The Rocky Mountains just got more gay friendly. The Colorado House voted Tuesday to approve a bill allowing same-sex civil unions. Despite protests from Republicans that the bill doesn’t offer religious exemptions, it passed 39–26, with two of the House’s 28 Republicans voting to approve. “I’m a Republican and a conservative and I like this bill,” said Rep. Cheri Gerou. The bill is now on its way to Gov. John Hickenlooper, who has already publicly supported it, and will become law on May 1. Now take a bong hit and celebrate.

There’ll be at least one more day of watching the Vatican chimney. Black smoke this afternoon signaled that no candidate got the required 77 votes needed to clinch the spot. There was only one round of balloting today, but from now on each day will have two rounds in the morning and two in the evening. Once counted, the ballots are burned along with chemicals in an oven in the Sistine Chapel. If the smoke is black (as it was today), there’s no result and voting continues. If it’s white, then it’s time to party—there’s a new pope in town.

Paul Ryan unveiled the GOP’s budget for 2013, and it looks very familiar. Like last year’s GOP blueprint, the budget would defund Obamacare, turn Medicare into a voucher-like program, and cut spending to social programs like Medicaid. Unlike past versions of the GOP budget, this year’s plan would produce a small surplus by 2023, but those gains mostly come from the tax increase pushed through as part of the fiscal-cliff deal. Senate Democrats are working on an opposing plan that they say would raise $1 trillion in new taxes and cut $1 trillion in spending over the next 10 years but would not balance the budget.

It sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but according to Venezuelan government officials, recently deceased President Hugo Chávez could have been purposefully infected with cancer—and the world’s best scientists will investigate the potential poisoning. “We have this intuition that our commander Chávez was poisoned by dark forces that wanted to be rid of him,” President Nicolás Maduro said in an interview. He explained that the U.S. had labs creating cancer in the ’40s and ’50s, and thinks they could have advanced—though stressed he wasn’t blaming America. “An assertion that the United States was somehow involved in causing President Chávez's illness is absurd, and we definitively reject it,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell last week.

Would you fly in one? On Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration approved Boeing's request to upgrade the problematic batteries on the company's 787 Dreamliners. Boeing had to ground the entire fleet of jets last month after a battery in one of the planes caught fire. The batteries will be put in fire-resistant box and vent smoke from overheating to outside the aircraft. “We won’t allow the plane to return to service unless we’re satisfied that the new design ensures the safety of the aircraft and its passengers,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said.

Four lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles have been settled with the church agreeing to pay $9.9 million to victims of priest Michael Baker. This is one of many settlements the church has made on behalf of Baker, who abused two boys in the 1980s and was sent to treatment, but later was reinstated only to molest again. In 2007 he was convicted and sent to prison. The 12,000 pages of internal documents released in January mentioned Baker and implicated L.A.’s Archdiocese, Cardinal Roger Mahony, in helping put Baker back in the ministry.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill calling for universal required background checks—a small but significant step toward President Obama’s goal of dramatically reducing gun violence in the U.S. The bill would extend background checks—currently required only for sales by licensed dealers—to transactions between private individuals. The panel voted 10–8 for the measure, with all eight Republicans opposing it. New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, who sponsored the bill, says he hopes he’ll be able to meet Republicans in the middle to improve the chances of getting the bill passed in the full Senate before going to the GOP-controlled House.

Life on Mars? Many moons ago, the planet’s conditions were habitable—for microbes, at least. NASA scientists announced Tuesday that analysis of rocks from the Curiosity rover—the first spacecraft sent to Mars that could collect samples from deep within the planet’s crags—found minerals that formed in a habitable watery environment for microscopic organisms. A NASA researcher said humans would have technically been able to drink from Mars’s fountain of life—a stream bed that dried out billions of years ago.

Students and staff at Florida State University Panama City got the surprise of their lives last week when all Web traffic was redirected to a video of an acrobatic penis. Benjamin Blouin, a student at the school, wanted to make a point about the dangers of an open Wi-Fi network, so he hacked into the system and rerouted everyone who accessed it to the legendary shock website Meatspin.com. (Replace “meat” with “penis” and you may get some idea of what awaits at that URL.) Much to Blouin’s satisfaction, the university has since required a login and password to access its Wi-Fi network.

Taylor Swift would do anything for her fans, so surely some prickly PR person or mailroom mix-up is to blame for hundreds of unopened letters to the songstress being trashed (back us up here, Taylor!) On the same day that Swift made headlines for visiting a cancer patient in Omaha, Nebraska, a woman found fan mail detritus in a recycling dumpster (no brownie points for recycling in this case). The woman told ABC News in Nashville, which then contacted Swift’s record label. Big Machine Records  presumed the letters landed in the dumpster accidentally and said they planned to “immediately pick up the mail."

It wasn’t because of Ben Affleck’s beard. Iran is reportedly considering suing Hollywood because of Argo’s “unrealistic portrayal” of the nation. The move comes after Iranian culture officials and film critics watched the movie on Monday. Last month, Tehran said the film was pro-CIA propaganda. The film, about the escape of American hostages from that nation in 1979, won the Oscar for Best Picture. We’re going out on a limb here, but chances are this lawsuit will fail.

This season’s Ken-like bachelor, Sean Lowe, made the decision of his life Monday night. After weeding through 25 other girls, Lowe made the grueling decision to give his final rose to Catherine Giudici on The Bachelor’s season finale Monday night. Lindsay Yenter, the dumped runner-up, tearfully left, while Lowe and his new bride-to-be literally rode off into the sunset together on the back of an elephant. Oh, young love.

Now the dude’s just being greedy. TMZ reports that North Korea’s favorite NBA star, Dennis Rodman, is flying to Rome to meet the new pope. At least, that’s what he hopes. His “people” have allegedly been speaking with other important unnamed people at the Vatican, who’ll try to get a one-on-one with whoever wins the conclave. Rodman apparently wants to be “anywhere in the world that I’m needed.” So take from that what you will.

The tragic double suicide of young sisters has come to symbolize the increasingly hostile world that many Afghanistan women are forced to live in. After Nabila Gul, 17, fell in love with a younger man “outside [her] families’ channels,” her sister Fareba, 25, became alarmed and insisted she cut ties. In a desperate attempt to prove to her family how much she loved the boy, Nabila went to the holy steps of the Hazrat Ali shrine and attempted to eat “just enough rat poison to scare her family.” She took more than enough. Overcome with guilt, her sister copied. The November deaths shattered the community of Mazar-e Sharif, and Afghanistan as a whole. While the government claims it collects no data on such incidents, the main hospital in the city says suicide attempts are soaring.

Let the soda fountains flow! On Monday, a New York Supreme Court judge overturned Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban on the sale of supersized sugary drinks in New York City restaurants and other venues. Judge Milton Tingling ordered the city is “permanently restrained” from “enforcing the new regulations,” which are “fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences.” He added that the “loopholes in this rule effectively defeat the stated purpose of the rule.” Many city restaurants and other businesses had already begun preparing for the ban, which was set to take effect on March 12. The judge’s ruling is a big blow to Mayor Bloomberg, who has stressed public-health initiatives throughout his tenure.

Ever wondered what Beyoncé’s Social Security number is? Twelve celebrities and politicians are victims of a hacker who posted information about their finances online, including their Social Security numbers, credit-card information, and mortgage amounts. Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Hillary Clinton, Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Mel Gibson, Ashton Kutcher, and Joe Biden are among those who were hacked. According to TMZ, the LAPD and FBI are both investigating the incident.

Think Obama’s just started reaching out to Republicans? Wrong. He just wasn’t that successful at it before. The president’s associates say that Obama could have tried harder to engage the other side on bipartisan issues in the past (inviting members of the GOP to screen Lincoln—which none attended—failed). They blame his reserve on a few things: personality, commitment to being a family man, and “little appreciation for the aura of the presidency.” He is trying harder now, though. Obama will head to the Capitol to hash out a budget policy. In the past, Republicans may have been resistant to cooperating with him in fear of being too close to a president that the conservative base didn’t like.

Nothing says film industry party like a movie with graphic scenes of partying. Baz Luhrmann’s long-awaited The Great Gatsby will open the 66th Cannes Film Festival on May 15. The film will already have been released in the U.S. by then. Set in the roaring ’20s, Gatsby stars Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Carey Mulligan. It’s only the second time a film opening the festival will be in 3-D (the first was Up in 2009).

It’s easy to say when you’re on the winning side. British Prime Minister David Cameron said that Argentina should respect the Falkland Islands’ nearly unanimous vote to stay British. Calling it the “clearest possible result,” Cameron vowed that Britain would always fight for the island. Argentina was trying to claim the territory as its own, only 31 years after waging war with England. Don’t tell any of this to Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández—she thinks the referendum is hogwash.

Consider this an international scolding. The White House is demanding that the Chinese government stop snooping around in American computer networks. It’s the first time the government has called China out on its cyberspying, and comes after Chinese officials denied that the nation’s military was engaged in cyberattacks against the U.S. It’s unclear whether the Chinese government will listen to these demands, but the American message is clear: behave.

Sarah Palin wants to say a big “bah humbug!” to all the “politically correct Scrooges” out there. The former vice-presidential candidate and permanent roguester will pen a book attacking the “war on Christmas,” according to a statement released Tuesday. A Happy Holiday IS a Merry Christmas will be a “fun, festive, thought provoking book” that blasts those “who would rather take Christ out of Christmas,” the statement says. It’s Palin’s third book, and it will be released in November.

Gold star for Japan. The nation says that it has extracted gas from methane hydrate, the first time that’s been done in history. What does that mean? Methane hydrate is a frozen “cage” of water and methane, and can be a possible source of energy. Offshore deposits like the one about 30 miles away from Japan’s main island can potentially be a monster reservoir of methane. There is an environmental caveat, though: they’re pretty unstable under water.