France kicked off on Wednesday auctions for frequencies to build high-speed fourth generation mobile telephone networks needed to keep up with the explosion of Internet-capable smartphones.

Bandwith in the 800 megahertz and 2.6 gigahertz range are on the block, with minimum bids set at 2.5 billion Euros ($3.6 billion), according to information published in France's official government journal.

Facebook is approaching 700 million members but its growth is slowing and it lost users in the United States and Canada last month, the Inside Facebook website said Monday.

Facebook had 687 million members at the start of June, said Inside Facebook, which closely tracks developments and trends at the Palo Alto, California-based social network.

Google and its joint venture partner in China have applied for a license to operate an online mapping service in the world's biggest web market, a report said Tuesday.

The State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping was reviewing the application from Beijing Guxiang Information Technology Co., which operates Google's mapping service in China, Dow Jones Newswires said, citing an official.

A shadowy group of hackers behind a string of recent cyber attacks claimed on Monday to have breached the U.S. Senate website and taken internal data.

The Senate Sergeant at Arms, which is responsible for congressional security, confirmed there had been an intrusion into the server hosting the public website,Senate.gov, but said no sensitive information was compromised.

Humor, online hits and social good blended at The Webby Awards -- the Internet industry's version of Hollywood's Oscars.

Addictive game Angry Birds along with the inventor of the mobile phone were among those honored late Monday at a ceremony known for testing winners' creativity by limiting acceptance speeches to five words.

The latest model of Apple's ultra-light MacBook Air is scheduled to hit the market by the end of this month, media in the computer manufacturing hub of Taiwan reported on Tuesday.

The first shipment of the next-generation MacBook Air -- the thinnest line of Apple's notebook computers, holding a hard drive and disc player -- will be 380,000 units, the Taipei-based Economic Daily News said.

Swiss solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse will make its second international flight from Brussels to Paris on Saturday, where it will be showcased at an international air show.

The pioneering aircraft is expected to take off between 1200 and 1600 GMT in Brussels and land around 2200 GMT at the earliest at Le Bourget near Paris, its press office said Friday, after several delays due to unfavorable weather conditions.

U.S. videogame publishing titan Electronic Arts is merging blockbuster titles with social play, popular new gadgets and downloadable content in a changing world of interactive entertainment.

"Historically, as a publisher, you developed a game, packed it on a disk, shipped it and then started work on your next game," said EA vice president and managing director of Southern Europe Pascal Brochier.

Apple, in a move hailed by a group of U.S. senators, has agreed not to allow any new iPhone applications in the App Store that identify police drunk-driving checkpoints.

Senators Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, Frank Lautenberg and Tom Udall urged Apple, Blackberry maker Research In Motion and Google in March to ban Smartphone applications that could help intoxicated drivers avoid police.

Facebook on Friday said it is dabbling with a Twitter-like feature that alerts members in real time to what their friends are up to on the social network.

The feature, reportedly called "Happening Now," is being tried by a "fraction of a percent" of Facebook's more than 600 million members, according to the world's leading online social network.