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."

The move has infuriated relatives of British servicemen killed in the conflict. One grieving father, already angered by the failure of Sir John Chilcot to publish his report into the Iraq War more than six years after starting his inquiry, said the Americans should lift the ‘veil of secrecy’ to expose how ‘we were led to war based on lies and deceit’.

Last night, a Chilcot Inquiry source refused to confirm or deny whether Sir John had studied the newly classified US documents, except to say his report ‘only covered the UK Government’s involvement’. Sir John is coming under increasing pressure to publish his findings, which are not likely to be completed until next year at the earliest. After David Cameron said on Friday that he found the delay ‘frustrating’, inquiry sources indicated Sir John would break his silence this week to tell the dead soldiers’ families that he understands their ‘anguish’.

Reg Keys, whose son Lance Corporal Thomas Keys was killed in a mob ambush in Iraq in June 2003, said: ‘We are not talking about an investigation into the price of milk – we are talking about more than 3,000 injured soldiers, who want to know why we were led to war based on lies and deceit. I have now come to accept I am unlikely to find out the whole truth in my lifetime.’

More than 40 percent contained Staphylococcus aureus. Almost 20 percent contained Clostridium perfringens, which causes nearly 1 million cases of food poisoning annually, many related to beef. A significant amount also contained superbugs, bacteria that are resistant to three or more classes of antibiotics. A key reason is the overuse of antibiotics on cattle farms.

"That practice can lead to the creation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a major public health problem. If you get sick from these bugs, your infection can be difficult to treat," said Urvashi Rangan, PhD, director of Food Safety and Sustainability at Consumer Reports. But the tests revealed some good news. Ground beef from cows that are grass-fed and raised without antibiotics were three times less likely to have superbug bacteria.

"This study is significant, because it's among the largest scientific studies to show that sustainable methods of raising cattle can produce cleaner and safer ground beef," Rangan said. When shopping for ground beef, Consumer Reports recommends choosing ground beef labeled as "no antibiotics," "grass-fed," or "organic." Even better is "organic and grass-fed" beef, which in their tests was less likely to contain bacteria and superbugs. That beef also comes from animals raised in more humane conditions.

No matter what beef you buy, Consumer Reports says cooking to 160 degrees Fahrenheit is the safest temperature for your meat so that the bacteria is killed.

All of these countries have good reason to be concerned about Beijing’s recent devaluing of the yuan. Nearby nations have seen the value of their currency plummet, and the Chinese stock market has been erratic for several days, reports CNN Money. This stands in stark contrast to the positive turn of events that helped investors make a killing during the past decade. In fact, between 2005 and earlier this year, the yuan’s value versus the US dollar had risen by 33 percent.

Many people were apparently lulled into a false sense of security due to their belief that the Chinese government would never allow the yuan to drop so low that it could seriously damage the country’s economy. Additionally, most Asian nations have a large stockpile of foreign exchange reserves, and this should make it possible for them to weather most financial storms. However, the main lesson of the 1997 crisis highlights that no area is fully protected from the fluctuations of the market, and there are numerous events that can trigger a financial chain reaction.

To make matters even worse, the global market crash clock is now sitting at just one minute to midnight. This has been caused by eight main factors, according to the Telegraph UK, including China’s slowdown, declining resource sector prices, the Global Commodity collapse, credit market issues, an overvalued US market, huge interest rate increases, the UK’s bull market and the central banks spiraling out of control.

With so many financial issues happening throughout Asia and in Greece, financial experts believe it may only be a matter of time before the situation gets worse. Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, is one of them. He told Newsmax TV that the US dollar is about to burst as well, which could be devastating for America, China and many other nations worldwide. It is impossible to know if or when this will really happen, but this might not be the best time to invest in any high risk ventures.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) wants to more than double the maximum permitted level for the sweetener Acesulfame potassium in chewing gum, from 2000 mg/kg to 5000 mg/kg. The sweetener contains methylene chloride. Health advocates claim long-term exposure to the substance can cause nausea, headaches, impairment of the kidneys and liver and even cancer.

FSANZ say Acesulfame potassium - which is contained in more than 4000 food and beverages - is safe. Numerous studies from the US Food and Drug Administration had also ruled it was safe. But Consumer New Zealand board member Sue Kedgley yesterday branded the proposal to increase the limit as "ludicrous".

"Consumers would be wise to avoid all artificial sweeteners, and chewing gum for that matter," she said. "People chew gum a lot and because it mixes with saliva, the sweeteners are absorbed into the body quickly. FSANZ has an extremely permissive stance to these sweeteners. It should be lowering levels, not increasing them. Anyone who uses chewing gum should look up the ingredients. Acesulfame is one of the most controversial ingredients in the food supply chain."