Angry mobs stormed the American and French embassies in Syria on Monday, after the two Western envoys visited the city of Hama, a flashpoint for protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The foreign ministry in Paris said three French staff were wounded in the embassy attack, while a U.S. official said "no staff were injured."

A trove of Jewish books and other materials, rescued from a sewage-filled Baghdad basement during the 2003 invasion, is now caught up in a tug-of-war between the United States and Iraq.

Ranging from a medieval religious book to children's Hebrew primers, from photos to Torah cases, the collection is testimony to a once vibrant Jewish community in Baghdad. Their present-day context is the relationship, fraught with distrust, between postwar Iraq and its Jewish diaspora.

In a new campaign against obesity, the British government issued guidelines on Monday saying that children under the age of five — including those who can't even walk yet — should exercise every day.

In its first such guidelines for children that young, the health department said children under five who can walk should be physically active for at least three hours a day. Officials also said parents should reduce the amount of time such kids spend being sedentary while watching television or being strapped in a stroller.

Some 120 foreign activists were being held in Israeli jails Saturday, awaiting possible deportation, after arriving at Tel Aviv's airport over the weekend as part of a solidarity mission with the Palestinians, a government official said.

Others who managed to get through Israeli border controls traveled to the West Bank where some joined a demonstration against Israel's separation barrier.

Interpol issued its highest-level international alerts against four Hizbullah men indicted in the 2005 slaying of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a Lebanese security official said Saturday.

The Interpol red notices were issued at the request of the Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon, said the official, who requested anonymity in line with official regulations.

Celebrations erupted in South Sudan on Saturday as the world's newest nation proclaimed formal independence and turned the page on five decades of devastating conflict with the north.

"Our martyrs did not die in vain... We have waited for more than 56 years for this day. It is a day that will be forever engraved on our hearts and minds," President Salva Kiir told tens of thousands of jubilant southerners at the official ceremony in Juba.

She's the last northern white rhinoceros on view anywhere in Europe — but zoo keepers are hoping lonely Nabire will find solace with a southern rhino 11 years her senior.

Another northern white — Nesari — died here in her sleep in May aged 39, further reducing the world's dwindling population of the critically endangered animal.

A 52-year-old Houston woman is suing after what she says was an order from her boss to dye her shoulder-length gray hair.

Sandra Rawline, who was an escrow officer and branch manager at Capital Title of Texas, said she was also instructed to wear "younger fancy suits" and lots of fancy jewelry. When she refused to dye her hair, Rawline says she was told her services were no longer necessary and she was replaced by a younger woman.

Sweden's Gunilla Lindberg returned to the International Olympic Committee executive board Saturday, becoming the second woman on the ruling 15-member body.

Lindberg was elected unopposed Saturday to the single opening on the board, filling a spot vacated by Norway's Gerhard Heiberg after the completion of his four-year mandate.

An Afghan spy agency guard opened fire and shot dead two NATO troops accompanying a reconstruction convoy traveling in a northern province on Saturday, the Afghan police said.

The shooting took place in the Darah district of Panjshir province, about 99 kilometers north of the capital, Kabul, according to provincial police chief Gen. Mohammad Qasim Jangalbagh.