By Kim Palmer CLEVELAND (Reuters) - A former Cleveland school-bus driver accused of holding three women captive in his home and torturing them for a decade is scheduled to appear in court for a pre-trial hearing on Wednesday. Ariel Castro, 52, pleaded not guilty last week to more than 300 charges and was scheduled for an initial hearing before Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Michael Russo. He is being held in a county jail on an $8 million bail. ...

By Peter Henderson SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The fight over legalizing gay marriage in the most populous U.S. state may go back to the ballot box in 2014 with California voters asked once again to settle the matter even after the Supreme Court's expected ruling this month on the issue. Experts believe the top court is unlikely to proclaim a national right to same-sex marriage in its decisions. The court is set to rule on a challenge to California's ban on same-sex marriage and on a provision of federal law denying certain benefits for married same-sex couples. ...

BERLIN (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he still wanted to close Guantanamo Bay prison but said the plan had been tougher to achieve than he had hoped due to resistance from Congress. "We cannot have a permanent outpost in which they are being held even as we are ending a war in Afghanistan that triggered the capture of some of these detainees in the first place," Obama said at a joint news conference in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. ...