Growing Underground is the world’s first underground eco-farm and there isn’t a tractor in sight. Stacked, 2×1-meter trays house a variety of micro herbs, from mustard to pea shoots, all of which are grown in a tightly controlled, completely artificial environment. Aside from the herbs, and the small Growing Underground team, nothing else fills the tunnels.

How much food, and what kind, you ask? At the moment, Growing Underground produces 10 different micro herbs, which will be sold to traders at the New Covent Garden Market before ultimately gracing the dishes made by chefs at many of London’s best and biggest restaurants.

Take mustard, as an example. It’s about seven days between planting and harvesting, and the farm can produce 700 wholesale cases each day, seven days a week, 365 days per year. It’s fresher too, because the mustard is seeded and harvested once each day, and reaches the market in a matter of hours, not days. Eating some straight from the growing bed, it tasted pretty good to me. The 10 herbs are just the start.

During the GLACIER event, which stands for Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience, Obama blamed the recent rash of wildfires sweeping parts of Washington State on global warming, insisting that “climate is changing faster than our efforts to address it.”

Overall, the speech painted a fairly doom-and-gloom outlook for America and the rest of the world. So if you’re a Doomsday Prepper, here are a few excerpts from the president's speech explaining the climate-related disasters heading to a town near you:

“Your house might slide off into the ocean …or it might be engulfed in flames.

And if it doesn’t, it will definitely get sucked into a sinkhole.

Your city will either look like Atlantis or something out of the zombie apocalypse.

You might run out of fresh salmon en croûte.

Or just food, in general.

You may simultaneously die of thirst and drown, all at the same time.

You might have to begin training for the Hunger Games.

And if the famine, flood, fire and fighting doesn’t get you, the fumes definitely will.

After all, we’re running out of time. On this issue, of all issues, there is such a thing as being too late. That moment is almost upon us.”

Perhaps the president got some of his research from the crew of the Canadian CCGS Amundsen during their four-month global warming expedition - you know, before they had to bail on their mission due to ships getting stuck in ice.

He reached another post reading "1951", a marker for the edge of Alaska's Exit Glacier that year, and gazed up toward where the rock-rutted ice mass has since receded, a quarter mile away. "This is as good a signpost of what we're dealing with on climate change as just about anything," Obama told reporters near the base of the glacier.

It was the signature moment of Obama's trek to Alaska, aimed at making the world pay heed to the damage already caused by rising seas, and demand global leaders reach a deal in Paris in December to curb climate-changing carbon emissions. Last year alone, the Exit Glacier melted and retreated 187 ft (57 m) toward the Harding ice field, which itself has lost 10 percent of its mass since 1950, mainly due to climate change.

"It's spectacular," Obama said, glancing over his shoulder and pausing, as the cameras clicked. "We want to make sure that our own grandkids can see this."

He also said the People's Liberation Army would be reduced by 300,000 personnel, but gave no timeframe. China's growing military power is being keenly watched amid regional tensions. China has several territorial disputes with neighbours in the South China Sea, as well as with Japan in the East China Sea. Ahead of the parade, the US said five Chinese ships had been spotted in the Bering Sea off Alaska for the first time.

More than 30 foreign government officials and heads of state including Russia's President Vladimir Putin and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon attended the event. But many Western leaders and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have stayed away.

Mr Xi made the troop reduction announcement in a speech where he reassured the global community that "China will remain committed to peaceful development". "No matter how strong it becomes, China will never seek hegemony or expansion. It will never inflict its past suffering on any nation," he said.

That's according to "$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America," a book from publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt that will be released on September 1.

The measure of poverty isn't arbitrary - it's the threshold the World Bank uses to measure global poverty in the developed world. While it may be the norm to see families in developing countries such as Bangladesh and Ethiopia struggle to survive on such meager income, the growing ranks of America's ultrapoor may be shocking, given that the US is considered one of the most developed capitalist countries in the world.

So, how do families living on so little get by? They tend to rely on a few strategies, including selling their own plasma for $30 a pop and selling scrap metal. Some families also sell their food stamp benefits for cash, which is illegal…

The Dow fell another 468 points, or 3 percent, Tuesday, providing fresh evidence for investors the sell-off which began in August was no mirage. It is likely to continue in September. Only eight more trading days remain until the dreaded Elul 29, which is the final day of the Shemitah year, known as “wipe out day” on the Hebrew calendar.

Since Elul 29 falls on a Sunday, September 13, when the markets are closed, the rest of this week and the following week could bring the most devastating losses. Another theory is that the period of September 14-28 right after Elul 29 and leading up to a scheduled blood moon (on September 27-28) could be worth watching.

Author Jonathan Cahn points out that the years 1973, 1980, 1987, 2001 and 2008 were all Shemitah years that saw stock markets collapse. The biggest ever single-day stock market crash occurred on September 29, 2008, when the Dow fell 777.7 points and lost $1.2 trillion in value. This day also happened to be Elul 29, the last day of the Jewish year, one day before Rosh Hashana, signaling the end of the Shemitah cycle.

The first blow, it said, was the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. The English-language video included archival footage from US news channels, including a 2007 clip of Ron Paul sounding the alarm over the vulnerability of the dollar.

Produced by the Islamic State’s Al Hayat Media, the extremist Sunni group positioned itself as leading the fight against fiat currency by minting caliphate gold, silver and bronze coins. It named them after historical Islamic caliphate coins: the gold dinar, the silver dirham and the bronze fals (or the plural fulus).

Its dedication to gold – and opposition to paper notes – was grounded in the Quran, excerpts of which appeared onscreen in the video. The group vowed that in the future, it would sell oil only in exchange for gold, not “fraudulent” paper bills.

Although those fleeing the Syrian crisis have for several years been crossing into Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey in huge numbers, entering other Arab states - especially in the Gulf - is far less straightforward. Officially, Syrians can apply for a tourist visa or work permit in order to enter a Gulf state. This comes as part of wider obstacles facing Syrians, who are required to obtain rarely granted visas to enter almost all Arab countries. Without a visa, Syrians are not currently allowed to enter Arab countries except for Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen.

The relative wealth and proximity to Syria of the states has led many - in both social and as well as traditional media - to question whether these states have more of a duty than Europe towards Syrians suffering from over four years of conflict and the emergence of jihadist groups in the country.

The measure has provoked anger because it recalls Nazi Germany's practice of writing numbers on concentration camp prisoners. The controversy came as thousands of desperate migrants staged angry protests outside Budapest’s main international railway station today after Hungarian authorities refused to let them board trains bound for Western Europe.

The measure was used with large groups of refugees to keep record of family members, according to Katerina Rendlova, spokeswoman for a unit of the Czech police dealing with foreigners. 'We also write the code of the train they have arrived on so that we know which country we should return them to within the readmission system.'

Unlike some other EU member states, Czech authorities maintain that migrants who enter the country without first having made an asylum request should be returned to the state from which they arrived, in line with the EU's Dublin Provision.

When economic bubbles are said to burst, it means that buyers in a free market no longer are willing to pay more for the bubble asset than its intrinsic worth, which causes those who own the asset to lose the amount by which they previously overpaid. This drop in value usually happens quickly and often takes the form of panic selling.

It is extremely important to understand this basic phenomenon, because it now is a major factor in our everyday lives and, in my opinion, it will cause great havoc around the world in the near future.

What started me to think about this is that my friends at the Success Council, Max Wright and Jarrod Dennis, have just completed an online briefing on the imminent bursting of, not one, but seven global economic bubbles. They are:

► Government debt

► Stock market

► Real Estate

► Sovereign-bonds

► Derivatives

► Student debt

► Unfunded government liabilities

When bubbles burst, a transfer of wealth always takes place – from the victims to the schemers and from the unprepared to the prepared.

If you are wondering what life could be like when these bubbles burst in Europe and the US, just look at what is happening now in the major stock markets of the world and on the streets of Venezuela. When bubbles burst, the economy crashes, and when the economy crashes, life becomes grim, indeed.

But what is “sustainable development?”

Patrick Wood, an economist and author of “Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation,” says it’s clear the UN and its supporters see sustainable development as more than just the way to a cleaner environment. They see it as the vehicle for creating a long-sought new international economic order, or “New World Order.” Wood’s new book traces the modern technocracy movement to Zbigniew Brzezinski, David Rockefeller and the Trilateral Commission in the early 1970s.

Wood says their goal is the overthrow of capitalism and the free enterprise system on a global scale. He points to Christiana Figueres, the UN’s top climate change official, who admitted as much in a comment earlier this year. “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history,” Figueres, who heads up the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, told reporters in February.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution,” Figueres said. Francis, as the first Jesuit pope, is well known for his socialist leanings. His statements in his encyclical about the need for global governance to combat “climate change” must be looked at in the context of the pope’s background and announced priorities.

From today, France is banning the use of cash for transactions worth more than €1,000, or slightly more than £700. On one level, that is about combating crime and terrorism. But on another, it is also part of a growing movement among academics and now governments to gradually ban the use of cash completely. It is inefficient, oils the underground economy, and makes it harder for central banks to manage the economy, or so runs the argument.

Much like gold, it is a “barbarous relic”, as some publications loftily dismiss it. The trouble is, cash is also incredibly efficient. And it is a crucial part of a free society. There is no convincing case for abolition.

A world without cash would also make life significantly easier for governments. One idea is for a simple transactions tax to replace VAT, with HMRC taking a slice off every electronic payment. In countries such as Greece, where tax avoidance is rampant, it would make it a lot harder to avoid paying your fair share. On top of that, and perhaps this is where the drive to abolish cash is really coming from, it is starting to limit the ability of central banks to control the economy.

People have used notes and coins for several thousand years. The earliest go all the way back to the Iron Age. If they wither away because people prefer using their phones or their cards, then that is fine. No one wants to stand in the way of technological innovation. But outlawing cash? That is surely a step too far – and we might miss it when it’s gone far more than we realise.