It wasn't a tough choice for convicted bank robber Chiquinho: spend the day in a cell or make money out in the sun helping Brazil build a 2014 World Cup stadium.

Former slave worker Nivaldo Inacio da Silva had another easy decision to make: pick cotton for about $2 a day or make eight times as much as a bricklayer at another World Cup venue.

Ezequiel Lavezzi and Edinson Cavani again dampened English hopes by leading Napoli to a 3-1 win over Chelsea in an entertaining first leg of their Champions League last-16 matchup.

Cavani, who struck a brace against Manchester City to eliminate the Premier League leaders in the group stage, was again in inspirational form as he gave Napoli the lead at halftime, before setting up Lavezzi's second in the 65th minute.

CSKA Moscow equalized from the last kick of the match when Pontus Wernbloom scrambled the ball into the net, giving the Russian club a 1-1 draw against Real Madrid in the last 16 of the Champions League on Tuesday.

The Swedish midfielder's debut game for CSKA ended with him poking the ball home in the third minute of stoppage time in the first leg at Luzhniki Stadium.

Carlos Tevez finally apologized to Manchester City on Tuesday following a five-month feud that has cost him close to 10 million pounds ($17 million), and could soon return to action for the club after withdrawing an appeal against his latest fines.

The Argentina striker has not played for the Premier League leaders since September when he refused to warm up during a Champions League match and only returned last week from a three-month unauthorized absence at home.

The global football players' union is backing a campaign to change FIFA's laws of the game by allowing Islamic women to wear hijabs.

FIFPro spokeswoman Frederique Winia said: “The current ban on wearing headscarves for religious reasons is discrimination."

Apple Inc. defended its right to use the iPad trademark in China in a heated court hearing Wednesday that pitted the electronics giant against a struggling Chinese electronics company that denies having sold the mainland China rights to the popular tablet computer's name.

Shenzhen Proview Technology's lawyer Xie Xianghui argued that the sale of the iPad trademark to an Apple subsidiary by Proview's Taiwan affiliate in 2009 was invalid. Apple countered that Proview violated the sales contract by failing to transfer the trademark rights in mainland China.

Syria's embattled leader, Bashar Assad, appears to be losing one of his last bastions of reliable support: the Druze Arab community in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

In the snow-covered villages of this strategic highland, Druze are quietly breaking a long-standing code of silence and — for the first time since Israel captured the Golan from Syria in 1967 — holding protests against the Syrian government for its brutal crackdown on opponents. Anti-Syria graffiti has sprouted up, and hundreds of people have joined a Golan-linked Facebook group critical of Assad.

The vice president is hitting the road — to what the White House wrote as "Road Island," mistakenly spelled R-O-A-D instead of R-H-O-D-E.

A release outlining Joe Biden's plans for the week showed him traveling to Providence in misspelled "Road Island" on Thursday for a campaign event. The vice president is scheduled to visit Boston and Manchester, N.H., on the same day. No misspellings there.

Malaysia has banned a nearly 30-year-old sex education book written by a British author following complaints by Muslim activists that it is obscene.

The Home Ministry said Wednesday that Peter Mayle's "Where Did I Come From?" contains "elements that undermine societal morals and public interests."

The prime minister's top spokesman has resigned six months into the job, Israeli media reported Wednesday, injecting new turmoil into Benjamin Netanyahu's troubled bureau shortly before an important White House visit.

Israeli newspapers, TV and radio stations reported that Yoaz Hendel quit after Netanyahu criticized the way he handled suspicions against the prime minister's chief of staff Natan Eshel, who was forced out this week over a sexual harassment scandal.