Google is trying once again to challenge Facebook's domination of the social networking business. Its main social networking site "Orkut" is very popular in Brazil, but in the rest of the world, Google trails Facebook.

But the company has a new attempt to catch up.

The new social network is called Google Plus, and you're not allowed to join it. At least, not yet.

"It's small but growing," says Bradley Horowitz, who oversees Google's communications products and social applications.

After French daily Le Figaro ran a report saying France was secretly arming Libyan rebels, the French military has admitted that they provided the rebels with ammunition and weapons on several occasions.

Watching President Obama Wednesday at his first full-scale news conference since February, it was difficult not to be aware of the two simultaneous campaigns he was waging.

The first and more short-term campaign was his effort to get congressional Republicans to agree to raise the federal debt ceiling by the Aug. 2 deadline set by the U.S. Treasury Department to avert a debt default by the U.S. government.

Since the economy is the issue that tops all others for voters, Obama said the debt-ceiling was about jobs.

We know you've asked yourself that question in the headline and common knowledge dictates that the reason your fingers look pruney when you're in water for too long is that the skin absorbs water.

Well, Mark Changizi, an evolutionary neurobiologist at 2AI Labs in Boise, Idaho, thinks he has a better theory. Nature reports on the study, which was published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution:

Fourth of July weekend is right there on the horizon, and beach bunnies everywhere are mulling where to drop their towels and umbrellas. Fortunately, they can refer to the Natural Resource Defense Council Testing the Waters report, released today, before making that call.

The music business has undergone drastic changes during the Internet era, but until recently, one thing that hadn't changed was the role of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, known to the industry as ASCAP. This performance rights organization has helped songwriters and music publishers get paid when their songs are played in radio broadcasts, on elevators and in clubs for nearly 100 years. But as broadcasting moves online, ASCAP's future may be uncertain.

The first of three U.S. Appeals courts has now weighed in on the constitutionality of law year's health overhaul, and the news couldn't have been much better for backers of the Affordable Care Act.

A group of researchers at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies set out to answer a number of hard questions about the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Broadly, though, they spent a year trying to figure out the cost of war.

What they found was the the United States had spent somewhere around $3.2 to $4 trillion since the wars began 10 years ago. Of that, only $1.3 trillion is from Pentagon war appropriations. They report:

Postpartum hemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal death in the developing world.

Several groups looking to change that have been running trials with the drug misoprostol, which can prevent bleeding after birth, to show that the medicine can be safely administered by traditional birth attendants who deliver babies in homes.

Here's the official reaction from House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to President Obama's news conference, during which the president said Republicans need to be willing to compromise on taxes just as Democrats need to agree to spending cuts in programs they like if progress is to be made on cutting the federal deficit and long-term debt: