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Banks and lenders fear this kind of thinking — that walking away from a house could be the smart economic move — appears to be on the rise. Wachovia, in a conference call yesterday, warned investors that increasing numbers of homeowners are walking away from their homes by choice: “… people that have otherwise had the capacity to pay, but have basically just decided not to because they feel like they’ve lost equity, value in their properties…”

Calculated Risk notes this is “one of the greatest fears for lenders … that it will become socially acceptable for upside down middle class Americans to walk away from their homes.”

A commenter on L.A. Land this morning writes, “I am one of these people. My condo has dropped in value from $520K in 5/06 when I bought it to $350K now. My ARM payment will probably go up $900 per month in June.

“Despite all this, I would be willing to stay if the bank would refi the loans to a 30 year fixed, but since I’m not a ‘hardship’ case they’d apparently rather foreclose. I guess the only way I could qualify for loan mitigation is to get my boss to fire me, stop making payments, and wreck my credit. In fact, my bank won’t even talk to me until I miss a couple of payments.

The second-biggest French bank said that it had lost €4.9 billion (£3.7 billion) as a result of the rogue trades by a Paris-based trader who concealed his positions through “a scheme of elaborate fictitious transactions”.

It said that it was in the process of dismissing the trader, who had “confessed to the fraud”. Some of his managers would also be leaving the company.

The fraud appears to be one of the biggest in history, dwarfing the £827 million lost by Mr Leeson, whose rogue trading led to the collapse of Barings in 1995.

SocGen described the fraud today as “exceptional in its size and nature”.

The trader, who has not been named, was in charge of trading what SocGen called “plain vanilla” European stock market index futures.

Plain vanilla is a phrase frequently used in the City to describe supposedly simple and straightforward securities, as distinct from more complex and esoteric investments.

Traders in index futures take bets on the future direction of share market indices such as the FTSE 100.

Normally, they are governed by strict trading limits to prevent catastrophic losses, or they hedge their overall exposure with offsetting bets.

Experts say video games can be fun as well as educational, although the outcome largely depends on the content.

“They could in fact lead to changes in attitudes, beliefs, and ultimately, changes in behavior,” said Craig Anderson, a professor of psychology at Iowa State University who studies the effects of video games on people.

The multi-player version of Fuel of War lets gamers connect and play along side or against each other from anywhere in the world.

They can choose to fight for the Western Alliance, made up of the U.S. and European countries, or the Eastern Alliance consisting of China and Russia.

And the choice of weapons is staggering – players can hop from ground combat with an array of hand-held munitions to flying helicopters, planes, or driving tanks – all futuristic designs DeLise and his team created using current weapons and intelligence gleamed from the Internet and other sources on next-generation military hardware.

Fuel of War, set for release in February, is a first-rate shoot ’em-up game with a well developed story line. It is one of a growing number of games that center around the theme of energy.

A previous game from Kaos centered on an oil war in the Caspian region, and Energyville, a SimCity-like Web-based game from Chevron and the Economist Group, lets players plan the energy needs of a future city.

But Anderson, the psychologist, is concerned about the message that violent games like Fuel of War may send to players.

“It may well change attitudes towards the use of these tactics as a political tool,” he said. Players may think “of course we have to use military tactics to go take oil.”

Solazyme is currently producing thousands of gallons of algal oil for use in producing algal biodiesel via conventional transesterification or algal renewable diesel via refinery-based hydrotreatment.

The company also has a research project underway for the production of algal biocrude oil. The biocrude or biopetroleum will be designed to match the composition of light sweet crude oil. The biopetroleum would be fully compatible with the infrastructure that refines, distributes retails and consumes petroleum products—not just automobile fuels but aviation fuel and chemicals as well.

Israel eased the siege for a day on Tueday, allowing in shipments of fuel and medicine. But the International Committee of the Red Cross said aid needed to be allowed into the territory on a regular basis to prevent a complete collapse of health and sanitary services.

“Deliveries of essential humanitarian goods must be secured in the long run to prevent more hardship and to avoid the collapse of the already fragile infrastructure,” said Dorothea Krimitsas, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Israel sealed Gaza on Thursday, halting fuel shipments. Three days later, Gaza’s Hamas rulers shut down the territory’s only power plant, which provides electricity to about one-third of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents.

Krimitsas said the situation remained precarious. Gaza’s hospitals were pooling their fuel to maintain life-saving services such as surgery and intensive care units.

Medical supplies are running out and health staff are having problems getting to work because transportation has become more difficult, Krimitsas told reporters.

“There is no functioning central heating in the hospitals,” she added.

The ICRC, which acts as the guardian of the Geneva Conventions on the rules of warfare, has repeatedly called on both Israeli armed forces and Palestinian militants to ensure that their conflict avoids harming civilians.

Krimitsas said Israel needed to provide conditions for Palestinians to live normal lives without relying forever on emergency relief.

The Associated Press reports the study, published on the website of the Centre for Public Integrity, concluded the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanised public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretences”.

According to the study, 935 false statements were issued by the White House in the two years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

In speeches, briefings and interviews, President Bush and other officials stated “unequivocally” on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had links to al-Qaeda, or had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to get them.

“It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaeda,” wrote the study’s authors Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith.

“In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.”

The study found that President Bush alone made 259 false statements – 231 about weapons of mass destruction and 28 about Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda.

The other officials named in the study are vice president Dick Cheney, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, then-defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-secretary of state Colin Powell, deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House spokesmen Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

“The cumulative effect of these false statements – amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts – was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war,” the study concluded.