New US home starts surge in June

There are signs confidence may be returning to the building sector

The construction of new homes in the US rose 3.6% between May and June to the highest level in seven months, official figures have shown.

This is the second month in a row that housing starts have risen following a post-war low in April.

Compared with the same month a year ago, however, June starts were down 46%, the Commerce Department said.

The number of single family homes being built jumped 14.4% in June, the biggest jump in over four years.

'Genuine surprise'

The number of new homes built totalled 582,000, many more than analysts had expected.

Figures for May were also revised upwards, from 532,000 to 562,000.

San Diego menaced by jumbo squid

Squid have come to the California coast before, like this one in 2005

Scuba divers off the Californian city of San Diego are being menaced by large numbers of jumbo squid.

The beaked Humboldt squid, which grow up to 5ft (1.5 metres) long, arrived off the city's shores last week.

Divers have reported unnerving encounters with the creatures, which are carnivorous and can be aggressive.

One diver described how one of the rust-coloured creatures ripped the buoyancy aid and light from her chest, and grabbed her with its tentacles.

"I just kicked like crazy," diver Shanda Magill told the Associated Press news agency.

"The first thing you think of is: 'Oh my gosh, I don't know if I'm going to survive this.' If that squid wanted to hurt me, it would have."

Shanda Magill holds the buoyancy aid and light that the squid ripped from her

The creatures - also known as jumbo flying squid - do not affect swimmers because they remain deeper in the water.

But dozens have been washing up on beaches in the area.

"The ones that we are getting right now have a big beak on them, like a large parrot beak," San Diego's Union-Tribune quoted John Hyde of the National Marine Fisheries Service as saying earlier in the week.

"They could take a chunk of flesh off you."

'Ram you'

Diver and amateur underwater cameraman Roger Uzun said he swam with a group of squid for about 20 minutes.

They seemed curious about him, he said, and appeared to be touching him and his wetsuit with their tentacles to see if he was edible.

"As soon as we went underwater and turned on the video lights, there they were. They would ram into you, they kept hitting the back of my head," he told AP.

It is not the first time the squid, which can weigh up to 45kg (7 stone), have taken up residence off California's coast.

In January 2005 hundreds of them washed up off the coast of Orange County, to the north, and in 2002 a similar invasion was reported near San Diego.

Scientists say they do not know why the squid - which usually live in deep waters further south off Mexico and Central America - have come so close in.

But one expert, Nigella Hillgarth of the San Diego-based Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told AP it was possible that the squid had established a year-round population off California.

Wikipedia painting row escalates

By Rory Cellan-Jones Technology correspondent, BBC News

Work by Sir Joshua Reynolds was among those uploaded to Wikipedia

The battle over Wikipedia's use of images from a British art gallery's website has intensified.

The online encyclopaedia has accused the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) of betraying its public service mission.

But the gallery has said it needs to recoup the £1m cost of its digitisation programme and claims Wikipedia has misrepresented its position.

The NPG is threatening legal action after 3,300 images from its website were uploaded to Wikipedia.

The high-resolution images were uploaded by Wikipedia volunteer Derrick Coetzee.

Now Erik Moeller, the deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation which runs the online encyclopaedia, has laid out the organisation's stance in a blog post.

'Empire building'

He said most observers would think the two sides should be "allies not adversaries" and that museums and other cultural institutions should not pursue extra revenue at the expense of limiting public access to their material.

"It is hard to see a plausible argument that excluding public domain content from a free, non-profit encyclopaedia serves any public interest whatsoever," he wrote.

He points out that two German photographic archives donated 350,000 copyrighted images for use on Wikipedia, and other institutions in the United States and the UK have seen benefits in making material available for use.

Another Wikipedia volunteer David Gerard has blogged about the row, claiming that the National Portrait Gallery makes only £10-15,000 a year from web licensing, less than it makes "selling food in the cafe".

They honestly think the paintings belong to them rather than to us David Gerard Wikipedia volunteer

But the gallery insists that its case has been misrepresented, and has now released a statement denying many of the charges made by Wikipedia.

It denies claims that it has been "locking up and limiting access to educational materials", saying that it has been a pioneer in making its material available.

It has worked for the last five years toward the target of getting half of its collection online by 2009. "We will be able to achieve this," said the gallery's statement, "as a result of self-generated income."

The gallery says that while it only makes a limited revenue from web licensing, it earns far more from the reproduction of its images in books and magazines - £339,000 in the last year.

But it says the present situation jeopardises its ability to fund its digitisation process from its own resources.

Legal issues

The gallery has claimed that Derrick Coetzee's actions have breached English copyright laws, which protect copies of original works even when they themselves are out of copyright.

The National Portrait Gallery now says it only sent a legal letter to Derrick Coetzee after the Wikimedia Foundation failed to respond to requests to discuss the issue. But it says contact has now been made and remains hopeful that a dialogue will be possible.

A spokeswoman also said that the two German archives mentioned in Erik Moeller's blog had in fact supplied medium resolution images to Wikipedia, and insisted that the National Portrait Gallery had been willing to offer similar material to Wikipedia.

The gallery said the row could prevent it putting more of its collection online

The gallery also explained how Derrick Coetzee was able to obtain the high resolution files from its site. They were made available to visitors using a "Zoomify" feature, which works by allowing several high resolution files to be seen all together.

It claims Mr Coetzee used special software to "de-scramble" the high-resolution tiles, allowing the whole portrait to be seen in high resolution.

The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has backed the National Portrait Gallery's stance.

"If owners of out of copyright material are not going to have the derivative works they have created protected, which will result in anyone being able to use then for free, they will cease to invest in the digitisation of works, and everyone will be the poorer," it wrote in an email to its members.

But the Wikipedia volunteer David Gerard accuses the gallery of bureaucratic empire building.

"They honestly think the paintings belong to them rather than to us," he wrote.

Asia watches long solar eclipse

People have been buying masks to view the eclipse

People in Asia are watching what will be the longest total solar eclipse this century, with swathes of India and China to be plunged into darkness.

Amateur stargazers and scientists have travelled far to see the eclipse, which will last for about five minutes.

The eclipse could first be seen early on Wednesday in eastern India, though in some regions there was thick cloud.

The eclipse is moving east across India, Nepal, Burma, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China and the Pacific.

The eclipse first became total over India at 0053GMT. It will cross some southern Japanese islands and will last be visible from land at Nikumaroro Island in the South Pacific nation of Kiribati. It will end at 0418GMT.

Elsewhere, a partial eclipse is visible across much of Asia.

Taking shelter

In India the village of Taregna, near Patna, has been swamped by researchers expecting a particularly clear view of the eclipse.

"We are hoping to make some valuable observations on the formation of asteroids around the sun," scientist Pankaj Bhama told the Associated Press news agency.

Eclipse fever in India village

But pregnant women in India were advised to stay inside, following beliefs that the eclipse could harm a foetus.

"My mother and aunts have called and told me stay in a darkened room with the curtains closed, lie in bed and chant prayers," said Krati Jain, a software worker in New Delhi who is expecting her first child.

In eastern China, heavy cloud or rain was expected to make it virtually impossible to see the eclipse.

The previous total eclipse, in August 2008, lasted two minutes and 27 seconds.

This one will last six minutes and 39 seconds at its maximum point.

'Special opportunity'

Alphonse Sterling, a Nasa astrophysicist who will be following the eclipse from China, scientists are hoping data from the eclipse will help explain solar flares and other structures of the sun and why they erupt.

"We'll have to wait a few hundred years for another opportunity to observe a solar eclipse that lasts this long, so it's a very special opportunity," Shao Zhenyi, an astronomer at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China told the Associated Press.

Solar scientist Lucie Green, from University College London, is aboard an American cruise ship heading for that point near the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, where the axis of the Moon's shadow will pass closest to Earth.

"The [Sun's] corona has a temperature of 2 million degrees but we don't know why it is so hot," she said.

"What we are going to look for are waves in the corona. ... The waves might be producing the energy that heats the corona. That would mean we understand another piece of the science of the Sun."

The next total solar eclipse will occur on 11 July next year. It will be visible in a narrow corridor over the southern hemisphere, from the southern Pacific Ocean to Argentina.

TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE In the area covered by the umbra (the darkest part of the shadow), a total eclipse is seen In the region covered by the penumbra (where only some of the light source is obscured) a partial eclipse is seen

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Will you be watching the eclipse? You can send us your pictures and videos of the eclipse.

Endeavour astronauts on spacewalk

US astronaut Tim Kopra was making his first ever spacewalk

Astronauts have begun the first of five spacewalks to be performed by the crew of the shuttle Endeavour at the International Space Station (ISS).

American astronauts Tim Kopra and Dave Wolf are preparing Japan's space lab Kibo for the installation of its final piece - a large external platform.

It will be used in experiments requiring materials to be exposed to the harsh environment of space.

Endeavour docked on Friday, uniting a record 13 astronauts at the ISS.

Saturday's spacewalk was expected to last more than six hours.

The 1.9-tonne platform will be attached to Kibo's two pressurised modules that were delivered to the space station last year.

Once the pieces are ready, the astronauts will manoeuvre the robotic arms on the station and put the section into place with the help of the two spacewalkers.