NEW YORK: US stocks closed fairly flat on Wednesday after a choppy day of trading, with some positive earnings reports providing support.
At the closing bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 7.22 points (0.05 percent) at 13,986.52.
The S&P 500 rose 0.83 (0.05 percent) to 1,512.12, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index fell 3.10 (0.10 percent) to 3,168.48.
- AFP/de
By Mariano Castillo, Miguel Marquez and Nick Parker, CNN
updated 3:33 PM EST, Wed February 6, 2013
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Acapulco, Mexico (CNN) -- Arrests could come as early as this week in the alleged rape of six Spanish tourists in Acapulco, the lead investigator in the case told CNN on Wednesday.
Mexican authorities have identified the suspects and are monitoring them, said Marcos Juarez. Fifty investigators were working the case.
The six women were among 14 people victimized by hooded gunmen who burst into a beach bungalow in the resort town before dawn Monday. There are seven suspects between the ages of 20 and 30, Juarez said.
In addition to the rapes, the men stole cell phones, iPads and tennis shoes from the victims, investigators said.
Investigators believe that the victims bought drugs from one or more of the suspects a day or two earlier, and that the victims knew the suspects, Juarez said.
The Spanish nationals range from 20 to 34 years of age and are under the protection of Mexican authorities in Mexico City.
Seven men who were with the group were tied up with cell phone cables and bikini straps while the gunmen assaulted the six women, officials said.
A seventh woman, a Mexican, was spared because of her nationality, Guerrero state Attorney General Martha Garzon said in a radio interview.
"She has said that she identified herself to the men and asked them not to rape her," Garzon told Radio Formula. "And they told her that she had 'passed the test' by being Mexican, and from that point they don't touch her."
The gunmen's motive was robbery and "to have some fun," as they saw it, Garzon said. They do not appear to be a part of organized crime, officials said.
Military checkpoints have been set up to apprehend the suspects.
As they sift through evidence, investigators have cordoned off the area around the bungalow, which is in an open area of Playa Encantada that has limited security in Playa Encantada.
Last year, the city of Acapulco attracted half a million tourists -- most of them Mexicans.
Mexico's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Spanish tourists received consular aid after the incident.
The U.S. State Department says "resort areas and tourist destinations in Mexico generally do not see the levels of drug-related violence and crime reported in the border region and in areas along major trafficking routes."
But the agency adds that resort city bars, including those in Acapulco, can be "havens for drug dealers and petty criminals."
CNN's Miguel Marquez and Nick Parker reported from Acapulco and Mariano Castillo from Atlanta. CNN's David Ariosto contributed to this report.
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updated 10:26 AM EST, Wed February 6, 2013
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Supporters of Richard III want a reconstruction of his head to bring a human aspect to a leader portrayed as a murderous villain.
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updated 12:07 AM EST, Wed February 6, 2013
As "We are the World" plays, a video shows what looks like a nuclear attack on the U.S. Jim Clancy reports on a bizarre video from North Korea.
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Musician Daniela Mercury has sold more than 12 million albums worldwide over a career span of nearly 30 years.
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Europol claims 380 soccer matches, including top level ones, were fixed - as the scandal widens, CNN's Dan Rivers looks at how it's done.
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It's an essential part of any trip, an activity we all take part in. Yet almost none of us are any good at it. Souvenir buying is too often an obligatory slog.
MONTROSE, Ga. More than two dozen cars, pickup trucks and tractor-trailers collided Wednesday morning in a fiery pileup on a foggy Georgia interstate, killing at least three people and sending nine others to a hospital, officials said.
Work crews on Interstate 16 were still clearing charred and twisted wreckage from the crash scene, which covered nearly a quarter-mile of the roadway, nearly six hours after the chain of crashes occurred at about 8:10 a.m.
State troopers said there were four separate crashes involving 27 vehicles, CBS Savannah affiliate WTOC-TV reports.
The Georgia State Patrol was still trying to piece together what started the series of wrecks. Capt. Kirk McGlamery said even drivers who dodged to the side of cars crashing in front of them weren't safe from getting rear-ended off the highway's shoulder.
"It was just a chain-reaction," McGlamery said. "I talked to two individuals involved who had come to a stop and had pulled off, one was on the shoulder and the other was trying to get out of the way, when they were struck by vehicles coming up behind them."
Officials said poor visibility likely played a big part. Weather forecasts called for dense fog Wednesday morning, and McGlamery said motorists reported smoke across the highway. He said a controlled burn had been permitted nearby the day before, and troopers were trying to find out if burning continued into Wednesday.
The crash shut down I-16 in both directions for several hours, though a single eastbound lane had opened Wednesday afternoon. The highway covers only 170 miles between nearby Macon in central Georgia and Savannah on the coast. But it's heavily traveled by commercial trucks hauling goods between Atlanta and Savannah's busy seaport, and is often used by travelers as a route to Interstate 95 along the Eastern Seaboard.
McGlamery said seven tractor-trailers were involved in the pileup, including an empty fuel tanker that exploded and caught fire.
Joseph White, a soldier in the Army National Guard, told the The Courier Herald of Dublin he was heading to work when he drove into heavy traffic clouded by black smoke. He was rear-ended before he saw a fuel tanker hit an 18-wheeler.
"I'm looking back and the tanker exploded," said White, who ran from the scene after his car came to a halt. "Pieces of the tanker flew toward me on the freeway, barely missing me. A piece of the tanker landed like 10 feet behind me as I was running. It almost fell on my head."
Martha Strickland, who passed through the smoky scene shortly after the crashes, said she could see the tanker burning but not engulfed in flames.s
"We had to creep by because, you know, it was just so much smoke and to keep us from getting in a wreck, and we were on eastbound and that was in westbound," Strickland said.
Laurens County EMS director Terry Cobb, who was among the first emergency officials at the scene, said at least six vehicles were still on fire when crews arrived. Emergency officials encountered fog on the way to the crash site, though it seemed to lift one they arrived, Cobb said.
Cobb and the State Patrol confirmed nine people were taken to a hospital in nearby Dublin, though none of the injuries appeared life-threatening.
The three people who died in the crash were all in separate vehicles, McGlamery said. Their names were not immediately released.
The area was under a dense fog advisory at the time of the pileup, said Laura Belanger, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Peachtree City. In some areas, visibility was only a quarter-mile or less, Belanger said.
You may look out on a starry night and get a lonely feeling, but astronomers now say our Milky Way galaxy may be thick with planets much like Earth -- perhaps 4.5 billion of them, according to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Astronomers looked at data from NASA's Kepler space telescope in orbit, and conclude that 6 percent of the red dwarf stars in the Milky Way probably have Earth-like, habitable planets. That's a lot by space standards, and since red dwarfs are very common -- they make up three out of four stars in our part of the galaxy -- we may have a lot more neighbors than we thought.
The nearest of them, astronomers said today, could be 13 light-years away -- not exactly commuting distance, since a light-year is six trillion miles, but a lot closer than most yellow stars like Earth's sun.
Video: Are We Alone? Kepler's Mission
David A. Aguilar/Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics
"We thought we would have to search vast distances to find an Earth-like planet. Now we realize another Earth is probably in our own backyard, waiting to be spotted," said Courtney Dressing, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, in announcing the findings today. The results will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
David Charbonneau, a co-author, said, "We now know the rate of occurrence of habitable planets around the most common stars in our galaxy. That rate implies that it will be significantly easier to search for life beyond the solar system than we previously thought."
Red dwarfs are older, smaller and dimmer than our sun, but a planet orbiting close to one could be sufficiently warmed to have liquid water. Dressing and her colleagues cited three possible planets that were spotted by Kepler, which was launched in 2009. One is 90 percent as large as Earth, and orbits its red sun in just 20 of our days.
There is no saying what such a world would actually be like; the Kepler probe can only show whether distant stars have objects periodically passing in front of them. But based on that, scientists can do some math and estimate the mass and orbit of these possible planets. So far, Kepler has spotted more than 2,700 of them in the small patch of sky it has been watching.
There are estimated to be 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way -- which is probably a pretty average galaxy. So the new estimate implies a universe with tremendous numbers of Earth-like planets, far beyond our ability to count.
Pictures: Final Frontier: Images From the Distant Universe
Could they be friendly to life? There's no way to know yet, but space scientists say that if you have the right ingredients -- a planet the right size, temperatures that allow for liquid water, organic molecules and so forth -- and the chances may be good, even on a planet that is very different from ours.
"You don't need an Earth clone to have life," said Dressing.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Editor's note: Dan Jones is a historian and newspaper columnist based in London. His new book, "The Plantagenets" (Viking), is published in the U.S. this spring. Follow him on Twitter.
(CNN) -- Richard III is the king we British just can't seem to make our minds up about.
The monarch who reigned from 1483 to 1485 became, a century later, the blackest villain of Shakespeare's history plays. The three most commonly known facts of his life are that he stole the crown, murdered his nephews and died wailing for a horse at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. His death ushered in the Tudor dynasty, so Richard often suffers the dual ignominy of being named the last "medieval" king of England -- in which medieval is not held to be a good thing.
Like any black legend, much of it is slander.
Richard did indeed usurp the crown and lose at Bosworth. He probably had his nephews killed, too; it is unknowable but overwhelmingly likely. Yet as his many supporters have been busy telling us since it was announced Monday that Richard's lost skeleton was found in a car park in Leicester, he wasn't all bad. In fact, he was for most of his life loyal and conscientious.
Dan Jones
To fill you in, a news conference held at the University of Leicester on Monday confirmed what archaeologists working there have suspected for months: that a skeleton removed from under a parking lot in the city center last fall was indeed the long-lost remains of Richard III.
News: Richard III: Is this the face that launched 1,000 myths?
His official burial place -- under the floor of a church belonging to the monastic order of the Greyfriars -- had been lost during the dissolution of the monasteries that was carried out in the 1530s under Henry VIII. A legend grew up that the bones had been thrown in a river. Today, we know they were not.
What do the bones tell us?
Well, they show that Richard -- identified by mitochondrial DNA tests against a Canadian descendant of his sister, Anne of York -- was about 5-foot-8, suffered curvature of the spine and had delicate limbs. He had been buried roughly and unceremoniously in a shallow grave too small for him, beneath the choir of the church.
He had died from a slicing blow to the back of the head sustained during battle and had suffered many other "humiliation injuries" after his death, including having a knife or dagger plunged into his hind parts. His hands may have been tied at his burial.
Opinion: What will the finding of Richard III mean?
In other words, we have quite a lot of either new or confirmed biographical information about Richard.
He was not a hunchback, but he was spindly and warped. He died unhorsed. He was buried where it was said he was buried. He very likely was, as one source had said, carried roughly across a horse's back from the battlefield where he died to Leicester, stripped naked and abused all the way.
All this is known today thanks to a superb piece of historical teamwork.
The interdisciplinary team at Leicester that worked toward Monday's revelations deserves huge plaudits. From the desk-based research that pinpointed the spot to dig, to the digging itself, to the bone analysis, the DNA work and the genealogy that identified Richard's descendants, all of it is worthy of the highest praise. Hat-tips, too, to the Richard III Society, as well as Leicester's City Council, which pulled together to make the project happen and also to publicize the society and city so effectively.
However, should anyone today tell you that Richard's skeleton somehow vindicates his historical reputation, you may tell them they are talking horsefeathers.
News: Back from the grave, King Richard III gets rehab
Richard III got a rep for a reason. He usurped the crown from a 12-year old boy, who later died.
This was his great crime, and there is no point denying it. It is true that before this crime, Richard was a conspicuously loyal lieutenant to the boy's father, his own brother, King Edward IV. It is also true that once he was king, Richard made a great effort to promote justice to the poor and needy, stabilize royal finances and contain public disorder.
But this does not mitigate that he stole the crown, justifying it after the fact with the claim that his nephews were illegitimate. Likewise, it remains indisputably true that his usurpation threw English politics, painstakingly restored to some order in the 12 years before his crime, into a turmoil from which it did not fully recover for another two decades.
So the discovery of Richard's bones is exciting. But it does not tell us anything to justify changing the current historical view of Richard: that the Tudor historians and propagandists, culminating with Shakespeare, may have exaggerated his physical deformities and the horrors of Richard's character, but he remains a criminal king whose actions wrought havoc on his realm.
Unfortunately, we don't all want to hear that. Richard remains the only king with a society devoted to rehabilitating his name, and it is a trait of some "Ricardians" to refuse to acknowledge any criticism of their hero whatever. So despite today's discovery, we Brits are likely to remain split on Richard down the old lines: murdering, crook-backed, dissembling Shakespearean monster versus misunderstood, loyal, enlightened, slandered hero. Which is the truth?
Somewhere in between. That's a classic historian's answer, isn't it? But it's also the truth.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Dan Jones.
WASHINGTON: US prosecutors said Tuesday they have no plans to press criminal charges against cycling cheat Lance Armstrong, despite his confession that he owes his Tour de France victories to illegal doping.
US Attorney Andre Birotte, who led a federal investigation into the disgraced rider, did not definitively rule out action, but said Armstrong's public admission had not yet changed the decision not to prosecute.
"We made a decision on that case, I believe, a little over a year ago," he said, when asked about the status of the federal inquiry into long-standing claims that Armstrong had run a doping program and had lied to federal agents.
"Obviously we've been well aware of the statements that have been made by Mr Armstrong and other media reports," he said, referring to Armstrong's bombshell confession to chat show legend Oprah Winfrey last month.
"That has not changed my view at this time. Obviously we'll consider -- we'll continue to look at the situation, but that hasn't changed our view as I stand here today," Birotte told a news conference in Washington.
The 41-year-old Texan was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles last year after the US Anti-Doping Agency gathered compelling testimony that he had been the ring-leader of a large-scale doping conspiracy.
He had long angrily professed his innocence, including in questioning by US federal agents investigating the same allegations, but the mask fell away last month when he confessed his guilt to Winfrey in detail.
The admission threw up a number of legal questions, including whether the federal probe might be re-opened, whether he might be prosecuted for perjury and whether he might be sued to recover former payments and prize money.
Dallas insurance company SCA Promotions has already demanded the return of $12 million in bonuses it paid to Armstrong for multiple Tour titles.
SCA withheld a $5 million bonus due after Armstrong's sixth Tour de France win in 2004 because of doping allegations circulating in Europe, and Armstrong took them to court.
He won the case because SCA's original contract had no stipulations about doping, and Armstrong attorney Tim Herman told USA Today that the shamed cyclist doesn't intend to pay back any of the money.
"My only point is no athlete ever, to my understanding, has gone back and paid back his compensation," Herman told the newspaper in an article published Tuesday.
Herman cited New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton, who was suspended for a season by the NFL for the team's alleged pay-for-hits "bounty" scheme.
"They were suspended, but nobody said you've got to give your paycheck back," Herman said.
While Armstrong told Winfrey he would like to get his lifetime ban reduced, so that he could eventually compete in marathons, for example, by the time he's 50, Herman said the shamed cyclist was now prepared to cooperate with anti-doping authorities in a bid to clean up cycling even if is eligibility isn't restored.
"Whether it's a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or some comprehensive attempt to clean things up, it doesn't make any difference as long as something like that is convened," Herman said. "Lance will definitely cooperate."
Herman told the newspaper that Armstrong doesn't believe that USADA is best-placed to lead the battle against doping in cycling, since the sport is largely based in Europe.
Nor has USADA chief Travis Tygart's claim that Armstrong lied in some of his comments to Winfrey eased relations between the two parties.
"To hear Tygart tell it, Lance Armstrong is responsible for the culture he was dropped into on a team (that) was engaged in misconduct long before he got to the team," Herman said.
"He was a 19-year-old kid dropped in this culture, just like everybody else. He didn't create it."
-AFP/ac
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Midland City, Alabama (CNN) -- Law enforcement officers were able to see what was going on inside the underground bunker where a 5-year-old boy was held hostage for a week with a camera they somehow slipped into the hideout, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.
As the standoff dragged on, an FBI hostage rescue team practiced on a nearby mockup of the bunker until kidnapper Jimmy Lee Dykes' declining mental state forced them to move in Monday afternoon, law enforcement sources said Tuesday.
The resulting assault -- from the top of the bunker, according to a law enforcement source -- ended with Dykes dead and the boy, named Ethan, free. Authorities took him to the hospital for evaluation, where he remained Tuesday.
"He was running around the hospital room, putting sticky notes on everyone who was in there, eating a turkey sandwich and watching 'Spongebob'," Dale County Schools Superintendent Ronny Bynum said.
It was not immediately clear when Ethan might be released, according to school officials.
Authorities say Dykes abducted the young boy from a school bus January 29.
Dykes approached the bus and demanded that the driver hand over two children. Dykes killed driver Charles Poland as he blocked the aisle -- allowing children to escape from the back of the bus, then seized Ethan and fled to the bunker, according to authorities.
Late Alabama bus driver called a hero
During the ensuing standoff, authorities were extraordinarily tight-lipped about what was happening, but said they were in contact with Dykes and said they believed he had not harmed the boy. He also allowed authorities to deliver food, medicine and at least one toy for the boy to play with, according to authorities.
The details about the law enforcement response to his abduction are the first provided by authorities about how they knew what was going on inside the bunker and why they decided to move when they did.
But many questions remain, including whether the Defense Department provided sensing equipment to aid in monitoring what was happening inside the bunker and why Dykes acted as he did.
"A big boom"
At one point Monday, Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson told reporters that Dykes had "a story that's important to him, although it's very complex."
But according to a law enforcement source, Dykes' mental state deteriorated in the 24 hours before the Monday afternoon rescue.
Experts from FBI units, including a crisis negotiation team, tactical intelligence officers and a behavioral sciences unit, had determined Dykes was in a downward psychological spiral, the source said.
At 3:12 p.m. (4:12 ET) on Monday, the FBI team went in.
One neighbor said he was outside when he was startled by the sound of an explosion.
"I heard a big boom and then ... I believe I heard rifle shots," said Bryon Martin, who owns a home near the bunker where Ethan had been held.
It was a loud noise that "made me jump off the ground," he said.
Authorities wouldn't say whether the blast was set off as a diversionary tactic or whether Dykes had planted explosives around the bunker.
While the law enforcement source said FBI agents went in through the top of the bunker, the source declined to say specifically how they breached the roof, how many agents were involved or whether Dykes shot himself or was killed by FBI gunfire.
A Dale County official told CNN that Dykes had been shot multiple times. The body remains "in the area" and will be examined by the county coroner before it is taken to Montgomery, Alabama, for autopsy by the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, the official said.
Olson declined to say whether the boy saw his abductor die.
"He's a very special child. He's been through a lot, he's endured a lot," he said.
Tom Fuentes, a former FBI assistant director, said the rescue likely was complicated by the layout and materials used to build the underground bunker.
Rescuers would have had to come down stairs, exposing their legs and meaning Dykes would see them first, he said. And if there were brick walls, the FBI agents would have to shoot carefully to guard against ricochets.
All that after tossing in a flash grenade to stun the kidnapper.
"The FBI hostage rescue team is the best in the world and they proved it yesterday," said Fuentes, who was not involved in Monday's rescue.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder praised law enforcement for saving the boy.
"I thought the FBI action on this was exemplary and as I think details are shared, you will understand why I use the word exemplary," he said.
Bynum, the school superintendent, said FBI agents broke down in "tears of joy" after the rescue was complete.
"It was a relief on all our shoulders," he said.
The aftermath
FBI bomb technicians were sweeping Dykes' property Tuesday looking for explosives, according to FBI spokesman Jason Pack. Evidence teams will take over when they are done, Pack said.
While authorities have not said whether Dykes killed himself or if the team that stormed the bunker shot him, the FBI is sending a "shooting review board" from Washington to look into the incident, Pack said.
Olson said Tuesday he could not release much information about the case.
"It's still actually an ongoing investigation, and we still have a lot of work to do here," the sheriff said.
Meanwhile, students in Dale County returned to school. State officials brought in a bus to replace the one Poland had been driving, state school transportation director Joe Lightsey said. Not all of the kids on Poland's route were back on the bus Tuesday, Lightsey said, but those who were seemed upbeat and ready to get back to class.
"A friendly kid"
While Ethan recuperated Tuesday from his ordeal, school officials began planning a party to celebrate the boy's birthday and to honor Poland, the bus driver hailed by school officials as a hero.
While the party won't be ready by Ethan's 6th birthday, which is Wednesday, it will be held soon -- likely at the Dale County High School football stadium, Bynum said.
Ethan's elementary school principal, Phillip Parker, said teachers are eager to have him back and "wrap their arms around him."
"Everybody knows Ethan. He's a good kid, a friendly kid," Parker said.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Steve Richardson said Monday that Ethan was in a private area of the hospital, with heavy security.
"He is doing fine," said Richardson, who had visited the boy. "He's laughing, joking, playing, eating."
What's next for Ethan?
Relief that Ethan was safe was palpable in Midland City, but many questions remain about what comes next for him.
How does a 5-year-old heal from this ordeal? How does a youngster go on after witnessing his bus driver shot to death, then being dragged to an underground bunker by a gun-toting stranger? How will he deal with what he experienced the six days he languished in that hole and what he saw during the explosive rescue Monday that killed his captor?
"It's very hard to tell how he's going to do," said Dr. Louis Krause, a psychiatrist at Chicago's Rush Medical Center. "On the one hand, he might get right back to his routine and do absolutely fine. But on the other hand, the anxieties, the trauma, what we call an acute stress disorder, even post-traumatic stress symptoms, can occur."
A psychologist said even if Ethan appears to be doing well on the outside, he needs to talk out what happened to him. Hoping the 5-year-old will forget what happened would be a bad strategy, said Wendy Walsh.
"That's not actually good because when you start to forget, some traumatic events they get stored in your body as feelings that crop up at strange times in your life," she said. "It is better to process it, get some therapy."
When terrible things happen: Helping children heal
Someone who knows all too well what Ethan may go through is Katie Beers, who as a 10-year-old was held underground in a concrete bunker for two weeks by a New York man.
"I am ecstatic that Ethan has been retrieved safe and sound," said Beers, who recently released a book about her abduction. "As for my ordeal, I just keep thinking about the effects of it: being deprived sunlight, nutritious food and human contact. And how much I wanted to have a nutritious meal, see my family."
Beers says she still feels the effects of her kidnapping.
"The major issue that I have is control issues with my kids and finances," she said. "I don't like my kids being out of my sight for more than two seconds. And I think that that might get worse as they get older."
Guiding children through grief and loss
Support crucial for kids after trauma
Victor Blackwell reported from Midland City; Michael Pearson reported and wrote from Atlanta. CNN's Carol Cratty, Vivian Kuo, Rich Phillips, Larry Shaughnessy, Barbara Starr, Lateef Mungin, Steve Almasy and HLN law enforcement analyst Mike Brooks also contributed to this report.
LONDON British lawmakers on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage championed by Prime Minister David Cameron, despite strong opposition from within his Conservative Party.
In a first House of Commons vote, lawmakers voted 400 to 175 in support of the legislation. There was majority support from the left-leaning Labour Party and Liberal Democrats party, but around half of the Conservative lawmakers rejected the proposals or abstained.
The bill will have to go through more detailed parliamentary debates and a vote in the House of Lords, where a vote in favor is likely given the strong support Tuesday. If it becomes law, the proposed bill would enable same-sex couples to get married in both civil and religious ceremonies, provided that the religious institution consents.
The bill would also allow couples who had previously entered into civil partnerships to convert their relationship into a marriage.
Earlier, Cameron - who did not attend a Parliament debate ahead of the vote - said passing the bill is "an important step forward" for Britain.
"I am a strong believer in marriage. It helps people commit to each other and I think it is right that gay people should be able to get married too," he said. "This is, yes, about equality. But it is also about making our society stronger."
Officials have stressed that all religious organizations can decide for themselves if they want to "opt in" to holding gay weddings. However, the Church of England, the country's official faith, is barred from performing such ceremonies.
That provision aims to ensure that the Church, which opposes gay marriage, is protected from legal claims that as the official state religion it must marry anyone who requests it.
Currently same-sex couples only have the option of a civil partnership, which offers the same legal rights and protections on issues such as inheritance, pensions, and child maintenance.
Supporters say that gay relationships should be treated exactly the same way as heterosexual ones, but critics worry that the proposals would change long-standing views about the meaning of marriage. Some Conservatives also fear the proposals would cost the party a significant number of votes in the next election.
"Marriage is the union between a man and a woman, has been historically, remains so. It is Alice in Wonderland territory, Orwellian almost, for any government of any political persuasion to seek to come along and try to re-write the lexicon," Conservative lawmaker Roger Gale said.
If passed, the bill's provisions would come into effect in 2015. They apply only to England and Wales - there are no plans for similar legislation in Northern Ireland. Scotland is considering introducing a similar bill.
CBS Radio's Vicki Barker reports from London that Tony and Barry Drewett-Barlow have been in a civil partnership for seven years. They are devout Christians who want a Christian wedding.
"For Barry and I it's about being able to stand up in front of the altar in our local church and say our vows," Tony said, "not only to each other and in law, but also in the eyes of God -- and that's a really important step."
Accused murderer Jodi Arias testified over the last two days about a flurry of boyfriends and how she followed them into exploring a string of religions including witchcraft, Buddhism, Hinduism and eventually Mormonism.
Arias, 32, has yet to tell the jury about meeting Travis Alexander, the ex-boyfriend who baptized her into the Mormon religion and who she is charged with killling in a jealous rage in 2008. She is now on trial in Arizona for his murder and could face the death penalty if convicted.
Her odyssey through boyfriends and the spiritual world included a five year period from age 18 through age 22 when Arias said she became very interested in fundamentalist Christianity, Wicca, Buddhism, and Hinduism, all of which she explored as she dated men who practiced those beliefs.
Eventually Arias became interested in Mormonism through Alexander, and converted to Mormonism when she began a tumultuous sexual relationship with him in 2006.
Arias took the stand for the second time today to explain to the jury how she came to kill Alexander in what she claims was self defense. Her story started with other boyfriends.
"When I first met (Matt McCartney) I was a little bit leery about things he was into. I saw some books on witchcraft and went, 'oh', but he explained to me that he was just seeking," Arias said today. "He was looking at other religions, he was studying Wicca, and I didn't practice it myself, but he had practiced it and had moved onto studying eastern mysticism and Buddhism."
"Our relationship took a lot of spiritual turns," she said.
Arias said that religion played a major role in her and McCartney's relationship, which lasted nearly two years and involved living together in Oregon.
"We sort of explored together, taking meditation seminars, new age type seminars, which sort of had roots in Hinduism or Buddhism, and were kind of like a modern version of transcendentalism," she said. "We would drive to Portland or the Bay Area often for them."
See Jodi Arias Trial Videos
Arias said she grew up as a non-denominational Christian. During her testimony on Monday Arias said that in high school, an acquaintance had told her that the second coming of Jesus Christ would be in 1997, and she took to warning close friends about it.
"It's kind of silly, but there was this older man who used to come into my parents' restaurant, and he had a small pocket version of the New Testament that he always carried. He was always quoting Bible stories to me, and this one time he told me he had done the math in the Bible and determined that he knew that the second coming was going to occur in September of 1997," Arias said.
Arias took the man's advice to heart and called her on-again, off-again boyfriend of the time to tell him the news.
"I was really naive and kind of believed him. It seemed important, so I thought Bobby (Juarez) should know about it. He wasn't religious, but I thought it was important that he at least hear that for himself," she said.
Through a string of boyfriends in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Arias continued to identify as a Christian who was into spirituality. When she met Alexander in 2006, she immediately became interested in Mormonism. She quickly converted and Alexander, a Mormon elder, baptized her into her new religion.
The two also maintained a torrid sexual affair, which is prohibited for unmarried people in the Mormon religion.
Other witnesses who have been called to the stand have noted her commitment to Mormonism, including Ryan Burns, a Mormon she began seeing after breaking up with Alexander. She also visited Burns the day after killing Alexander.
"Part of our conversations with each other were about her religious views, and my religious views," Burns testified. "She would often tell me about how she felt about her religious beliefs, the Book of Mormon. She was a convert, by Travis... She mentioned reading the scriptures."
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- North Korea's intention to carry out a new nuclear test, coming on the heels of December's successful satellite launch, suggests that Pyongyang is moving forward toward developing a nuclear warhead and a deliverable missile system, experts say. The question remains: How close are they?
The answer, like the cloistered "hermit kingdom," remains largely a mystery as does much of its nuclear program.
"It's a question over the delivery system and the reliability of those systems," said Daniel Pinkston, senior analyst for the International Crisis Group covering Northeast Asia. "That is essentially unknown, or known by a few people inside North Korea."
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A 2009 report by International Crisis Group suspects that North Korea "probably has somewhere between six and twelve nuclear weapons, or at least explosive devices," but notes that experts are divided whether any of these to be now useable as warheads -- small enough to be mounted on missiles and durable enough to withstand the hazards of flight.
"It's pretty clear that these are advanced technologies and the systems present a number of engineering challenges -- and to master these technologies requires a number of tests," Pinkston said.
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Last month, on the first anniversary of Kim Jong Il's death, North Korea successfully launched a three-stage rocket that put the satellite, Shining Star-3, into orbit. The launch also signaled that the North's long-range missile program now puts the United States within reach.
Last week, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution that strengthened sanctions against the north in response to the December rocket launch. Declaring sanctions to be tantamount to "a declaration of war," North Korea is threatening further missile and nuclear tests which it said are a new phase of confrontation with the United States.
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A new underground nuclear test would be the third, following tests in 2009 and 2006. While seismographs will be able to confirm if North Korea has an underground test, the size of the nuclear blast will be difficult to determine, Pinkston said.
"From what I understand it is virtually impossible to mask a nuclear event in terms of concealing it due to seismographs," Pinkston said. "But as far as the accuracy of the assessment of the yield, that's where the difficulty lies."
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Estimates of the size, or "yield," of the 2009 nuclear test range from 2.5 kilotons to 6 kilotons, Pinkston said. By comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 16 kilotons.
While the specter of a North Korea able to send nuclear-tipped missiles is worrisome, equally troublesome to the international community is Pyongyang's atomic technology fuelling the black market for weapons.
"If its clandestine uranium-enrichment program has made strides, Pyongyang could demonstrate that it will gain access to a far larger pool of fissile material than simply its limited supply of weapons-grade plutonium," wrote Patrick M. Cronin, an Asian expert at the Center for New American Security, in a CNN op-ed. "A larger pool of fissile material is a dual threat: As a vital part of an expanded nuclear weapon program and as a commodity to be sold on the black market."
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