President Obama on Monday will nominate Walmart’s Sylvia Matthews Burwell as his next budget director, a senior administration official said.
If confirmed by the Senate, Burwell would take the helm at the Office of Management and Budget at a time of heated budget battles between the White House and congressional Republicans. She would also bring more diversity to Obama’s second-term Cabinet following criticism that many top jobs were going to white men.
The 47-year-old Burwell is a Washington veteran, having served as OMB’s deputy director in the Clinton administration and chief of staff to former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
Member of Miracles passes away at 73
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.
Rogers formed the group in 1956 with cousin Claudette Rogers, Pete Moore, Ronnie White and Robinson.
Queen Elizabeth II hospitalized
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II was hospitalized 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.
Egypt protests spur military action
The military intervened in clashes between thousands of protesters and police in a restive Egyptian canal city, the latest in a cycle of violence that continues to rock Egypt two years after the uprising that ousted longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak.
Also, a court ruled that Mubarak will face a new trial next month on charges related to the killings of hundreds of protesters during the revolution that forced him from power.
Around 5,000 protesters threw rocks and firebombs at police in Port Said late Sunday, the scene of a civil strike now in its second week. Riot police responded with tear gas and bird shot.
Car bomb kills 37 in Pakistan
A car bomb exploded outside a mosque, 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.
No one has taken responsibility for the bombing, but Shiite Muslims have been increasingly targeted by Sunni militant groups in Karachi, Pakistan’s economic hub and site of years of political, sectarian and ethnic violence, as well as other parts of the country.
