President Barack Obama will nominate Walmart's philanthropic head Sylvia Mathews Burwell on Monday to become director of the White House budget office, a White House official said on Sunday. Burwell, 47, is a veteran of Bill Clinton's White House and for the past year has been president of the Walmart Foundation at the corporation's Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters. The charity organization in 2011 gave out nearly $1 billion in corporate contributions to projects around the world such as fighting hunger and empowering women. ...

The president's budget gamble has only gotten bigger as Washington’s response to it has gotten smaller.

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (AP) — Bobby Rogers, a founding member of Motown group The Miracles and a songwriting collaborator with Smokey Robinson, died Sunday at his suburban Detroit home. He was 73.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Preparations for electing Roman Catholicism's new leader begin in earnest on Monday as the College of Cardinals opens daily talks to sketch an identikit for the next pope and ponder who among them might fit it. The idea is to have the new pope elected during next week and officially installed several days later so he can preside over the Holy Week ceremonies starting with Palm Sunday on March 24 and culminating in Easter the following Sunday. ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private Earth-to-orbit delivery service made good on its latest shipment to the International Space Station on Sunday, overcoming mechanical difficulty and delivering a ton of supplies with high-flying finesse.

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — A car bomb exploded outside a mosque on Sunday, killing 37 people and wounding another 141 in a Shiite Muslim dominated neighborhood in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi — the third mass casualty attack on the minority sect in the country this year.

SAO PAULO (AP) — Faithful attending Sunday Mass on five continents for the first time since Pope Benedict XVI's retirement had different ideas about who should next lead the Roman Catholic Church, with people suggesting everything from a Latin American pope to one more like the conservative, Polish-born John Paul II. What most agreed on, however, was the church is in dire need of a comeback.

LONDON (AP) — A Scottish cardinal on Sunday acknowledged having engaged in unspecified sexual misbehavior, apologized for his actions, and promised to stay out of the church's public life in a statement that comes at an awkward time for the Vatican.

The White House and congressional leaders are giving no indication that the $85 billion in mandatory across-the-board federal spending cuts known as the sequester will be lifted any time soon. Two days have passed since President Obama signed the order to reduce the budget of...

While the White House and Congress failed to reach an agreement to avoid automatic spending cuts that began taking effect on March 1, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., said she is still open to the idea of a “big agreement” to address the country’s long-term fiscal...

LONDON (AP) — Britain's Queen Elizabeth II was hospitalized Sunday over an apparent stomach infection that has ailed her for days, a rare instance of ill health sidelining the long-reigning monarch. Elizabeth will have to cancel a visit to Rome and other engagements as she recovers, and outside experts said she may have to be rehydrated intravenously.

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian opposition chief visited rebel-held suburbs of the embattled city of Aleppo for the first time Sunday as fighters trying to oust President Bashar Assad made significant strategic advances in the heavily contested northeast.

A 911 dispatcher pleaded with a nurse at a Bakersfield, Calif., senior living facility to save the life of an elderly woman by giving her CPR, but the nurse said policy did not allow her to, according to a newly released audiotape of the call....

LONDON (Reuters) - A Roman Catholic cardinal who resigned as head of the church in Scotland on February 25 apologized on Sunday for sexual conduct which he said had "fallen below the standards expected of me". Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who was Britain's most senior Catholic cleric, resigned as archbishop and said he would not take part in the conclave to elect a new pope after newspaper allegations of inappropriate behavior with priests. ...