Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari picked AC Milan striker Robinho on Thursday for the squad that will play friendlies against Chile and Honduras next month.

Robinho gained another chance thanks in part to the absence of Diego Costa, who was left out after choosing to play for Spain instead of his native Brazil.

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are suing a co-founder of YouTube over a video of their marriage proposal that was posted online.

The lawsuit filed Thursday claims Chad Hurley violated a confidentiality agreement when he posted the fuzzy footage of the lavish proposal on his new web venture, MixBit.

The secretive street artist Banksy ended his self-announced month-long residency in New York City with a final piece of graffiti, a $615,000 painting donated to charity and a debate: Is he a jerk or a genius?

Banksy, who created a new picture, video or prank every day of October somewhere in the city, spent his last day like thousands of graffiti artists before him: He tagged a building near a highway with his name in giant bubble letters. The twist was that these letters were actual bubbles: balloon-like inflatables stuck to a wall near the Long Island Expressway in Queens.

The Vatican is taking the unusual step of conducting a worldwide survey on how parishes deal with sensitive issues such as birth control, divorce and gay marriage, seeking input ahead of a major meeting on the family that Pope Francis plans next year.

The poll was sent in mid-October to every national conference of bishops with a request from the Vatican coordinator, Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, to "share it immediately as widely as possible to deaneries and parishes so that input from local sources can be received."

Vice President Joe Biden and senior Obama administration officials convinced a number of senators to hold off on another round of Iran sanctions as Western powers test Tehran's willingness to scale back its nuclear aims.

The full-court press Thursday didn't sway every senator who participated in the hours-long, closed-door briefing, but the chances that the Senate Banking Committee would draft new, punitive measures next week just as negotiations occurred in Geneva diminished significantly.

President Barack Obama welcomes Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to the White House on Friday, as sectarian violence in the country hits its deadliest peak since April 2008.

The Oval Office talks take place nearly two years after the last American troops left Iraq following an eight-year occupation and as a wave of Al-Qaida attacks sows terror in the Iraqi Shiite community.

Slapping a 20 percent tax on soda in Britain could cut the number of obese adults by about 180,000, according to a new study.

Though the number works out to a modest drop of 1.3 percent in obesity, scientists say that reduction would still be worthwhile in the U.K., which has a population of about 63 million and is the fattest country in Western Europe. About one in four Britons is obese.

The nations that make decisions about Antarctic fishing have failed for a third time to agree on a plan to create the world's largest marine sanctuary.

The U.S. and New Zealand had proposed creating a reserve in the pristine waters of the Ross Sea. At 1.34 million square kilometers (517,000 square miles), it would have been twice the size of Texas.

The manager of the region's largest camp for Syrian refugees arranges toy figures, trucks and houses on a map in his office trailer to illustrate his ambitious vision. In a year, he wants to turn the chaotic shantytown of 100,000 into a city with local councils, paved streets, parks, an electricity grid and sewage pipes.

Zaatari, a desert camp near Jordan's border with Syria, is far from that ideal. Life is tough here. The strong often take from the weak, women fear going to communal bathrooms after dark, sewage runs between pre-fab trailers and boys hustle for pennies carting goods in wheelbarrows instead of going to school.

Israeli warplanes have struck a military base near the Syrian city of Latakia, targeting missiles that might have been destined for Hizbullah, CNN quoted an Obama administration official as saying on Thursday.

An explosion at a missile storage site in the area was widely reported in the Israeli press, but an attack has not been confirmed by the Israeli government.