro, reinstituting the franc, and devaluing to put its economy back on track. However, Marine Le Pen’s souverainiste message – promising to regain French sovereignty – has proved powerful.

The EU is also responsible for the open borders immigration policy that made it so easy for Islamic extremists to move back and forth from Belgium, and allows relatively easy passage of firearms across the continent. To be fair to the EU, though, France’s historic neglect and ill-treatment of its Muslim population has contributed greatly to tensions in that community. But the EU has scarcely made things better.

On this side of the Channel, things are going so badly with the alleged renegotiation – which has become the modern political equivalent of fairies at the bottom of the garden – that Mr Cameron’s friends are saying he may join the Brexit campaign. It is a thought that fills that campaign with horror, given the baggage Mr Cameron would bring with him, but it is highly unlikely it will ever happen. But if this “threat” was designed to shake our European partners into compliance with British wishes, it hasn’t worked.

Meanwhile, Mr Cameron must face the realities of his dismal relationship with Europe. There will be no deal on benefits, let alone on anything that really matters to the British public, such as border controls or sovereignty. The longer he postpones his referendum, the more chance that some other destructive, anti-democratic or ruinous aspect of EU policy will lead to Britain’s leaving Europe. But it no longer seems to be a question of whether Britain can survive outside the EU, as whether widespread public discontent with the anti-democratic EU will allow it to survive very long after a British exit.

A scheme pioneered by Mr Juncker’s office to address the influx by flying migrants by charter jets from Greece and Italy to new homes around the European Union has ground to a halt, moving just 184 people since it was launched in September, out of a target of 160,000. According to official figures, EU states have volunteered some 3,827 reception places for migrants, with some 156,000 left to find.

The feeble response is a source of embarrassment for the European Commission - and of quiet satisfaction to eastern European states which insisted the plans would not work and protested they were an unacceptable infringement of sovereignty. The relocation policy was announced in Mr Juncker’s ‘State of the Union’ address in September, and driven through the European Council by a majority vote against the wishes of Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Romania.

Since then, several states – among them Austria, Estonia and Slovenia – have effectively boycotted the scheme by not making available places. The migration crisis is top of the agenda at this week’s European Council summit in Brussels, at which Britain’s renegotiation will also be discussed. Leaked papers hint at forcing migrants to take part in the scheme, saying progress has been "insufficient" and that leaders will discuss how they can “discourage refusal of registration”.

Leaders are due to agree to "implement relocation decisions more rapidly", and will consider whether the scheme should be expanded to evacuate migrants from other overwhelmed countries, such as Sweden. Some credit Mr Juncker with showing leadership by pushing the scheme through at a time of chaos. But many national diplomats point out that they repeatedly warned the complicated scheme was doomed to failure, because the majority of the refugees from the Middle East are intent on reaching only Germany, Sweden or Britain, and have no desire to be “relocated” to Tallinn, Poznan or Bucharest. Those that did agree to be moved, the argument goes, would be on the first coach to Frankfurt.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin said recently the Vatican was considering whether to ramp up security. He said: "The Vatican could be a target because of its religious significance. We are capable of increasing the level of security in the Vatican and the surrounding area. But we will not let ourselves be paralysed by fear." Rome has been the subject of a number of threatening terror films released by the extremists in recent weeks.

It is thought the focus on Rome, and specifically the Vatican City, may be in response to the Pope's recent condemnation of the deadly terror attacks in Paris, as well as its status of the capital of the Catholic world. The latest, and most ominous video, shows CGI ISIS tanks advancing on a crumbling Colosseum, promises a final battle between "believers" and "crusaders."

It also shows an eerie St Peter's Basilica, the papal enclave within the Vatican City, bathed in an orange light and accompanied by chilling music. The video's narrator then apparently claims that ISIS will take over Rome, destroying crucifixes and taking Christian women as slaves.

Robots are already being weaponized: In 2014, a South African company started selling drones that could shoot 80 pepper balls per second, and police in North Dakota have been cleared to use a type of drone that is armed with tear gas and Tasers. Police use of Tasers — they’re designed to be nonlethal but can trigger cardiac arrest — killed 540 Americans from 2001 to 2013, according to Amnesty International.

Right now, this technology requires an operator to remotely control the robots and the weapons. But autonomous weaponized robots are already being used by the Israeli military to patrol that nation’s borders, and a Texas company has created a drone to hover over private property and, without human instruction, fire a Taser dart to keep a potential intruder under shock until the authorities arrive. Imagine a convergence in technology that also gives these robots facial-recognition capability.

Given the right circumstances, such as a terrorist threat, these robots could be rolled out in large numbers to protect citizens. Connected to the cloud in order to work in tandem with other robots, they would be the perfect tools to ID and track large numbers of people from afar and from the air. The threat of future attacks would make these robots hard to put away again.

And don’t forget the problems with all computerized devices: They can be hacked and used against the authorities or innocent victims. They can be spoofed about their location and crash into buildings. And they have already been used to commit crimes like theft, snooping and drug smuggling.

We shouldn’t stifle the onset of new technologies that could help humanity, but we need a bill of human technological rights to ensure our individual freedoms. Otherwise, I am predicting a gradual erosion of human rights such as freedom of movement, privacy and even life.

Assange addressed the panel on security and surveillance hosted by RT in central Moscow on Thursday via videoconference from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has remained holed up for the last three years in order to avoid extradition to Sweden.

When offered a chance to comment on the session’s topic – “Security or Surveillance: Can the right to privacy and effective anti-terror security coexist in the digital age?” – the whistleblower asked the moderator, and host of The Big Picture Show on RT American, Thom Hartmann: “How long have you got, Tom?” implying he has a lot to say on the issue. But it was Assange’s only joke during the event, as his reply turned out to be gravely serious and in many respects depressing.

“In thinking about this issue I want to take quite a different position, perhaps, from what you would expect me to have taken… I think that we should understand that the game for privacy is gone. It’s gone. The mass surveillance is here to stay,” he said. Mass surveillance is already being implemented not only by major world powers, but also by some medium and small-sized countries, he added.

“The Five Eyes intelligence arrangement [of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US]… is so evasive in terms of mass surveillance of domestic and international telecommunications that while some experts can achieve practical privacy for themselves for limited number of operations… it’s gone for the rest of the populations,” the WikiLeaks founder stressed.

International terrorists are among those “experts” capable of making their communications invisible for security agencies, he added. Privacy “will not be coming back, short of a very regressive economic collapse, which reduces the technological capacity of civilization,” Assange said.

First of all, what proportion of the population is same-sex attracted? On page 8 of the booklet for teachers, it states very clearly that "10% of people are same-sex attracted". This is supported by Footnote 9, which refers the reader to a monograph, the 5th national survey of Australian secondary students and sexual health, published by the Australian Research Centre in Sex Health and Society at La Trobe University.

However, nowhere does the 10% statistic appear in the reference. So what is its source? On page 23, the La Trobe University survey states that "a proportion (6% overall: 8% boys, 4% girls) reported being attracted exclusively to people of the same sex". In addition, 4% (4% boys and 5% girls), were unsure about their sexual attraction. It appears that the 10% figure may have been reached by adding those who were exclusively attracted to those who were unsure.

The Safe Schools Coalition needs to explain how it got its figures so wrong. One explanation may be its highly unprofessional research methods. The “All Of Us” study guide says that the figures are based on "Australian and international research". This is nonsense. The two footnotes are just reports based on rough-and-ready surveys, not peer-reviewed journals.

Figures about the LGBT population are always going to be controversial. The Safe Schools Coalition could have used figures provided by the best-known LGBT think tank, the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School in California. It is “dedicated to conducting rigorous, independent research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy”. Its fact sheet, “How many people are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender?” is freely available. The author, Gary J Gates, is a well-known American demographer specialising in LGBT issues whose work has been used in US Supreme Court cases.

Surprisingly, Gates’ figures are far, far lower than those cited in the “All Of Us” program: “An estimated 3.5% of adults in the United States identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and an estimated 0.3% of adults are transgender,” he writes. If Gates is correct, the “All Of Us” figure for same-sex attracted people is about 180% too high and for transgender people about 1200% too high.

The teen years are a turbulent time for children. What they need to survive and thrive is the truth, not the propaganda in the “All Of Us” program.

There are just 150 residents of the picturesque hamlet, while up to 200 men will be kept there at a time, in some cases for up to three weeks. Residents have posted flyers saying the move is “entirely disproportionate”. That is putting it mildly. Who on earth really thinks it is a good idea to house people from a totally different cultural background in a tiny village that will not be able to cope?

The problems that will arise are entirely predictable, not least because they have happened elsewhere including Germany where long-term residents have been turfed out of their homes to make way for incomers. This is a recipe for unrest.

A government’s first duty is to its own people, not migrants from other countries who know nothing about Britain and feel neither loyalty nor love for the UK. Immigration has already changed the face of Britain almost beyond recognition. If the Government doesn’t get a grip it will pay dearly at the ballot box.