A severe drought affecting Brazil’s biggest city has led to a “water war” that could cause the water supply to collapse in parts of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Authorities in São Paulo have been battling a water crisis for months as reservoirs run dry for lack of rainfall.

Earlier this month, the state energy company in São Paulo (Cesp) asked the national operator of the electric system (ONS) to reduce the water flow at the Jaguari hydro-electric dam on the Rio Paraíba do Sul from 40,000 litres per second to 10,000 litres per second.

The measure was intended to priorities water supply to residents in São Paulo state over energy generation.

But according to the ONS, which reduced the flow over several days to just 30,000 litres per second, a unilateral reduction would empty reserves and leave millions in 41 municipalities without water by the end of October.

In a statement, the operator said: “The ONS informed the National Water Agency and Cesp that it was not considered viable to meet the request of the agency.”

Public prosecutors in Rio have requested information about increasing the water flow of the Paraíba do Sul river, which runs through Rio state and into São Paulo.

The dispute over resources has caused conflict between the state governments in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Reports suggested the row could end up in the hands of the president, Dilma Rousseff.

“São Paulo cannot take a unilateral decision,” Luiz Fernando Pezão, Rio governor, told Estado newspaper.

“I’m sure the federal government, through the National Water Agency, will determine what has to be done with the Paraíba do Sul river.”

Residents in Rio state have reportedly already been affected with shortages that coincided with the temporary reduction in water flow at the dam.

Local authorities said families in Barra do Piraí were finding their taps dry for 12 hours a day.

Mayor Maércio de Almeida blamed Cesp’s request for a reduction in water flow.

“This decision was nonsense, taken without consulting anyone,” he said. “I hope the National Water Agency will take some action.”

The drought in the region supplied by the Paraíba do Sul river was said to be worse than that affecting the Cantareira system, which supplies 8.45 million people in São Paulo and surrounding areas.

At the end of last month, federal prosecutors recommended immediate water rationing in São Paulo after a study suggested the system could dry up within 100 days.

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Sir Cliff Richard has been accused of molesting a young boy when he sang at a Christian rally organised by Billy Graham, the American evangelist, in the Eighties, it has emerged.

The 73-year-old entertainer on Thursday protested his innocence and was preparing to return to Britain from his holiday home in Portugal to answer police questions in connection with the sex abuse claim.

Sir Cliff, whose home in Berkshire was searched by police on Thursday afternoon, issued a robust statement from his house in the Algarve, vehemently denying the allegation, but pledging to co-operate with the investigation.

He said he had been aware of allegations “for many months” and said they were “completely false”.

The alleged assault is said to have taken place in June 1985, when Sir Cliff appeared as a special guest of Mr Graham, who was hosting a week of events attended by tens of thousands of people at Sheffield’s Bramall Lane football stadium.

Sir Cliff, a devout Christian, who first met Mr Graham in the Sixties, was a surprise guest on the bill for the last night of his Mission England tour in Sheffield, and delighted the large crowds with renditions of his most popular songs as well as hymns.

At some time during or after the festivities, it is alleged that he assaulted a boy who was under the age of 16 at the time.

More than a quarter of a century after the concert took place, the alleged victim came forward to police, who have been increasingly urging victims of historic sexual abuse to report crimes.

On Thursday lunchtime, detectives from South Yorkshire police raided the entertainer’s £2.5 million Berkshire apartment, seizing a number of items that were taken away for analysis.

Sir Cliff, who had not been informed that the search was taking place, said: “For many months I have been aware of allegations against me of historic impropriety which have been circulating online. The allegations are completely false.

“Up until now I have chosen not to dignify the false allegations with a response, as it would just give them more oxygen. However, the police attended my apartment in Berkshire today without notice, except, it would appear, to the press.

“I am not presently in the UK but it goes without saying that I will co-operate fully should the police wish to speak to me.

“Beyond stating that today’s allegation is completely false it would not be appropriate to say anything further until the police investigation has concluded.”

The police inquiry was sparked when the alleged victim made a complaint to the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Yewtree, which was set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal to explore claims of historic sexual abuse.

Because the alleged incident took place in Sheffield, the matter was then passed to the South Yorkshire force, which requested the assistance of Thames Valley Police to carry out the raid.

A police spokesman said: “A search warrant was granted after police received an allegation of a sexual nature dating back to the Eighties, involving a boy who was under the age of 16 at the time.

“No one has been arrested and the owner of the property was not present.”

Police, some wearing forensic gloves, spent about five hours at the apartment in the Charters complex in Sunningdale, which Sir Cliff bought in March 2008, before leaving in a convoy of unmarked vehicles.

The spokesman later added: “South Yorkshire Police officers have now finished searching a property in the Sunningdale area of Berkshire. A number of items have been removed for further investigation.”

A source close to Sir Cliff said the star had nothing to hide and would be willing to return to Britain to be questioned by detectives.

The source accused the police of organising a “fishing expedition”, claiming that the raid had been carried out in an attempt to generate the maximum amount of publicity.

The friend said: “The whole thing is appalling because what they are doing, they are just going in there making as much noise about it as they can and seeing if anyone comes out of the woodwork to back it up. And if they don’t, they will still have wrecked someone’s life.”

Within minutes of the convoy of unmarked police cars arriving at the gated development where Sir Cliff lives, news of the raid was being reported by the BBC, which had stationed a producer outside the night before following a tip-off.

South Yorkshire police issued a statement confirming that police were undertaking a search, with sources indicating that it was in connection with allegations made against the entertainer.

The open approach contrasted sharply with the way information was handled when the home of Rolf Harris was searched in 2012 and no such confirmation was provided from the police.

Born as Harry Webb in Lucknow, India, in 1940, Sir Cliff has become one of the most enduring stars of his time, with hits including Devil Woman and Living Doll. He was knighted in 1995, the first rock star to be so honoured, and performed at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace in 2012.

A lifelong bachelor, Sir Cliff has long had to deflect rumours about his private life and in 1996 came out with a robust denial that he was homosexual.

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Most of us like to think we understand the underlying causes of our actions and beliefs; that we do what we do because every action either achieves some short-term gain or moves us closer towards a long-term goal; that we form our beliefs and opinions by carefully weighing up all the evidence available to us. But this is nothing more than a comforting illusion.

Although - if pressed - we can generally come up with what feel to us like plausible explanations for our behaviour, we are usually oblivious to the real psychological causes that are buried deep below the surface. And I'm talking not about the Freudian subconscious, but basic mental processes that - thanks to modern experimental psychology - are, today, well documented and understood.

Here are 10 uncomfortable truths. Read them if you dare...

1) You're more likely to say you like something if you've paid a lot of money for it

Suppose you and a friend have been to see the same play on different nights. You paid $100 for your ticket, while your friend paid just $50. Who do you think is likely to enjoy the play more? The answer is: you.

The explanation lies with a phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance. In a typical study, participants complete some tedious task, such as turning pegs on a board, and are then paid either $1 or $20 to convince a new would-be participant that the task is fun and interesting. The idea is to cause the original participants to experience the discomfiting state that arises when our situation, actions or publicly-stated convictions (eg saying "the task is fun") contradict our beliefs ("the task is boring"): cognitive dissonance.

Later, participants are asked to rate the task. Typically, those who were paid $1 rate it as far less boring than those paid $20. According to the theory, the participants who were paid just $1 reduced their cognitive dissonance ("The task was boring, but I said it was fun") by convincing themselves that the task wasn't actually that bad. The $20 group had a much easier way to escape from their cognitive dissonance - "The task was boring, but I said it was fun... but only because they paid me a lot of money to do so" - and so had no need to convince themselves that the task was fun.

Consequently, if a typical theatregoer finds his actions (paying £100 for some pretentious drivel) in conflict with his beliefs ("I know how to get good value for money at the theatre"), his only escape from cognitive dissonance is to change his belief ("Actually, that play had quite a few good points").

This also explains why customer-satisfaction surveys are such a waste of time. If you have already spent a lot of time and money on a meal, training course or university degree, and begin to experience a conflicting belief ("Hmmm, this really isn't very good"), you are far more likely to change your belief ("Actually, all in all, it's been pretty good") than to tolerate the cognitive dissonance and give low scores on the questionnaire.

2) Couples want everyone else to get married because it endorses their own lifestyle choice

And it's not just marriage. You can probably easily call to mind an acquaintance who is constantly trying to persuade you to make exactly the same choices as her, whether you're planning a holiday or buying a new phone or computer. Annoying, isn't it? So why do we do it? Again, cognitive dissonance seems to be at least part of the answer.

In one recent study, participants were given a fairly neutral description of a single person of the same gender, and asked to write a few lines about how they imagined "Nick" or "Nicole" might spend Valentine's Day. Participants who were married or in long-term relationships were more likely to describe a depressing, lonely evening, while single participants were more likely to describe a fun night out. But when "Nick" and "Nicole" were given partners, the pattern flipped: coupled participants portrayed a better evening than single participants.

Participants whose relationship status mismatches that of Nick/Nicole risk finding themselves in a state of cognitive dissonance, whereby their situation - being in a couple - rubs up with a conflicting inner belief ("Being single on Valentine's Day sounds fun"). So, the finding that people deem their own current relationship situation to be the better one arises because it's much easier to change our beliefs ("Actually, being single on Valentine's Day is probably depressing") than to change our situation ("Honey, you're dumped").

3) Some people are hard-wired to believe in homeopathy whatever the evidence

In January 2010, a group of protesters staged a mass “overdose” of Boots’ homeopathic remedies, including homeopathic “sleeping pills”. Of course, nobody was harmed because these “remedies” contain no active ingredients and have been demonstrated - in countless controlled experimental trials - to be completely ineffective. So why do people believe in them? The answer lies with two thinking biases that all of us – even homeopathy sceptics – fall prey to at some time or other.

The first is the failure to take into account a phenomenon known as "regression to the mean" (which simply means “going back to the average”). Suppose you throw darts at a dartboard blindfolded. If you get a very low score with your first dart (say a 2), it is almost certain that the score on your next throw will be higher, simply because 18 of the 20 slices (and the bull’s-eye) give a score that is greater than two. Similarly, because most illnesses come and go of their own accord, then if you feel at your absolute worst on Monday, you’ll almost certainly feel a lot better by Friday, whether or not you take a homeopathic remedy on Tuesday. But if you do, you’ll probably credit the improvement to the pill.

Of course, you’re probably far too sensible to believe in homeopathy; but even the most hardened sceptic can fail to spot cases of regression to the mean when they’re less obvious. For example, it’s easy for teachers or trainers to believe that their constructive criticism has a huge influence on their pupils. After all, doesn’t performance improve after every dressing down, especially a particularly severe one following a particularly inept failure? Regression to the mean tells us that this would happen anyway, even if the teacher wasn’t there.

To understand the second thinking bias, try the following “card trick”.

Look at the four cards below. We know for a fact that each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other.

What is the fewest number of cards you need to turn over to check the claim that "Every card that has a D on one side has a 3 on the other"? Which ones?

Obviously we need to turn over the D to check that there is a 3 on the back (everybody gets this one right). And equally obviously, there's no need to turn over the K (and again, everybody realises this). The 3 card is a tricky one. Most people think that you need to turn this card over to see whether there is a D on the other side. This would be necessary had the claim been that "Every card that has a D on one side has a 3 on the other, and vice versa". But it wasn't. The 7 is the other tricky one. It doesn't occur to most people that we need to turn this card over to check that the letter on the back is not D. If it is D, then the claim is false.

This trick illustrates the phenomenon of confirmation bias. Most people, being fairly charitable sorts, want to turn over the 3, find a D on the back and confirm the claim ("Well done, you're right!"). And so it is with homeopathy (or conspiracy theories). People who want to believe that the treatment works actively search for opportunities to confirm this belief, focusing on homeopathy patients who seem to have got better ("3 cards") and reject opportunities to disconfirm it, by ignoring research studies ("7 cards").

4) The more intelligent you are, the less likely you are to be religious

Don't shoot the messenger, but the evidence is strong (eg from a 2013 review paper that pooled the results of 63 previous studies) that the more intelligent you are, the less likely you are to be religious. But what's the cause of this relationship? There are three possibilities:

(a) Low intelligence causes high religiosity (that is, the less intelligent you are, the more likely you are to accept religious claims)

(b) High religiosity causes low intelligence (that is, the more religious you are, the less you are able to exercise your "intelligence muscles" via abstract scientific reasoning and exposure to ideas such as evolution)

(c) There is no causal link between intelligence and religiosity at all. Both low intelligence and high religiosity are caused by some third factor or "confound", such as age (that is, older people are more religious and tend to score lower on IQ tests, as scores improve with each generation).

While there is no room here to go into the evidence in detail, on balance, the first possibility seems best supported. The strongest evidence comes from prospective studies. IQ tests given in childhood predict levels of religious belief later in life (in some cases, as much as 25 years later): the more intelligent you are as a child, the less likely you are to be religious as an adult.The reason? Intelligent people tend to be less conformist and also have an analytical rather than intuitive thinking style: they let their heads rule their hearts, as opposed to the other way round.

5) You think a price that ends in "99" is cheap because of the shape you make with your mouth

Beyond the obvious fact that a $1.99 product is (slightly) cheaper than a $2 product, some interesting psychological mechanisms are at play. One is that we have learnt a subconscious link between "99" prices and reductions(participants rate such products as more likely to be on special offer). A second is that, since prices are read from left to right, having a lower number at the start (eg $1.99) "anchors" our frame of reference to "about a pound".

The third is most interesting, as it relates to sound symbolism. Studies with made-up words show that certain sounds (such as those in "bouba", "malooma") are associated with large (and round) shapes, while others (eg "kiki", "taketi") are associated with small (and angular) shapes. Why? The former force us to open our mouths wide, and are found in words such as large, huge and enormous. The latter involve stretching our lips to make a tiny gap, and are found in words such as little, tiny, mini, petite, itsybitsy and teeny-weenie. So when you hear, for example, "one ninety-nine", you are hearing these "tiny" sounds.

6) You chose the name of your child based on your political beliefs

It's not hugely surprising that parents tend to choose children's names that are typical of their social class, but a recent study showed that, incredibly, parents' political beliefs seemed to have an effect, too. For example, the names Liam, Ryan, Sam and Thea are more commonly chosen by Left-leaning parents, while Frank, Joseph, Kate, Kurt and William are more commonly chosen by Right-leaning parents. Why? It's not because parents name their children after politicians (there is no glut of Tonys or Gordons), but simply because they choose names they like the sound of.

Yes, Left and Right-leaning parents like different sounds: Left-leaning parents are more likely to choose names that contain the sounds L, AYE, S and TH (eg Liam, Ryan, Sam and Thea), while Right-leaning parents prefer names containing F, OH, K and W (eg Frank, Joseph, Kate, Kurt and William). Why? More sound symbolism. The "Right-leaning" sounds are harsher, more rugged and - in a completely objective sense - more masculine, in that they are much more common in boys' than girls' names. The "Left-leaning" sounds are softer and more feminine (ie more common in girls' names).

7) We like a work of art more if the artist has an unusual name

Now far be it from me to question your impeccable taste, but a recent study showed that when judging the merit of a work of art we were partly influenced by a wholly irrelevant factor: the name of the artist. I don't mean whether or not the artist is famous, I mean the name of the artist: participants (split into two groups) rated the same poem as more creative if it was attributed to a poet with an unusual name (eg Aira Cady) than a more common name (eg Jane Clarke).

For music, the unusual-name stereotype is joined by another: that men are more creative than women. Consequently, the same piece was rated 6/7 for creativity when attributed to a composer with a rare male name (eg Jonah Dissanyake), but only 4/7 when attributed to a composer with a common female name (eg Emma Moore).

For paintings, name and gender interact in a puzzling way. Following the usual pattern, female painters with rarer names (eg Leah Edevane) are deemed more creative than those with more common names (eg Anna Scott). But for men, the pattern is reversed: male painters with common names (eg David Jones) are deemed more creative than those with rarer names (eg Elliot Le Feuvre). The researchers who conducted the study describe this finding as completely unexpected and offer no explanation. But is it just possible that the current vogue for proudly working-class male artists (eg the sculptor Damien Hirst, the film director Danny Boyle and the designer Paul Smith) is in the process of turning our stereotypes on their head?

8) If you move into a "quicker" queue it hardly ever makes any difference

The truth is, it is difficult to estimate accurately the average speed of a queue, particularly over a long distance. In a traffic jam, drivers focus on the amount of time spent overtaking versus the amount of time spent being overtaken by others. But this method of measurement is misleading, as it fails to take into account the fact that your speed is higher when you are overtaking than being overtaken: a 100yd stretch during which you are overtaking others is over in a flash; but a 100yd stretch during which you are being overtaken drags on forever.

The illusion that the other lane is quicker arises because your brain incorrectly focuses on the relative time spent overtaking versus being overtaken, forgetting to factor in the distance covered in each period. Consequently, even if two lanes of traffic are moving at exactly the same speed, a driver in either lane will spend almost half as long again being overtaken as overtaking others. No wonder the grass is always greener.

9) Your view on smacking children has no basis in fact

Most experts counsel against it, but around a third of parents still do it. To spank or not to spank? We all have a view, and most of us like to pretend that our view is supported by the evidence; either, if we are anti, that children who are spanked turn out to be more violent as adults, or, if we are pro, that children who are not spanked turn out unruly, undisciplined and anti-social.

In fact, the evidence from psychological studies- and this is a well-researched topic - suggests that it makes little difference either way. Provided that children are matched for initial baseline levels of aggression and anti-social behaviour (ie before any are spanked), the difference between those who are subsequently spanked and those who are not is negligible.

Non-spanked children are less aggressive and anti-social, but by such an infinitesimally small amount that 47 per cent of non-spanked children are more aggressive and anti-social than the average spanked child (if this figure were 50 per cent, the groups would be identical). Incidentally, the statistics are comparable for another putative cause of childhood aggression: violent computer games.

In reality, most people take the decision to spank or not to spank on purely ideological grounds, which is probably the best policy.

10) We make financial decisions based on an illogical "general rule"

Suppose you have bought a $300 ticket for a weekend trip to Italy. A few weeks later you buy a $150 ticket for a weekend trip to Spain. You think you will enjoy the Spain trip more than the Italy trip. Later, when looking at your calendar, you realise you have made a terrible mistake: the two tickets are for the same weekend. The tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable: you will have to go on one trip and not the other. Which one do you choose?

More than 50 per cent of people choose the more expensive Italy trip over the more enjoyable Spain trip; an example of the sunk-cost fallacy: the more you have already invested in something - whether in money, time or effort - the more reluctant you are to "waste" that investment, even if doing so would ensure you a better outcome.

What causes this fallacy? The answer seems to be that we are over-applying a general rule or heuristic that "waste is a bad thing, and should always be minimised" (which, in most cases, is a good rule to have). How do we know? Well, when children are offered similar - though suitably childlike - scenarios (eg, involving tickets for fairground rides), they simply choose the option they think they'd prefer, presumably because they are not yet capable of forming abstract rules, including the "waste not, want not" rule that leads to the sunk-cost fallacy in adults.

The best way to avoid the fallacy is to bring in a fresh pair of eyes. For example, while a football manager might persist with an expensive failure, a newmanager will often sell him on ( as Liverpool's Brendan Rodgers did with Andy Carroll), because the sunk cost, in terms of managerial reputation, is not his own. Managers would do well to be aware of the sunk-cost fallacy, and make a conscious effort to judge each player on his current form, not his price tag.

Ben Ambridge is senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Liverpool. His new book, Psy-Q (Profile Boooks), is available here

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Robin Williams found it "very difficult" to watch his "senses being stripped away" by Parkinson’s disease, a close friend told The Telegraph.

The Hollywood star was in the early stages of the condition at the time of his death, his wife revealed in a statement on Thursday, saying she had tried to support him as he struggled with the diagnosis on top of his depression and anxiety.

Williams, who had fought a life-long battle with depression, had hidden his recent news from many who knew him but confided in a neighbor and friend of over a decade.

The Oscar-winning actor and comedian was said to have been worried that the progressive neurological disorder would have an impact on his film and TV work, the income from which was helping support his family.

His friend said Williams had “envisioned how Parkinson's would limit his ability to work and that was terrifying."

It is thought the entertainer agreed to star in a number of films, including "Mrs. Doubtfire 2" and a sequel to "Night at the Museum," in his final months, to complete as many projects as he could before his symptoms became too noticeable.

His friend said the actor was terrified of his own mortality and that after the shock of his open heart surgery in 2009, it was "very difficult" to watch his “senses and abilities being stripped away from him.”

Early Parkinson's symptoms often include feeling tired and weak, as well as poor hand co-ordination, problems with handwriting, and a sensation of tremors in the arm.

The two friends would often go on bike rides together around their hometown of Tiburon, north of San Francisco, but the trips had become less and less frequent in recent months.

“Robin loved to cycle and staying fit and active,” the friend, who last saw him three weeks ago, said. “However, the fear of losing control of one's body, and not being able to exercise — which is a major mood elevator for lots of athletes — was frightening to him.

“Parkinson's definitely compounded his worries and the depths of depression,” the friend said. “Imagine holding a stack of pennies. At some point you simply can't hold the weight of one additional penny placed in your hand.”

Parkinson's disease is an incurable nervous system disorder that involves a loss of brain cells controlling movement.

It can cause tremors, rigid, halting walking, slowed speech, and sometimes dementia. Symptoms worsen over time, though they can often be treated with drugs.

Depression is often present even in early stages and can sometimes precede tremors that help doctors make the diagnosis, according to experts.

Actor Michael J Fox, who has long had the disease and is known for his efforts to fund research into it, tweeted that he was stunned to learn Williams had early symptoms.

"Stunned to learn Robin had PD. Pretty sure his support for our Fdn predated his diagnosis. A true friend; I wish him peace," Fox tweeted.

Williams' wife, Susan, said in her statement: “Robin's sobriety was intact and he was brave as he struggled with his own battles of depression, anxiety as well as early stages of Parkinson’s Disease, which he was not yet ready to share publicly.

“It is our hope in the wake of Robin’s tragic passing, that others will find the strength to seek the care and support they need to treat whatever battles they are facing so they may feel less afraid.”

• Readers who wish to seek information and/or support on suicide prevention can call 08457 90 90 90, or visit the Samaritans website.

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It’s official: Venice is a theme park. How do we know? Because Italy’s undersecretary of culture, Ilaria Borletti, has suggested selling tickets.

Anyone who has been to Venice knows precisely why she has suggested doing this. The moment you arrive in the city it is barely possible to move. It is as though the place is, in itself, one giant blockbuster British museum exhibition, in which space is so limited that visitors, jammed tightly together, are forced to move in lock step until they are eventually spat out at the exit.

Tourism is Venice’s lifeblood, you might argue. Not according to Borletti, who says that tourists are actually “suffocating” the city. Like jackals, she says, packs of day-trippers pick Venice’s cultural corpse clean. Do they stay to invest in hotels and restaurants? No.

So what’s the answer? Should we set a barrier to entry so that Venice becomes the preserve of the privileged few? Or should we welcome the fact that hordes of people are prepared to travel around the world to drink in its beauty? Venice is a world heritage site. But should it really belong to us all? Or should we give vent to our inner snobs?

The last time I went to Venice the large crowds of Chinese tourists clogging the place up, moving slowly around en masse, drove me up the wall. But they were certainly no more annoying than the art-crowd trendies who flood the place during the Biennale. And no doubt the queues of Europeans shuffling past the Terracotta Army are insufferable too.

The real problem with Venice is that it is simply not subject to market rules. You would think that the nastier Venice gets, the fewer people would go. But that is not the case. No matter how crowded Venice is, it will remain a place that everybody wants to see at least once in their lives. And we are right to feel like that, because the first time you step out of Santa Lucia train station, or motor up the Grand Canal in the vaporetto from the airport, your jaw hits the floor. It is an astonishing, barely credible site, so startlingly wonderful that on initial viewing you feel as though the experience must be unique to you. It is only with the passage of time that the press of the crowds begin to impinge upon this vision. The worse the press of bodies, the quicker this process is.

There is one upside to the influx of day-trippers to Venice, however. That is that days must fade into night, and that trips must come to an end. At night Venice is emptier. And if that happens to be a night in December, it will be emptier still. And if that happens to be a night, in December, at a café on some tiny off-the-beaten-track canal in Cannaregio, then you can still feel that you have the place to yourself. And that is very special, indeed.

SEE ALSO: 37 Places You Need To Visit In Italy

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After a pilot was recently forced to land a plane one-handed, due to his prosthetic limb falling off, we look at other miraculous airline escapes.

The Jakarta incident
June 24, 1982

This British Airways flight from Heathrow to Auckland was passing over Jakarta when it ran into volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines. Naturally, there was concern in the cockpit, with the flight engineer exclaiming: “I don't believe it – all four engines have failed!"

The captain, Roger Greaves, tried to reassure passengers with the following statement: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."

Passengers reportedly scribbled notes to loved ones, while Greaves calculated how far the plane might be able to glide before reaching sea level (91 miles he deduced). Luckily, at around 13,500 feet, the engines restarted successfully.

British Airways Flight 5390
June 10, 1990

In this remarkable incident, on board a BA flight to Malaga with 81 passengers, a badly-fitted windscreen panel failed, sucking the captain, Tim Lancaster, halfway out of the cockpit. His head and torso was outdoors – at 17,300 feet and being battered by 300mph winds – while his legs remained inside, with flight attendants gripping him tightly. Co-pilot Alastair Atchison made an emergency descent, but – due to the sound of rushing air – could not hear air traffic control. He eventually landed safely in Southampton, where Lancaster was treated for frostbite, shock and a broken arm.

The miracle on the Hudson
January 15, 2009

Perhaps the best known incident of recent times, involving the most brilliantly monikered pilot. Chesley Sullenberger III, at the helm of US Airways Flight 1549, managed to land safely on the Hudson River after a flock of Canada geese disabled the aircraft. All 155 passengers survived; Sullenberger’s reward was a book deal with HarperCollins, and early retirement.

The Windsor incident
June 12, 1972

American Airlines Flight 96 from LA to New York ran into trouble soon after a stopover in Detroit, when the rear cargo door suddenly broke off. The subsequent explosive decompression saw part of the floor at the rear of the cabin give way, severing a control cable and disabling one of the engines. Captain Bryce McCormick, who initially believed the plane had suffered a mid-air collision, declared an emergency, while flight attendants took oxygen to passengers (masks did not deploy because the plane was below the 14,000ft limit). The plane returned to Detroit, and – despite being forced to land dangerously fast – McCormick touched down safely.

The Gimli Glider
July 23, 1983

While cruising at 41,000 feet, halfway through a flight from Montreal to Edmonton, Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of juice – due to, shockingly, a refuelling miscalculation caused by a recent switch to the metric system. The problem had not been spotted earlier because of an electronic fault on the aircraft’s instrument panel, and the plane lost all power. Luckily, Captain Bob Pearson was an experienced glider pilot, guiding the 767 to RCAF Station Gimli. The landing was hard and fast – Pearson had to brake so hard he blew two tires, while the aircraft’s nose fell off, starting a small fire – but all 61 on board survived unharmed.

Aloha Flight 243
April 28, 1988

In 1988, a 737, flown by Aloha Airlines with 90 people on board was en route to Honolulu, cruising at an altitude of 24,000 feet, when a small section of the roof ruptured. The resulting explosive decompression tore off a larger section of the roof, and a 57-year-old flight attendant called Clarabelle Lansing was swept from her seat and out of the hole in the aircraft. Fortunately, all other passengers were belted up, and the pilot – Robert Schornstheimer – managed to land 13 minutes later, avoiding further loss of life.

BA Flight 38
January 17, 2008

Another recent case, BA Flight 38 was just two miles from Heathrow when its engines suddenly failed to respond to the crew’s demand for extra thrust. A build of ice crystals in its fuel lines had caused a restriction in the flow of fuel. The plane landed around 270 metres short of the runway, just beyond the A30. The plane was a write-off, but just one passenger suffered a serious injury. The pilot’s name? Ironically, John Coward.

Saving a superjumbo
November 4, 2010

The captain of this Qantas flight – Richard Champion de Crespigny – was also given a Polaris Award. Engine number 2 exploded over Indonesia, damaging a wing and causing a fuel tank fire, forcing the plane, an A380 with 469 people on board, to make an emergency landing in Singapore. It blew four tyres when it landed, but no one was hurt.

Cathay Pacific Flight 780
April 13, 2010

In a similar incident to BA Flight 38, this Cathay Pacific service from Surabaya Juanda International Airport in Indonesia suddenly lost the ability to change thrust as it neared Hong Kong, landing at almost twice the recommended speed. Pilots Malcolm Waters and David Hayhoe were given the Polaris Award – from the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations – for their heroism.

SEE ALSO: Pilot Lands Plane One-Handed After Prosthetic Arm Falls Off

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A medical recovery that is baffling science - and giving hope to head injury patients

"Are you ready for our drive then?” Simon Lewis, 56, comes hobbling into his parents’ living room in Sherman Oaks, a suburb of the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles. An Englishman by birth, his public-school accent remains unsullied by nearly 40 years in the United States. “Brave man!” he chuckles.

“Brave” is one way of putting it. “Foolish”, another. After all, Lewis has constricted vision in his left eye, or “peripheral neglect” – he needs special glasses to see the road. He also suffers from a perceptual distortion known as “flat time”, which means he can’t distinguish the chronology of his memories. The upshot of this in the present is that he struggles with the sequence of events, such that if you play him a piece of film backwards, he likely won’t even notice.

“So the trouble is,” he explains, “if I see a pedestrian on the side of the street, I can’t tell if he’s going to cross or just stand there.”

But most of all, Lewis just hasn’t had much luck with cars. The reason for his impaired vision, his flat time and his limping gait is a road traffic accident 20 years ago. Crashes seldom make the news in Los Angeles, they are so routine. But when Lewis and his wife Marcy were brutally T-boned one evening in March 1994, the consequences were so shattering the Los Angeles Times ran it on the front page.

READ: Ten inspiring quotes from a nobel laureate

Here was a young couple driving home through Hancock Park, a well-heeled suburb of mansions and manicured lawns. Lewis was a thriving film producer of 36, best known for the huge comedy hit Look Who’s Talking, starring John Travolta, and Marcy, 27, was in marketing. They’d been married five months.

Then out of nowhere, a white Chevrolet van hit them at 75mph, an absurd speed for the neighbourhood. Marcy was killed outright and Lewis was so thoroughly broken that the paramedic on the scene took him for dead. The Chevrolet driver, meanwhile, fled the scene, and was never caught. That was the story the Times ran with – the destructive experience of a hit-and-run in a city where everyone drives everywhere.

Twenty years on, that crash continues to reverberate. Only this time, it’s a happier story, one that Lewis has told in a book, Rise and Shine, and before large audiences at numerous public events. It’s the story of his astonishing recovery, and it not only gives hope to sufferers of traumatic brain injury (TBI), but provides proof, in the most dramatic fashion, of the brain’s incredible ability to regenerate and reorganise itself.

Doctors simply didn’t expect Lewis to live on the night of “the trauma”, as his mother Pat calls it.

When two Jaws of Life machines freed him from the wreckage, he’d sustained a broken skull, jaw, arms, clavicle and pelvis, with compound fractures in nine ribs. And then there was the “catastrophic brain insult” he’d suffered – a stroke that destroyed a third of his right hemisphere and caused a contusion to the brainstem and severe internal bleeding. He was so bloated with blood that his brother David, who was called in to identify him on the operating table, remembers “this enormous Michelin man lying there with raccoon eyes”.

Lewis went into a coma that night – the most severe coma on the internationally accepted Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS). On a scale of three to 15, GCS3 means no motor response, no verbal response and no visual response. It’s as close as one can get to death without actually dying. And although the Glasgow Scale is considered somewhat crude and subjective for a field as complex as traumatic brain injury, studies suggest that patients with GCS 3-5 have less than a 10 per cent chance of a survival with good outcomes, particularly if they fail to respond within two weeks of the injury. Lewis remained in that state for 31 days.

When he came to, Lewis was a shell. He had little awareness of his surroundings. He couldn’t read or write, and he had acute short-term amnesia – he wasn’t aware that he’d been in a crash at all. He struggled with language, attention, visual-spatial awareness and basic comprehension.

Doctors deemed his cognitive function so low it was untestable – that is, an IQ below 50. It was likely, they said, that he would have to rely on others for even the most menial of tasks for the rest of his life.

But then his recovery began. It has been a long road, littered with surgeries, and even now it isn’t over – but, today, Lewis has not only regained most of his cognitive function, he actually has an IQ as high as the one he had before the crash. He is an extraordinary medical phenomenon and gives hope to all those facing similar challenges.

READ: Ten tricks the brain plays on us

The odds of surviving a coma are notoriously hard to predict, brain injury being the most complex of problems afflicting the most complex organ in the body. Some people do make amazing recoveries. Former cheerleader Sarah Scantlin, from Kansas, began talking 20 years after falling into a coma after a hit-and-run accident. Carrie Coons, an 86-year-old from New York, regained consciousness after a year and engaged in conversation. The Olympic rower James Cracknell has written a book, run marathons and stood as an MEP, despite serious damage to his frontal lobe in a 2010 cycling accident .

But, in general, many patients struggle to regain full brain function and the odds of doing so fall off sharply the longer the coma continues. So when, in June, the former Formula One driver Michael Schumacheremerged from a 24-week coma, medical experts were quick to manage the expectations of his supporters. Dr Ganesh Bavikatte, of the Walton Centre in Liverpool, which specialises in neurological issues, spoke of a long road to recovery, “filled with uncertainty and frustration”.

READ: Michael Schumacher 'likely to remain an invalid'

In Lewis’s case, it took a village to rebuild his mind – in his talks he attributes his progress to issues as disparate as circulation and jaw alignment. But he owes much of it to Dr Lois Provda, an educational therapist in West Hollywood – not a ground-breaking scientist, or prize-winning researcher, just a conscientious practitioner who helps those who have slipped down the learning curve.

When he was sent to her, in October 1995, his IQ had climbed significantly to 89, just a point below the lower edge of “normal” (between 90 and 110) on the Revised Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. But when she was finished with him in February 1997 – after three sessions a week, with gaps for the occasional surgery – Lewis had an IQ of more than 151, close to so-called “genius” levels.

Dr Provda is elderly and struggles to remember the details of Lewis’s case, but her work speaks for itself. Today, Lewis is in possession of not a damaged brain but an overactive one. Bright eyed, beaming and permanently cheerful, he’s like an effusive academic, propelled from tangent to tangent by his own enthusiasm. A Cambridge graduate (in law), he was always bright, much like his brothers, David and Jonathan, a barrister and stockbroker respectively. “All my boys are high calibre,” says Pat, with pride.

But only Lewis is missing a third of his right hemisphere and still capable of fielding questions about neuroplasticity and possible reforms to the education system, his pet subject. That he’s not a neuroscientist or policymaker, but a movie producer, just makes it all the more impressive.

“That’s why we chose Simon,” says Dr Suzy Walton, a psychologist and deputy chair of the RSA, who introduced Lewis when he spoke at the London-based organisation last year. “Plenty of people with brain injuries survive, but he also has ambition, drive, confidence and, on top of that, he puts himself out there as a public speaker, which means he’s able to cope with nerves and anxiety. He’s the only living example of someone with that degree of physical impairment who can function at that level.”

For Lewis, talks like the one he gave at the RSA are a cherished opportunity to spread the good news about the phenomenon of neuroplasticity; the process by which the brain changes the way it functions.

Until relatively recently neuroscientists believed each part of the brain had a well-defined, unchanging role; if it was damaged there was little you could do about it, you just had to learn to live with it. But it is now widely acknowledged that the brain is more versatile than that and that, with the right sort of cognitive training, it is possible to persuade other areas of the brain to take on, at least to some extent, the tasks formerly carried out by those areas that have been damaged.

“I remember this influential doctor from UCLA told me, ‘Looking at your recovery, it’s a miracle,’ ” says Lewis. “And I just thought, ‘That’s not right. I’ve come this far because I’ve seen people who have helped me.’ There are techniques that rebuild the processes of your mind.”

Cognitive training is not new. It first emerged after the world wars, to treat the brain-injured soldiers returning home. And ever since, a body of research has accumulated, especially in the Seventies and Eighties, which honed the methods that Dr Provda used on Lewis. She evaluated him first, and then took him through a series of games and exercises to develop his deficient skills.

“She had me working with Kapla building blocks, and memorising numbers backwards and forwards,” says Lewis. “I had to put cartoon images in sequence, to help me with cause and effect, the idea that one event leads to another. Another exercise was called Interactive Metronome, where I’d have to write things with a metronome clicking out a beat. It was exhausting!”

For Lewis, these techniques have implications for us all – not just the head-injured. “What my experience demonstrates is how much we can train the brain measurably and repeatedly,” he says. “And that applies to everyone. We need to start screening children at school who are falling behind, and treat their difficulties, rather than writing them off.” He believes “brain training” can help children diagnosed with ADHDand dyslexia and those at risk of dementia.

And he’s not the only one. Today, cognitive training is big business. In the past decade especially, companies such as Lumosity, Posit, Nintendo and Cogmed have harnessed the language of physical fitness – “it’s a gym for the mind!” – to sell a multiplicity of apps, games and digital exercises that promise to, in the words of the Lumosity publicity, “build your cognitive reserve”. According to SharpBrains, a neuroscience market research consultancy, the global revenues of the brain training industry increased from $200 million in 2005 to $1.3 billion in 2013.

Scientists, however, are ambivalentabout the claims such companies make. Very little of the research that shows brain training works (in those who have not been the victim of a severe brain injury) has been peer reviewed. And one study, published in 2010, which monitored the outcomes of 11,000 adults who took part in exercises designed to improve their reasoning, memory, attention and visual-spatial skills, concluded that they got better at carrying out the tasks themselves but were not able to transfer those improvements to other areas of life.

Headway , the British brain injury association, is also reluctant to set too much store by brain training games; it talks instead about “cognitive rehabilitation therapy” and stresses the importance of bespoke care plans tailored to each patient’s needs, which tend to be complex and multi-faceted. In the best case scenario, patients work with neuropsychologists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, social workers, physiotherapists, doctors, counsellors and cognitive behavioural therapists.

Intensive brain training exercises, in fact, can actually exhaust people, sap their confidence and end up being counter-productive, the association believes.

“It’s people’s attitudes and support system that really distinguish who recover well and who don’t,” says Jeffrey Kreutzer, the editor of Brain Injury magazine, and professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Patients who stay at home, and say, ‘I don’t need advice, I’ll figure it out myself, leave me alone.’ They do poorly. But someone who seeks out social relationships, volunteer work, does much better. Recovery isn’t just neuronal – it’s a process that involves family support, as well as a positive attitude.”

These factors undoubtedly played a part in Lewis’s recovery. His book Rise and Shine is, among other things, a catalogue of his family’s persistence in the face of setbacks – doctors making mistakes, surgeries to correct surgeries, and the dehumanising ordeal of the American health care system.

And it’s unlikely he would have fared much better in Britain. Despite there being, on average, 55 admissions to hospital for severe head injuries in the UK every day, and doctors acknowledging that proper rehabilitation is crucial to improving patients’ quality of life and long-term outcomes, the provision of services is extremely variable across the country. “Many people slip through the net and are discharged from hospital with little or no support,” says Richard Morris, a spokesman for Headway. “Helping these people access the help they need is one of our most important functions.”

Simon Lewis continues to receive treatment two decades after his accident and still has significant disabilities. His brain no longer communicates with the muscles that pick up his left foot, so in order to walk he relies on an ingenious device that senses his steps and stimulates the muscles accordingly. His reconstructed pelvis remains an issue, not to mention his vision problems and perception of time.

“My memories used to be like a photo album,” he says. “You could flick the pages and go back in time. But now, the album’s gone, all I’ve got are the photos, and I can’t tell what order they came in.”

Furthermore, his memories are all equally vivid, which means even though his accident was 20 years ago, memories of the trauma and his wife’s death feel as close as those of the film he saw last week. “I remember my old life,” he says. “They’re very fond memories. But for a long time I couldn’t bring myself to recall my wife.

"When I started writing Rise and Shine, I didn’t write her name. I still almost never say it because I know I’ll tear up. Because I do feel sad sometimes, when I think about how I don’t have a family. That’s the thing about brain injury, you get quite emotional. There’s no filter anymore.”

Nevertheless, Lewis remains overwhelmingly positive. “I never lose sight of the fact that I get a chance that my wife will never have. It’s a responsibility of survivors to never complain, and to make the most of what remains.” And in this new post-coma chapter of his life, he has found himself strangely unburdened. “I don’t feel anger anymore at all,” he says. “There are some emotions that have just melted away.”

He lives with his parents, both of them now retired. But at the desk in his bedroom, the seeds of his future independence are being sown. He’s back at work on the science fiction script that he was developing at the time of his accident. And writing this time around is a new adventure. He considers his perceptual quirks an asset, a fresh and creative take on life. His hearing is much more acute and, for Lewis, there’s even an upside to visual impairment.

“Have you heard of blindsight?” he asks, excitedly. “It’s a perfect example of neuroplasticity. I had a doctor hold up coloured cards outside of my field of vision, and I could guess the colours correctly even though I couldn’t see them! What happens is the visual information from the retina bypasses the conscious brain and is processed by the subconscious. So I’m constantly in touch with my subconscious. It’s like a waking dream!”

It’s time to see the waking dreamer behind the wheel, before it gets late and Lewis starts to tire. He has enough stacked against him as it is. The plan is to just pop around the corner for a coffee, maybe a mile or so. So we leave the house and buckle into his Lexus automatic, Lewis talking constantly as he goes.

“Right so let me put on my prismatic glasses [glasses that give him back his peripheral vision], make sure there’s nothing behind me. No that’s fine. Right, so I see that guy with the dog. The coast is clear. OK then!” And off we go, nice and smooth. It took him three tries to pass his driving test again, but he made it eventually, which was much more than a symbolic victory for Lewis – as ­everyone in this city knows, there’s just no life without driving in Los Angeles.

“You have to get back in the saddle, it’s the only way,” he says. “I once spoke at this community event for stroke victims – there were about 100 people there. And I was demonstrating the NESS, the device I use to help me walk. I’ll never forget, this man in a wheelchair asked, ‘When can I start jogging again?’ And I love that attitude – it’s so American. Not walking, ‘jogging!’ ”

So Lewis is nothing if not hopeful about his future. About the prospects of having a family, and children of his own. “It’s probably my head injury speaking, but I’d like to meet someone,” he says. “So I’ve started dating again! I met a lovely lady last week actually. I realise my income is limited for now, but you never know.”

We arrive at the coffee shop. He pulls in and beams – this driving lark is easy. “I’ve been so fortunate in my life if you think about it,” he says. “There’s something wildly improbable about recovering from my injuries. They were telling my brother in the ICU, ‘No one thinks he’s going to make it.’ I have everything to hope for.”

‘Rise and Shine’ by Simon Lewis is available on Amazon

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A trans-Siberian train ride highlighted how China is racing ahead compared with Russia's slower progress

I have just returned from a mega train trip, starting in Moscow, following the route of the Trans-Siberian railway, and then branching off to Mongolia, ending up in Beijing.

As well as enjoying the extraordinary scenery, I found myself reflecting on essential matters of economics.

I had first set foot in Moscow 40 years ago, and in Beijing 30 years ago. My mind was full of comparisons and conjectures. When I visited Moscow in 1974 this was in the midst of the Brezhnev era and at the height of the Cold War. The city was grim in the extreme. I stayed in a ghastly Soviet hotel. You felt as though you were being followed by the KGB (and you probably were). Where you were able to shop depended upon who you were: foreigner, communist party hack, or mere mortal.

Not that there was much to spend your money on anyway. The only thing worth taking home were the fur hats, one of which I still have today. In those days the sugar did not dissolve in your coffee. You had to repeatedly bash the cube with a spoon to get it to break up. I also have one of those Soviet sugar cubes today, still undissolved after all those years.

I next visited some 15 years later, as the Soviet Union was about to do what the sugar couldn’t. My hotel was another Soviet disaster zone, where the top floor was given over to spies and their listening equipment. I well remember visiting the hotel restaurant with my friend, the journalist William Keegan, to find ourselves kept at bay by a sign in the window announcing that the restaurant was closed for lunch – closed to customers that is, so that the staff could have lunch.

Today Moscow is a radically different city – brash, traffic-clogged, sophisticated and dedicated to conspicuous consumption: smart girls, smart cars and smart restaurants, all at eye-watering prices. Amusingly, I thought there was something very familiar about the extremely luxurious hotel I was staying at. And then I realised: it was in the same position as the hotel I had stayed at before, since completely remodelled. But there wasn’t a KGB man to be seen; the top floor was now a swish bar.

With Moscow coming across as the quintessence of capitalism unbridled, I was unprepared for the cities of Siberia. Here the Soviet era seemed to be alive and well, complete with tour guides straight out of central casting: “On the right you see car park number three. It measures 330 metres by 84 metres and can take a maximum of 330 cars. It replaced car park number two in 1984.” After 20 minutes of this stuff you start to lose the will to live.

In one Siberian town we were taken to see its claim to fame – the world’s largest bust of Lenin, still glaring out across a windswept, decrepit central square - lucky us. Interestingly, we saw no statues of Stalin anywhere – except in Mongolia, where tradesmen were selling a trio of busts of what they construed as notable world leaders: the inevitable Genghis Khan, Stalin and Hitler.

One favourable legacy from the Stalin era in Russia is the apartment blocks built during his reign and still referred to as Stalin flats, which are much sought after today. They looked to be well built, elegant in style and evidently spacious within – in contrast to the so-called Khrushchev flats which looked ghastly.

Was this an instance of falling building standards everywhere, I asked myself. Or did it reflect something specifically Soviet? Whatever the answer, there are clearly large parts of the country that have been little touched by the prosperity that is evident in Moscow. The need to spend money on infrastructure and residential construction is simply immense.

As we left Siberia, I mused on the economic significance of space. In the UK we are used to the idea that the lack of space is a major economic drawback. But an abundance of space can be a problem too. It creates significant communication and transport problems and it also makes it difficult to enjoy the benefits of agglomeration, including economies of scale and specialisation. Despite its vast array of natural wealth, over and above its extreme climate, Siberia suffers from huge disadvantages because of its size.

In some ways, arriving in China left me with the opposite impressions. After I returned from my first trip to Beijing 30 years ago, I wrote in this very newspaper that two things struck me forcibly about the city – cabbages and bicycles: cabbages piled 10ft high on the pavements of the streets and bicycles in swarms, ridden by anonymous characters in grey or brown Mao suits.

Thirty years on there wasn’t a single cabbage or Mao suit to be seen – although Mao himself is still venerated. There were a few bicycles but far more motor scooters and hugely impressive, city blocking, volumes of traffic.

As well as the bustle of the city I was impressed by the quality of the building and the apparent prosperity of the people. Given that on average, China is still a poor country, there must be oodles of severe rural poverty to offset the prosperity visible in Beijing and many other cities.

Interestingly, China is not a country blessed with endowments of natural resources; despite its vast size it does not even have a massive surplus of land. For large parts of the country are largely uninhabited desert. In those parts of the country that are inhabited, the population density is high. Interestingly, China’s surge in GDP and living standards of the past 30 years has been intimately bound up with urbanisation.

I was as conscious of the state on this visit as I had been 30 years ago: lots of uniformed people on the streets: soldiers, police, and officers of all kinds. When entering the country, for heaven knows what reason, there were uniformed border officers taking photographs of people as they waited to go through the immigration procedures.

It is difficult not to be bowled over by what China has achieved - especially when contrasted with Russia. Average Russian living standards are still higher than China’s. But whereas Russia’s have doubled since the early 1990s, China’s have increased 10-fold. As I left the country, I found myself wondering whether this has been despite the continuation of communist dictatorship or because of it.

Roger Bootle is managing director of Capital Economics. His latest book, The Trouble with Europe, has just been published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

roger.bootle@capitaleconomics.com

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The world’s corporate giants are poised to tap into record cash reserves and possibly embark on a long-awaited spending spree, fuelling hopes of a massive boost to the global economic recovery.

Companies, together with private equity firms, are coming under mounting pressure to delve into a global cash mountain of $7 trillion (£4.1 trillion) that has been amassed since the dark days of the financial crisis.

As the economic recovery gets under way and factories begin to operate at full capacity, investors are growing increasingly frustrated at more than half a decade of prudence, pushing chief executives to loosen the purse strings, experts believe.

“Capital spending could increase as early indicators show that industrial companies are beginning to run at higher levels of capacity than has been the case over the last five years,” Dennis Jose, senior global and European equity strategist at Barclays, said. “When factories and the like are running at less capacity on the back of lower demand there is very low capital expenditure.”

In the aftermath of the financial crisis companies hunkered down and re-engineered their balance sheets, diverting funds from investment to pay off debt or stockpile cash. However, even since the recession ended and the economy has picked up, many have continued to hoard cash leading to growing calls from investors to deploy cash reserves, which earns low returns sitting on balance sheets. Governments too are calling for a loosening of the purse strings to help propel the economic recovery, which is showing signs of stalling in many parts of Europe.

The bulk of the cash is held by 5,100 of the world’s biggest companies, which had combined reserves – cash and short-term debt – of $5.7 tn as of the end of 2013. The cash pile total excludes financial companies such as banks and insurers, who are required by regulators to hire capital.

Corporate America dominates the pack with about $2tn at its disposal, led by a clutch of tech titans. Apple’s cash mountain of $140bn means it has more unspent capital than any other American company, followed by Microsoft with $83bn, and Google, which has built up $59bn of reserves.

The FTSE 100 has $85.5bn of untapped cash reserves. Drugmaker AstraZeneca leads the pack with $8bn, closely followed by miners Anglo American with $7.7bn and BHP Billiton at $5.6bn.

The pile of unspent corporate cash that has built up since the start of the financial crisis is being held by an increasingly concentrated pool of companies. However, those companies are now expected by their investors to put the money to work, which is crucial to there being a pick-up in business investment in order to stimulate the world economy.

“If a company has cash on its balance sheet, it has three options; mergers and acquisitions, invest in its business to pursue organic growth, or return it to shareholders,” said Laurence Hollingworth, head of corporate coverage EMEA at JPMorgan.

Investor appetite for companies to spend their cash is highlighted by a record number of investors calling for companies to invest more in capital spending in a well-respected poll of fund managers by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. By comparison, the number of investors wanting companies to return surplus cash to them, via dividends and buybacks, is at the lowest level in five years.

With confidence returning to the economy, the pace of deal making has increased and cross-border M&A is already totalling $883.6bn this year, 127pc higher than the same period last year. A greater appetite for risk has also fuelled investment for buyout groups, who have spent the past year raising money to pursue new investment opportunities.

“Investors in private equity firms, which include pension and sovereign wealth funds, now have a greater risk appetite and are looking for returns in an environment with relatively low interest rates”, said Richard Parsons, head of private equity coverage at Deloitte. “They see the private equity market as being able to provide this.”

The private equity industry is now sitting on $1.2tn of so-called dry powder – the highest ever amount for the industry. As a result, industry experts believe the wall of cash and the ongoing recovery in debt markets could mean that private equity could start to write multi-billion cheques for deals.

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Julian Assange has developed a potentially fatal heart condition and a number of other health problems while living within the Ecuadorian embassy, it is claimed.

Julian Assange has developed a potentially life-threatening heart defect and a chronic lung condition during his long confinement at the Ecuadorian embassy, it was claimed.

The WikiLeaks founder is unable to seek hospital treatment for his deteriorating health problems for fear of being arrested if he steps outside the embassy, his supporters have complained.

The 43-year-old has been living inside the building in Knightsbridge, London, since being granted diplomatic asylum in August 2012.

The British government wants to extradite him to Sweden under a European Arrest Warrant for questioning in relation to a sexual assault investigation.

Assange argues that if he faces the allegations in Sweden he will be extradited to the US, where he could face 35 years in prison for publishing classified documents related to the Pentagon’s activities in Iraq and Afghanistan on WikiLeaks.

Metropolitan police officers have been stationed outside the embassy since Assange entered the building and have been ordered to arrest him if he attempts to leave.

After two years unable to go outside living within the air-conditioned interior of the embassy, Assange is suffering from arrhythmia, which is a form of irregular heartbeat, a chronic cough and high blood pressure, WikiLeaks sources revealed.

They also said the lack of Vitamin D, which is produced by exposure to sunshine, is damaging his health and could lead to a host of conditions including asthma, diabetes, weak bones and even heightened risk of dementia.

The Ecuadorian have asked the Foreign Office for permission to transport Assange to hospital in a diplomatic car but have received no response.

“He would come round handcuffed to his hospital bed,” a source told the Mail on Sunday.

The Metropolitan Police refused to be drawn on whether Assange would face immediate arrest if he went to hospital.

“We wouldn’t discuss matters like this,” a spokesman said.

In an effort to keep fit, Assange has been working out with a former SAS veteran who acts as his personal trainer.

He also plays football alone in the embassy corridor in an effort to stay flexible.

The former computer hacker complained about the waste of money spent in policing him, which has now surpassed £7 million.

He said: “The broader geopolitics is that the world is going crazy. Maybe it’s time to think that WikiLeaks is not the main problem here for the West, maybe me and my publishing house are a lesser threat than say the Islamic State in Iraq or, closer to home, paedophiles in Westminster.

“Why are they burning £240,000 a month on me which could be better spent on hospital beds, meals for the needy or teachers’ salaries?”

“The Metropolitan Police Service has now spent in excess of £7 million on guarding the embassy, which is a ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money.”

Assange claims the British authorities have confiscated his passport so he could not get far even if he did escape the embassy.

“It’s not like I can go into the Australian Consulate to get a replacement,” he said.

“I would want an understanding – formal or informal – that I would be given time to leave the UK before the US puts in an extradition bid. And then I’d go to my children, like any father.”

He is being represented by Amal Alamuddin, the human rights lawyer who recently became engaged to George Clooney, who spent two-and-a-half hours with him last week.

Her role defending a man considered by many as an enemy of the US, could become difficult is her actor fiancé pursues his political ambitions and runs for governorship of California

But Assange remains optimistic that diplomatic solution will be reached between the UK and Ecuador which will allow him to travel to a friendly country, such as Ecuador itself.

“As a nation they have done the hard yards for me and I know it is a safe place,” he said.

He complained about the strain his incarceration has put upon his family.

“One of my children is trapped in a war zone.

“They live in a country in which the elected government has collapsed and violence has broken out. I cannot go there. As with any parent, my instinct is to protect but I can do nothing.

“One of the best things about human beings is that they are adaptable and show strength and configure themselves to cope with bad situations. I can do that, not least because I understand the politics of it all.

“What I don’t accept is the interference with my family. That is not forgivable. I have managed to protect some of my children, but unfortunately not all of them, from being used, swept up into this situation.

“I have not seen my mother for two years, nor my grandmother, who is 87. In the time I have been in the embassy, both my stepfather and my grandfather have died.

“I am a man in my early 40s and most people will understand that means playing a supportive role in an extended family, being the person others rely on instead of worrying about.

“I am being denied that, and by extension so are they.

“We miss each other but it’s incredibly difficult to have any kind of relationship with those you love because it puts them in danger of surveillance, of attack. I am extremely protective of them and have done everything possible to avoid their exposure because I cannot have them being used as leverage against me.”

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Wall Street banks could desert Britain if the country decides to leave the European Union, senior figures in the industry have reportedly said.

Some major institutions are believed to be already drawing up plans to move activities abroad amid concerns that the UK is drifting further away from the EU.

Most US and Asian banks currently run their main European operations from the UK, which gives them a passport to provide services across the EU. But if the UK left the European Union, it is believed to be unlikely foreign banks based in London would carry on receiving the same rights.

According to the Financial Times, US-based banks including Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are considering Ireland as a favourable alternative location for business currently conducted in London.

One senior UK-based manager at a Wall Street bank was quoted as saying: “I’m frankly looking at moving some activities to Ireland.

“I think the Irish central bank and government would welcome this.”

Citigroup employs around 2,500 people in Ireland, while JP Morgan and Bank of America each employ 500 staff there.

Ireland has become attractive to foreign banks due to its low corporate tax rate, English-speaking workforce, and eurozone membership.

Other possible destinations for US-based business, should Britain leave the EU, could include Frankfurt or Paris.

According to TheCityUK, a lobby group, more than 250 foreign banks are hosted by the UK and they accounted for around a third of last year’s £71 billion financial services trade surplus.

Last month, foreign banks based in London warned the Treasury about the possible consequences of an EU exit.

In a submission, the Association of Foreign Banks said Britain should stay in the union because it would remain in a position to influence EU rules.

A spokesman for the group said: “If Britain withdraws from Europe, then foreign banks may reassess their reasons for maintaining their business in Britain and may decide to continue their business elsewhere.”

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A mobile app that could help cut queues at airport security is being trialled at Hartsfield Jackson Airport, Atlanta

The long, unwelcoming queues at the customs desks of airports may soon be a thing of the past, if the trial of a new app in the United States is successful.

The app allows iPhone and iPad users to bypass the queue at passport control and go through customs virtually. Travellers download the app, called "mobilepassport", fill in a profile, take their own picture and answer questions, then submit their information to US Customs and Border Protection for consideration, via the app.

Once the information has been verified, the app displays a QR code which is valid for four hours and scanned by officials who also see the traveller's passport just before exit.

At the moment, only US and Canadian citizens can use the app, being trialled in Hartsfield-Jackson airport. Atlanta's airport is the busiest in the world for both passenger numbers and operations, seeing on average 2,500 departures and dealing with 250,000 passengers each day (in comparison, Heathrow has 1,286 flights and 191,200 passengers on average per day).

An Android version of the app will be available in September and the app is expected to be rolled out to other airports in the US toward the end of the year. It is unknown whether the app will be extended to cover citizens from other countries.

The app is a new attempt to reduce passenger queues at passport control, but there is no sign of a UK version as yet.

SEE ALSO: The Ultimate Guide To Scoring Cheap Flights

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A new Channel 4 series follows rookie British pilots as they gain experience flying perilous routes between the islands of Indonesia. Are the risks worth it, asks Theo Merz

A recently-qualified pilot flies a single-engine turboprop plane above the mountains of Indonesia.

Below him he can see a propeller plane of the same model, which crashed into one of the tree-covered slopes years ago but has never been cleared away. It is a reminder of the many risks that being a pilot in this part of the world involves.

Others include landing in areas in which local communities are armed and in conflict with the government, and flying over parts of the world in which cannibalism is, allegedly, still practiced.

The dangers, however, do not deter young, Western pilots, who need to clock up their flying hours, from applying to work in Indonesia, before they can be employed by commercial or passenger airlines in their own countries.

Susi Air, an airline flying out of West Java to some of Indonesia’s most remote islands, receives hundreds of emails a week from would-be pilots hoping to work with them.

And the number will no doubt increase, despite the title of a new Channel 4 documentary series charting the progress of the airline’s British employees – Worst Place to be a Pilot .

Captain Guy Richardson, originally from Surrey, is one of the pilots to feature in the programme, the first episode of which airs tonight. The 37-year-old worked a variety of jobs in the UK before undertaking his flight training in South Africa seven years ago. He graduated in the middle of a global recession and found it impossible to get work elsewhere, so applied to Susi through a friend.

“I was up for an adventure,” says Richardson during one of his twice-yearly trips back to the UK. “I think you have to be less aware of danger than most people to do it. Generally, it’s the same as what they say about commercial flying everywhere, though – 95 per cent boredom and five per cent pure terror.”

While he emphasises that Susi is less dangerous than many other carriers in Indonesia, which are under greater commercial pressures to reach remote and often dangerous areas, the airline still has a less-than-perfect safety record: US Embassy staff were banned from flying on Susi Air following a series of fatal plane crashes in 2011-12.

One of the main problems, Richardson says, is communication with air traffic control. “Sometimes I have to do the exact opposite of what air traffic control are telling me, which in Europe would never, ever happen.” Once he was preparing to take off from a remote landing strip when he saw another plane beginning its descent towards him; the aircraft had not told traffic control where they were landing, or if they had, the message had been confused.

In an incident in the first episode of the series, Richardson spots a dog on the runway before he is about to take off. He repeatedly calls to the ground staff to remove it but they do not understand the instruction – so he takes off anyway and hopes that the dog will stay out of his path.

“Another thing is the weather,” he says. “When you’re in a jumbo jet you’re flying above it, but here – in these smaller planes, if you’re close to the mountains – you’re totally in it. That can be pretty scary when you get caught up in a storm.”

Despite the dangers, Richardson has no regrets about taking on the job in Indonesia, though he is starting to think it might be time to come home. “There’s so much coastline in the country, so I’ll do a lot of surfing in my spare time. I stay with other Susi pilots and it can get a bit strained living and working together, but we get along; we play tennis and football.

“I’ve got used to the hazards of flying here now, but I should probably get back to Europe and start a family of my own. There are lots of things I love out in Asia but a family's not going to happen if I stay there.”

Worst Place to be a Pilot, 9pm, Tuesday 19th August, Channel 4

SEE ALSO: We're Running Out Of Pilots

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A British person living in Sierra Leone has tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus, in the first confirmed case for a UK citizen.

The Department for Health confirmed that the victim had tested positive.

But it was not known whether they were working out there treating patients, or living permanently in the former British colony.

Professor John Watson, deputy chief medical officer, said: "The overall risk to the public in the UK continues to be very low. Medical experts are currently assessing the situation in Sierra Leone to ensure that appropriate care is provided.

"We have robust, well-developed and well-tested NHS systems for managing unusual infectious diseases when they arise, supported by a wide range of experts."

On August 12 a Spanish missionary, 75-year-old Miguel Pajares, became the first European victim of the disease.

Since then there have been dozens of false alarms in Ireland, Austria, Spain and Germany. In Germany, about 600 people were quarantined for two hours in a Berlin jobcentre after a false alarm about a suspected case of Ebola.

Two American doctors who contracted the disease, Dr Kent Brantly, 33, and Nancy Writebol, 59, were released from hospital in Atlanta this week after three weeks of being cared for in the US hospital. The pair were treated with an untested serum, ZMapp, which had been trialled on monkeys but not approved for human use.

Since the "miraculous" recovery of the American medics, a small quantity of ZMapp has been sent to Liberia for use on patients there. There are only limited quantities of the drug, as it has not yet been approved for mass production.

The virus, which first emerged in the 1960s, has killed almost 1,500 people across West Africa in the worst-ever outbreak of the disease. The majority of cases have been registered in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea – where this outbreak began on April 1.

But it has also spread to Nigeria – Africa's most populous country – and has infected people beyond the original victim and his carers.

Patrick Sawyer died in Lagos after travelling from Liberia, and was due to travel home to the United States.

In all, 213 people are now under surveillance in Nigeria - including six people, all "secondary contacts" like the caregivers' spouses, being monitored in the state of Enugu, more than 310 miles east of Lagos.

Sierra Leone has been hit hard by the current outbreak, recording at least 910 cases and 392 deaths, according to figures released on Friday by the World Health Organization.

A total of 2,615 infections and 1,427 deaths have been recorded across West Africa.

The spread of the infection has been worsened by the fact that many in Sierra Leone fear Western medicine, and have taken their relatives away from care centres. As a result they die in the community unrecorded, leading to "shadow zones".

On Friday the Ivory Coast closed its borders with Liberia and Guinea. A day later the Philippines announced that they were withdrawing their UN peacekeeping troops from Liberia in response to the outbreak.

The World Health Organisation declared the outbreak an "international public health emergency" on August 8.

"Declaring Ebola an international public health emergency shows how seriously WHO is taking the current outbreak; but statements won’t save lives," said Dr Bart Janssens, MSF Director of Operations.

"Now we need this statement to translate into immediate action on the ground. For weeks, MSF has been repeating that a massive medical, epidemiological and public health response is desperately needed to saves lives and reverse the course of the epidemic. Lives are being lost because the response is too slow.”

Dr Janssens said that there needed to be an urgent scaling-up of medical care, training of health staff, infection control, contact tracing, epidemiological surveillance, alert and referral systems, community mobilisation and education.

He added: "MSF currently has 66 international and 610 national staff responding to the crisis in the three affected countries. All our Ebola experts are mobilised, we simply cannot do more."

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SEE ALSO: ISIS Fighter Who Boasted Of Raising 'Flag Of Allah In The White House' Killed In Syria

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In the end, none came – a result which in part can be attributed to the White House’s policies towards terrorist kidnap victims.

Unlike some of their European counterparts, officials operate on a “no ransom and no negotiation” basis. But the murder of Mr Foley has cast an uncomfortable spotlight on this position, with critics saying that past experience including the release of Bowe Bergdahl has demonstrated inconsistencies in American policy.

It came as the reporter’s family today asked why more was not done to save his life.

Speaking to Yahoo Global News, his brother Michael Foley said: “There’s more that could have been done directly on Jim’s behalf.

“I really, really hope that Jim’s death pushes us to take another look at our approach to terrorist and hostage negotiation.”

Meanwhile Mr Foley’s father told American TV this morning that the “negotiation process has been very uneven”.

He and his wife Diane expressed their hopes that future talks might spare the life of Steven Sotloff, another US journalist in captivity, along with the lives of other hostages.

“We pray at this very moment that Steven Sotloff is spared and the other American hostages,” said John Foley. “We pray from the bottom of our souls.”

In the email that was sent to the executed journalist’s parents on August 12, his captors said they had offered a deal to exchange kidnapped Westerners in return for jailed Islamic militants.

“However you proved very quickly to us that this is NOT what you are interested in,” they said.

The correspondence was released by the Global Post online news organisation, one of the outlets which Mr Foley was working for. It was also passed to the American authorities.

His Isil captors had previously sent emails demanding $132.5 million (£80 million) from relatives and political concession from Washington, according to the Associated Press news agency.

But the revelation that the group also offered a prisoner swap has led to unwelcome comparisons with a previous high-profile kidnap case.

In May this year, US soldier Sgt Bowe Bergdahl was freed from captivity in Afghanistan.

As part of that deal, the Obama administration agreed to release five Taliban detainees who had been arrested during the Afghan war and held in Guantanamo Bay – a development which appeared to contradict official White House policy.

Trying to explain this apparent contradiction, the Obama administration explained that the Bergdahl deal was orchestrated through Qatar.

Not only were the released Taliban detainees handed directly into Qatari custody, but according to American officials all negotiation for their release was carried out through Qatari representatives.

As a result of this, US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel was able to tell Americans in a TV interview that “we didn’t negotiate with terrorists”. There was no prisoner swap with the Taliban, argued the White House, because the swap actually involved only Qatar.

As such, the White House will still be able to maintain the notion that it does not get involved in grubby beneath-the-counter prisoner deals – not for Bowe Bergdahl, and not for James Foley.

Isil had in the past also captured French and Spanish journalists, but freed them after their governments reportedly paid ransoms.

US special forces launched an operation in July to rescue Mr Foley, but were forced to retreat empty-handed after a brief firefight with militants.

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The "pause" in global warming may last another decade before surface temperatures start rising again, according to scientists who say heat is being stored in the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans.

Global average surface temperatures rose rapidly from the 1970s but have been relatively stable since the late 1990s, in a trend that has been seized upon by climate sceptics who question the science of man-made warming.

Climate change scientists have proposed more than a dozen theories to explain the "hiatus", which they say is a "distraction" from the widespread consensus on global warming.

A new study, published in the journal Science, suggests that a natural cycle of ocean currents has caused the phenomenon by drawing heat from shallow waters down almost a mile into the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans.

The cycle naturally produces periods of roughly 30 years in which heat is stored near the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, leading to warmer temperatures, followed by roughly 30 years in which it is stored in the depths, causing cooler surface temperatures, it suggests.

Rising surface temperatures in the last three decades of the 20th century were roughly half caused by man-made global warming and half by the ocean currents keeping more heat near the surface, it finds.

When the ocean cycle reversed around the turn of the century, drawing heat down into the depths, this served to counteract the effects of man-made global warming.

"When the internal variability that is responsible for the current hiatus switches sign, as it inevitably will, another episode of accelerated global warming should ensue," the study concludes.

Prof Ka-Kit Tung of the University of Washington, one of the report's authors, said:"Historically the cool period lasted 20 to 35 years. The current period already lasted 15 years, so roughly there [are] 10 more years to go."

But he said that other impacts of climate change could upset the cycle, which is caused by variation in the salinity of the water as denser, saltier water sinks.

Prof Tung said the study's findings were a surprise because previous studies had suggested it was the Pacific Ocean that was "the culprit for hiding heat".

"The data are quite convincing and they show otherwise," he said.

Prof Piers Forster, professor of climate change at the University of Leeds, said the paper was "another a nail in the coffin of the idea that the hiatus is evidence that our projections of long term climate change need revising down".

"Variability in the ocean will not affect long-term climate trends but may mean we have a period of accelerated warming to look forward to," he said.

Prof Richard Allan, professor of climate science at the University of Reading, said: "Although it is human nature to seek a single cause for notable events, in reality the complexity of the climate system means that there is not one simple explanation for a decade of unusual climatic conditions."

SEE ALSO: A Changing World Is Creating These Hybrid Animals

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John Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, who walked free from a Colombian prison on Tuesday night, initially wanted to be a policeman. But he ended up working for the world's richest drugs lord, and ordering the murder of 3,000 politicians, journalists, rival narcotraffickers and unfortunate civilians.

When John Jairo Velásquez Vásquez walked out of prison after 22 years he had, he calculated, an 80 per cent chance of being murdered.

But given his career choice, the odds may come as no surprise.

Velásquez, 52, better known as "Popeye", started working for Colombian drugs lord Pablo Escobar at the age of 18, rising up the ranks to become his most trusted and loyal hitman.

By the time he was arrested, in 1992, he had killed 250 people with his own hands – including his own girlfriend – and ordered the murder of up to 3,000 more. He detonated over 250 car bombs and organised dozens of kidnappings – among them Andres Pastrana, who went on to be president, and Francisco Santos, cousin of the current president Juan Manuel Santos. He is linked to the 1989 bombing of an Avianca jet, which killed 109 people, and the murder of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan in 1990 – for which he was convicted to 30 years behind bars.

His decision to help the authorities secure further convictions expedited his release – but it has still been controversial in Colombia.

"I don't think it's the right time," said Francisco Arellano, president of Colombia Remembers, a support group for Escobar's victims. "Not because the victims think that insufficient time has passed – but because he still has convictions pending. And when you are in that situation, you should not be free."

But for the family of Galan, a popular Left-wing politician whose murder deeply shocked the country, releasing him was the right thing to do.

"My family and I are direct victims of Popeye," said Andres Villamizar, nephew of Galan's wife. "But if anyone in Colombia has paid for their crimes, it's him."

As a child, Velasquez initially wanted to work on the side of the government.

Born into the mountainous industrial town of Yarumal, 70 miles north of Colombia's second city Medellin – and Escobar's fiefdom – Velasquez described his childhood as being "limited".

"We didn't play football, or go out on bikes – we did nothing," he told Colombian newspaper El Tiempo in 2013. "Then, because of my father's job, we moved to Itagui (a suburb of Medellin). Then I began to see the world."

At first he wanted to be a policeman, and signed up for the local branch. Then he tried his hand at being a marine, but found it "boring" - far from the guns, glamour and warships he imagined.

He then met up with a childhood friend, Pinina, who was working for Escobar and, as Velasquez described it, "taught me how to work".

His first "contract" came when he was 18.

"I had to kill a bus conductor in the Medellin suburb of Envigado," he recalled years later.

"When he was the driver, the mother of a friend of Pablo Escobar's got off the bus and had a fall, and he didn't help her. He left her there and she died. So when this guy got some money, he asked Pablo Escobar to help him get revenge on this driver.

"I made some enquiries, found the guy and killed him. I felt nothing. That idea that a person cannot sleep for thinking about dead people doesn't apply to me.

"Neither did I need to take drugs, or smoke, or take pills to calm myself down. The deeds that I have done don't deprive me of sleep."

From there he progressed to heading up "operations" as significant as the kidnapping of Mr Pastrana – who was held by Escobar's Medellin Cartel for a week – and the murder of Carlos Mauro Hoyos, the Attorney General.

"Then we learnt to use dynamite," he said. "With this we brought Colombia to its knees. We put 250 bombs in Cali, Bogota and Medellin."

They even obtained rockets – but couldn't work out how to use them.

"A rocket is quite hard to control – you need military training," he said. "I remember one day we were in Hacienda Napoles (Escobar's ranch) and Carlos Lehder took one out to try against a house. He fired it against one of the buildings, and it didn't even kill a pig!"

He was shot twice – once in the arm, and another time by a policeman through the chest. "But I reacted quickly and killed him," he said.

In 1991, Escobar agreed to be held in his own "prison" on the outskirts of Medellin named La Catedral, from where he ran his drugs empire behind bars.

His loyal hitman went with him, murdering on his behalf enemies who were lured into the fortress.

"If Pablo Escobar were born again, I would join him without a moment's hesitation," he said. "He was loved by us. He taught us to fight and gave us everything."

Escobar, he said, was a professional – a businessman with a strategy and vision, which the current crop of Mexican drugs lords lack. Escobar's illicit empire supplied 80 per cent of all America's cocaine – making its leader, who was shot dead by the city's police in 1993, the second richest man in the world, with an estimated fortune of $30 billion (£18bn).

The one murder for which he shows a flicker of remorse is that of his mistress, Wendy Chavarriga – who was Escobar's ex-girlfriend. Escobar ordered her death for the betrayal, and for working as an informant for a rival gang.

"The hit on Wendy was madness," he said. "I sent a group of guys – they're all dead today – who were working for me. I wasn't able to do it myself.

"I made a date with her, and they handled it.

"I have no regrets about anything, you can't change the past. But sometimes in my cell I repent that.

"If one day I see Wendy again, I could only say 'I'm sorry.' It wasn't me. I had all this violence in my head. I was very loyal to Pablo Escobar."

In October 1992, with the noose tightening around Escobar, Popeye handed himself in.

In the first two prisons, other inmates tried to kill him several times.

"I was going to get killed in the showers in the morning, and here, one is naked and soapy and nobody makes it in that situation," he said. "I'm small and they were going to unleash on me two beasts, two 22-year-old guys with wooden knives – I was told about it."

So on arrival at his third prison, in Combita, 100 miles north of the capital Bogota, he changed strategies and decided to cooperate with the authorities to secure the convictions of others.

He went on to study for degrees and act as a mentor for younger prisoners, telling them not to return to a life of crime on their release.

And on his release from Combita prison, 100 miles north of the capital Bogota, "Popeye" said he had no intention of returning to his violent past.

Instead he hopes to write the screenplay of the Medellin Cartel story, or perhaps a book. He is on bail for nine million Colombian pesos, and cannot leave the country for two years.

"I'm not going to harm anyone," he said, in an interview a year before his release. "I am a man at peace with myself."

His wife and son live in the United States, but he has not been visited by friends or family for five years.

And despite being escorted by 200 police in five vans and on 10 motorbikes as he left prison on Tuesday night, he knew the odds were stacked against him.

"Eighty per cent chance of me being killed. Twenty per cent chance of making it," he said.

"That's the name of the game. I'm not stupid. Will I spend 22 years in prison and then go out looking for enemies and saying 'Hey, here I am, shoot me!'?

"No. I take care of myself, and if a guy comes after me to kill me, I'll defend myself. I'm not suicidal."

SEE ALSO: Pablo Escobar's Right-Hand Man Freed From Colombian Prison

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Where was the good snow in 2013/14 in the Alps, and North America - and what does it mean for 2014/15?

It’s not often to see extremes of high and low snowfall as geographically close together as last season. Italy and the rest of the southern Alps were exceptionally snowy – you would have to go back to 1951 to find a snowier winter in the southern Austrian region of Carinthia, Lombardy or the Dolomites in the Italian Alps.

By contrast, the north-eastern Alps, including most of Austria, had a dismal season with little or no natural base below 1,200m, even in the depths of winter. In the northern French and western Swiss Alps, snowfall was more normal, but everywhere (even the exceptionally snowy south) saw above average temperatures, thanks to persistent south-westerly winds.

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How did the season play out?
November storms dropping significant snow at altitude meant things started well and optimism was rife, but with high pressure dominant for much of December, leading to dry, mild conditions, low resorts were looking threadbare in the run up to Christmas.

Then, as good snow became increasingly scarce, a massive storm dumped right across the southern Alps - Madesimo clocking 2.3m on December 25 and 26 alone. This set the tone for January and February, with further huge snowfalls across Italy and the southern Alps, but only bits and pieces further north.

While this was enough for the northern French and western Swiss Alps to enjoy a reasonable season, it proved woefully inadequate for most of Austria, whose lower resorts - such as Kitzbühel - were unable to build a convincing base and relied heavily on artificial help.

To make matters worse, spring came early and consistently warm temperatures and lots of sun meant that for some small Austrian resorts it was game over by mid-March. Elsewhere in the Alps, there was still some good late season snow to be enjoyed, particularly at altitude in the south and west.

Not surprisingly, most Austrian resorts away from the far south finished with below average snowfall – just 3.5m up top for Söll (average 6.5m) and 5.8m for Warth-Schröcken, whose 10.6m average is the highest in the Alps. In Switzerland, snowfall figures were closer to normal – 6.1m at mid-mountain for Verbier and 5.4m at resort level in Arosa.

In France, the mega resorts of the northern Alps were generally a little below par – 4.4m for Val d’Isère and 5.4m for La Rosière, while snowfall increased the further south you went, with a near record-breaking 10m for Isola 2000. However, Italy was the stand-out country in 2013/14, with 8.3m at resort level in Cervinia (some 30 to 40 per cent above average) and over 9m in Madesimo (average 4.5m). Snowiest of all was Passo Tonale with an incredible 11.6m (average 5m).

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Across the pond
In North America, fortunes were also mixed. California endured its worst winter since 1976/77 with just 4.6m at altitude in Mammoth, around half what you might expect. Utah was also below par, but at least the snow fell fairly consistently, and 10.4m for Alta (around 75 per cent of normal) is still impressive by most European standards.

Colorado fared better after two dismal seasons, with Aspen clocking almost 8m and Loveland 10.6m - both some 25 per cent above average.

Up in Canada, Whistler had a poor early season but recovered well to finish with 9m, just 15 per cent below par. By contrast, interior BC and Alberta impressed from the start with 6.8m for Lake Louise, 60 per cent above average in what is a relatively cold and dry part of the Rockies.

The snowiest resort in North America was perennial winner Mt Baker, in Washington State, despite only clocking 14.8m - nearly 2m short of its massive 16.6m average.

And next season?
Recent years have seen a slight positive bias towards the southern Alps in terms of snowfall, but it's too soon to say if this will continue. In North America a moderate El Niño was predicted but this is now being played down. There is some evidence linking El Niño events to greater than average snowfall across California and the southern Rockies - but it’s complex stuff, and not everyone agrees.

Fraser Wilkin is the editor of weathertoski.co.uk, a website that provides regularly updated snow and weather information for skiers and snowboarders.

SEE ALSO: The 10 Most Intense Ski Runs In The US

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As American tennis mourned the defeat of its most promising young player - the 21st seed Sloane Stephens, who lost on Wednesday against Sweden's Johanna Larsson - there was at least some compensation in the feelgood story of 15-year-old CiCi Bellis.

On Tuesday evening, Bellis took out the Australian Open finalist and 12th seed Dominika Cibulkova in a dramatic three-set match: 6-1, 4-6, 6-4. In doing so, the world No 1,208 became the youngest woman to win a match at the US Open since Anna Kournikova in 1996.

Expectations around Flushing Meadows had not been high before the match, as was evident from Bellis's scheduling on the relatively unglamorous Court Six.

As word got out of a potential upset, the few available seats became heavily oversubscribed, while host broadcaster ESPN had to set up a last-minute camera position in the stands.

The chanting of Bellis's name helped her to rouse herself to overcome a 3-1 deficit in the deciding set, and afterwards she credited the crowd for giving her "so much energy. I love it when people watch me".

Much of the post-match coverage of Bellis's win focused on her amateur status. In order to keep the option of a college tennis career open, she is not claiming her earnings from this event, which would amount to $60,000 assuming she loses on Thursday to her second-round opponent, Zarina Dyas of Kazakhstan.

As the world's second-ranked junior, Bellis will almost certainly be good enough to turn pro directly, rather than opting for the safety net of a college degree.

She earned a wild card to the US Open by beating another hotly tipped talent in Tornado Black to win the national girls' under-18 competition in San Diego a fortnight ago.

Again, Bellis was performing ahead of expectations in San Diego: she was the youngest woman to lift that title since Lindsay Davenport, who went on to win three grand slams, in 1991. Sensibly, though, she does not want to close down any paths at this early stage of her career.

"I think I'm definitely going to stay an amateur right now to keep my options open for college, in case an injury or something happens," she said. "But I'd love to be a pro one day."

The money she sacrificed may not concern her too much. Bellis comes from a comfortable background, to say the least, having learnt the game at a country club in San Francisco.

Her father Gordon works in private equity, and her mother Lori was herself a college tennis player who was reported to be too nervous to attend the match on Tuesday.

Feelin this dubs photo @thealexisnelson👊 pic.twitter.com/3auH20miMO

— CiCi Bellis (@cicibellis99) August 11, 2014

"I'm told I cannot sigh and cannot move or say anything," Gordon Bellis told one reporter, when asked about the experience of supporting his daughter from the courtside. "She knows when I sigh. I have to sit like a sphinx."

There are plenty of young American women with star quality - not least Madison Keys, who lifted her maiden WTA title in Eastbourne in June.

But with the exception of Stephens's appearance in the Australian Open semi-final last year, they have yet to suggest that they can contend with the queen of the court: Serena Williams, who beat another compatriot in Taylor Townsend in her first-round match on Tuesday night.

"I haven't had that great of a season," Stephens said on Wednesday, after her 6-7, 6-4, 6-2 defeat by Larsson. "But I'm not going to dwell on it. There is always room for improvement. Everyone has their ups and downs. Everyone goes through times like this. I'm not the first person and won't be the last."

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