A Texas mom expected a big baby, but nothing like this: 16 pounds, 1 ounce (7.3 kilograms).

Janet Johnson on Monday remained in an East Texas hospital after giving birth to what her doctors called one of the biggest newborns they've ever seen. She was awaiting word on whether her son, JaMichael Brown, ranked among the biggest births in state history.

Berlin's oldest university says it is partnering with Google and three German institutions to start a research institute.

Humboldt University announced Monday that the institute would open in the fall and examine the evolution of the Internet and its impact on society, science, politics and the economy.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Japan's Mitsubishi Corp. have signed an initial deal with Iraq to tap natural gas in the country's south, an oil executive said Tuesday, the latest push to develop Iraq's energy sector battered by years of neglect and war.

The deal is expected to be a key part of the government's strategy to alleviate its power generation woes as chronic power outages have led to sometimes violent protests.

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.