Deep beneath desert sands, an embattled Middle Eastern state has built a covert nuclear bomb, using technology and materials provided by friendly powers or stolen by a clandestine network of agents. It is the stuff of pulp thrillers and the sort of narrative often used to characterise the worst fears about the Iranian nuclear programme. In reality, though, neither US nor British intelligence believe Tehran has decided to build a bomb, and Iran's atomic projects are under constant international monitoring.
The exotic tale of the bomb hidden in the desert is a true story, though. It's just one that applies to another country. In an extraordinary feat of subterfuge, Israel managed to assemble an entire underground nuclear arsenal – now estimated at 80 warheads, on a par with India and Pakistan – and even tested a bomb nearly half a century ago, with a minimum of international outcry or even much public awareness of what it was doing.
Despite the fact that the Israel's nuclear programme has been an open secret since a disgruntled technician, Mordechai Vanunu, blew the whistle on it in 1986, the official Israeli position is still never to confirm or deny its existence.
When the former speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, broke the taboo last month, declaring Israeli possession of both nuclear and chemical weapons and describing the official non-disclosure policy as "outdated and childish" a rightwing group formally called for a police investigation for treason.
Meanwhile, western governments have played along with the policy of "opacity" by avoiding all mention of the issue. In 2009, when a veteran Washington reporter, Helen Thomas, asked Barack Obama in the first month of his presidency if he knew of any country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, he dodged the trapdoor by saying only that he did not wish to "speculate".
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A senior Morrisons employee bought shares in online grocer Ocado before a transformational £216m tie-up between the two retailers was announced, it has been alleged.
The Telegraph can reveal that Paul Coyle, Morrisons’ group treasurer and head of tax, was arrested in December after an insider trading investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
He was arrested on suspicion of buying shares in Ocado before it was publicly revealed that the companies had agreed a lucrative partnership to launch an online grocery service for Morrisons.
Shares in Ocado rocketed after the shock deal was revealed and the online grocer, which has notoriously never reported an annual pre-tax profit, was the best performing major stock in Europe last year.
Ocado shares are up by 281pc since the companies first publicly confirmed on March 14 that they were in talks about a joint venture.
Those on the outside might imagine that the business leaders who gather in Davos each year to chew the fat are concerned only about enriching themselves. Critics might imagine that the company bosses, jetting to the World Economic Forum 5,000 feet up in the Swiss Alps in their helicopters, mink-clad trophy wives in tow, are oblivious to the struggles of the poor. But they would be wrong.
As the rich and powerful make their last-minute preparations for their week up the magic mountain, they want the message to be sent out that they understand about inequality. They feel the pain. Truly they do.
The evidence for the "Davos gets it" line comes from the annual risk report compiled by the WEF. It asks 700 of its members what they think will be the most pressing threats to the global economy over the coming decade. Inequality is seen as the most likely risk.
Klaus Schwab, who created the Davos meeting in the 1970s, is pleased about that finding. As a good old-fashioned social democrat, he wants his members to take a history lesson and realise that capitalism cannot survive if income and wealth become concentrated in too few hands. For much of the 20th century, the more far-sighted business leaders realised this. They understood that their workers needed reasonable wages so that they could buy the goods and services they were making. They grasped the idea that a market system in its rawest form was incompatible with democracy and so acquiesced while some of the rough edges were knocked off via progressive taxation, welfare states and curbs on capital. Deep down, they feared that the Russian revolution would provide a template for disaffected workers in the west
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