The fire at a sports hall near Nauen, about 25 miles west of Berlin, was spotted just after 2am and swiftly destroyed the structure, which had been prepared as temporary housing for about 100 migrants, the authorities said. Arson was believed to be the cause.

Officials throughout the country have scrambled to find or adapt decent places to shelter the new arrivals in Germany, where the struggle to stop anti-immigrant violence has vied with news of a mass migration not seen in Europe since the wars that ripped apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

About 3,000 people are expected to cross into Macedonia from Greece every day in coming months, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday, as they make their way to wealthier countries in northern Europe. “We do not see any end to the influx of people in coming months,” Melissa Fleming, chief spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said in Geneva.

More than $10 million a year will be needed from member states to monitor the proposed deal, said Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and funds are already running out. "The Agency has immediate funding needs related to the continuing costs of implementing monitoring and verification under the existing Joint Plan of Action. These total 800,000 euros per month," Amano said in remarks prepared for the UN nuclear watchdog's board of directors.

"The extra-budgetary contributions which we have previously received for this purpose will be exhausted by the end of September," he said. A further 160,000 euros ($185,000) per month will also be needed between the day the agreement is adopted and when it's implemented, he added, as the IAEA carries out preparatory work to enable the verification and monitoring process.

Chick-fil-A was "the second-most sought-after quick service brand at the airport, second to Chipotle," according to a 2013 survey of airport goers. But council members voiced concerns over president Dan Cathy's views on gay marriage. When asked in 2012 whether he believed in the “Biblical definition of a family unit,” president Dan Cathy replied "guilty as charged."

"All of us become more wise as time goes by. We sincerely care about all people," Cathy told USA Today last year, after his words ignited a social media firestorm. "I'm going to leave it to politicians and others to discuss social issues."

“The German government is clear in that it seeks a nationwide cultivation ban,” Fronczak said by phone from Berlin. “There’s resistance from all sides, from the public to the farmers.”

Germany is taking advantage of new measures allowing countries to opt out of growing gene-modified crops. Switzerland’s Syngenta AG and US rival Monsanto Co have been among the strongest proponents of the seeds, which are mostly banned in the EU because of what some say are uncertain environmental and health effects. Monsanto maintains the products are safe.

The Agriculture Ministry has asked for the backing of state ministries in a letter sent in the past few days, Fronczak said. Germany gave state governments a deadline until September 11 to reply. If it doesn’t hear any objections from the states, it will ask that companies exclude Germany from their applications to sell GMO seeds, Fronczak said.

The letter, signed by leaders from all the major streams of Christianity in the United States — Roman Catholic, evangelical, mainline Protestant and Orthodox, warns lawmakers that “rejection of this deal would be a rejection of the historic progress our diplomats have made to make this world a safer place.”

“Faith communities are mobilizing en masse to urge lawmakers to vote for the Iran deal, to support diplomacy as an effective foreign policy approach,” said Diane Randall, the Executive Secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “When members of Congress cast their vote, we want them to know that Christians from diverse traditions will support a vote for peace over risking war.”

The signatories include leaders from diverse Christian denominations and include the support of various Baptist, Catholic, evangelical, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, Orthodox, Mennonite, Quaker and Church of the Brethren organizations.

Billions were wiped off indices across the world in a day of frenetic selling which saw the Shanghai composite suffer an 8.5 percent decline, its worst one-day performance since 2007. The mass panic, dubbed "Black Monday" by China's official state news agency, was driven by investors' dashed hopes that Beijing would inject a fresh round of stimulus into its economy at the weekend. China's benchmark index has now lost all of its yearly gains after a relentless ascent that saw its valuation rise to record levels earlier this year.

Asian markets crashed on the news, with Japan's Nikkei closing down 4.5 percent and entering official "correction" territory. Hong Kong's Hang Seng sank 5.2 percent, its steepest sell-off in 30 years. Emerging markets, most exposed to a waning Chinese economy, saw their currencies continue an abysmal summer rout. Russia's rouble fell to an all-time low of 70.74 to the dollar, despite desperate attempts by the Kremlin to prop up its value. Contagion quickly spread west, decimating European indices, which all suffered record post-crisis losses. The FTSE 100 dropped 4.7 percent, wiping £74 billion off its market capitalisation and capping its worst one-day performance since March 2009.

"Stock markets are falling apart at the seams," said Jasper Lawler at CMC Markets. "There was one point today when there just seemed to be no buyers and markets just went into freefall." Fears soon engulfed Wall Street, where the Dow Jones lost 1,000 points minutes after the opening bell. Pre-market futures trading in the Dow and the S&P 500 had to be suspended as investors became embroiled in a manic sell-off. "Dealers don’t know what to do with themselves because the market moves are so enormous and erratic, and their levels of fear are outweighing their greed," said David Madden at IG.

Following the huge sell-offs in Asia, the FTSE 100 followed suit and lost £76 billion in value yesterday. It was feared European markets could fall again today off the back of China's continued losing streak, but investors in London appeared to have recovered their nerve with the UK's premier share index bouncing up by around 2.5 per cent in morning trading.

The index is now hovering at around 6,058, after closing at 5898.87 yesterday. The value of the FTSE 100 affects the worth of British pensions with billions of pounds in pension savings invested in the market. However, experts have urged savers to hold their nerve during the current volatile period.

The Russian news service Sputnik, an agency launched by Russia’s state-owned Rossiya Segodnya in 2014 to “target global audiences with its non-mainstream take on world events,” predicts doom for the American economy next month. In a recent article, Sputnik cites several economists warning of catastrophe.

It continues: “Most of the experts agree that all the optimistic data like record earnings on Wall Street and a surging dollar is just disguising fundamental cracks, and the collapse of historic proportions will happen within few months, starting in the US. No wonder such forecasts, and there are dozens, from professional economists leave US and the world dizzy and shivering in fear and helplessness, just what one would probably feel if the actual apocalypse was coming.”

“Advice on the looming crash, No.1: get hard cash in a safe place now; don't assume banks & cashpoints will be open, or bank cards will work,” he tweeted.

“Crash advice No.2: do you have enough bottled water, tinned goods & other essentials at home to live a month indoors? If not, get shopping.

“Crash advice No.3: agree a rally point with your loved ones in case transport and communication gets cut off; somewhere you can all head to.”

Mr McBride credited his former boss Gordon Brown with preventing a cataclysm by nationalising the banking system during the 2008 crash.

“We were close enough in 2008 (if the bank bailout hadn't worked),” he said. “and what's coming is on 20 times that scale”.

Mr McBride’s suggestions about stocking up on canned goods, setting rally points and stocking up on bottled water were ridiculed by some users on Twitter as over the top, however. Mr McBride was special adviser to Gordon Brown and head of communications at the Treasury for a period during the last Labour government.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said the Pratt & Whitney F135 engines are so unreliable at this point that it could cause further delays in what is already the US military's most expensive program. At this point the Pentagon has planned to spend nearly $400 billion on 2,443 planes — three variations of which will be produced for the Air Force, the Marines and the Navy. Estimates are that, with maintenance costs down the road, the program could top $1 trillion.

The revelations about the latest round of changes needed for the Pratt & Whitney engines also highlights the much-criticized decision to rush the planes into production before design was even completed, meaning the military has spent billions on fixing already produced aircraft that were faulty. "This will make a headline if I say it, but I'm going to say it anyway," Frank Kendall, a top Pentagon official, said in 2012. "Putting the F-35 into production years before the first test flight was acquisition malpractice. It should not have been done."

One of these corporations is Starbucks, which has repeatedly pledged support of marriage rights for everyone while remaining pitifully silent on Planned Parenthood's alleged felony crimes in providing illicit abortion services for profit. Starbucks is listed as a corporate donor on Planned Parenthood's website (or at least it was until Planned Parenthood scrubbed this information), but since the controversy has unfolded, the coffee giant has provided no clarification as to its relationship with the group.

Many other corporations, including Coca-Cola, Xerox, Ford and others were quick to pull their sponsorship of Planned Parenthood following the release of what has now developed into three separate undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood's operations. But Starbucks, Ben & Jerry's, Susan G Komen and others have remained completely silent.

The Starbucks corporation has repeatedly made it clear that the company's mission is to put its "partners" first (partners referring to Starbucks baristas and other store employees), including the right of partners to marry others of the same sex. This policy of "equality and inclusion," as Partner Resources executive vice president Kalen Holmes puts it, is a core value that Starbucks claims to embrace on all fronts. But this equality and inclusion appears to stop at the womb, with Starbucks neither denying nor affirming, according to The Daily Signal, where it stands on Planned Parenthood's exploitation of aborted babies for profit in the name of "scientific research." Where is the outcry from Starbucks in support of equality for unborn babies murdered before birth?

What about the equality of Planned Parenthood executives being held to the same legal requirements as the rest of us - selling baby body parts for profit, after all, is a felony crime. Starbucks isn't alone in its hypocrisy. The Microsoft corporation, along with Nike (another alleged corporate donor to Planned Parenthood), vocally endorsed a bill in Washington State (where Microsoft is based) to legalize gay marriage - this, of course, was before the recent Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide.

Isn't it all supposed to be about love? That's what these corporations claim to support when they endorse gay marriage and the right of all humans to love whomever they wish. But somehow that love doesn't apply when it comes to the unborn and those who illegally exploit them for profit. "The fruit we reap today from Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood comes from a seed of hatred, sin and death," wrote one commenter for The Daily Signal. "You cannot separate the fruit of this tree from its seed. Call it progress, call it freedom, or call it whatever you want; but the fact remains eugenics by any other name is still murder."