WASHINGTON Justice Stephen Breyer was robbed last week by a machete-wielding intruder at his vacation home in the West Indies, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said Monday.

WASHINGTON The White House said Monday legislation in the Senate that would give employers broad leeway to restrict coverage for contraception is "dangerous and wrong."

WASHINGTON The United States is considering how an international peacekeeping force might operate in Syria.

WASHINGTON Despite criticism of Fannie Mae by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, his campaign accepted nearly $280,000 in donations raised by a registered lobbyist who once represented the government mortgage giant and whose clients now include a private equity firm and the drug company Pfizer.

WASHINGTON House Republicans say they will introduce legislation to extend payroll tax cuts through the end of the year, even though bipartisan talks are stalled on a plan to make sure the cost doesn't add to federal deficits.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama proposed tax increases on wealthy individuals and some corporations Monday, setting the stage for an ideological battle that won't be resolved until after the November election - if then.

WASHINGTON A U.S. envoy will hold talks with North Korea on its nuclear program in Beijing next week, the first such negotiations since the death of the nation's longtime leader Kim Jong Il.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama's new federal budget showcases the major priorities of his presidency and sets up the top battles that will be waged on both sides in the presidential campaign.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama proposed a $3.8 trillion budget on Monday for fiscal 2013 that aims to slash the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years but still envisions growth in the government's major health benefit programs. Here is the agency-by-agency breakdown:

ANNANDALE, Va. President Barack Obama called on Congress Monday to create an $8 billion fund to train community college students for high-growth industries, giving a financial incentive to schools whose graduates are getting jobs.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama is sending Congress his proposed budget for the new fiscal year and traveling to a community college outside the capital to promote the plan.

WASHINGTON Movie super spies James Bond and Jason Bourne use them. So do real-life presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who says he pays his taxes, and untold numbers of Americans who don't. Swiss banks and their secretive counterparts around the globe may sound like the exclusive province of the wealthy, the mysterious or the shady, but anybody can legally open an offshore account.

LOS ANGELES Documents detail the terms of a discounted mortgage loan received by U.S. Rep. Howard McKeon from the now-defunct Countrywide Financial Corp. under a VIP program, according to a published report.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama unveiled a $3.8 trillion spending plan on Monday that seeks to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade but does little to restrain growth in the government's huge health benefit programs, a major cause of future deficits.

LOS ANGELES Documents detail the terms of a discounted mortgage loan received by U.S. Rep. Howard McKeon from the now-defunct Countrywide Financial Corp. under a VIP program, according to a published report.

WASHINGTON Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping arrives in the United States on Monday for a high-profile visit where he'll be honored as if he were the president of China - the post he's expected to take next year.

WASHINGTON Conservatives said Sunday the flap surrounding President Barack Obama's birth control mandate was far from over, with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell saying he'll push to overturn the requirement because it was another example of government meddling.

WASHINGTON It was part of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier: a government agency to work with developing countries around the world and spread democracy in the process.

WASHINGTON Piece by piece, in backpacks and carry-on bags, American aid contractor Alan Gross made sure laptops, smartphones, hard drives and networking equipment were secreted into Cuba. The most sensitive item, according to official trip reports, was the last one: a specialized mobile phone chip that experts say is often used by the Pentagon and the CIA to make satellite signals virtually impossible to track.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama's chief of staff says it's only a matter of time before the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad collapses.

WASHINGTON Rick Santorum says he expects to do well in the next GOP presidential contests and will be in a two-man race with Mitt Romney.

WASHINGTON Mitt Romney takes a hard line against congressional earmarks, but the GOP presidential front-runner had a more favorable view of federal pork-barrel spending when he was governor of Massachusetts.

DES MOINES, Iowa From the start, it's been a roller-coaster race for the Republican presidential nomination.

WASHINGTON The dustup over contraception underscored President Barack Obama's political edge in working to attract independent voters without alienating his Democratic base. His Republican rivals are forced to keep emphasizing their conservative credentials to attract the right-leaning activists who dominate the nominating contests.

PORTLAND, Maine A day after Mitt Romney regained some momentum in the Republican presidential contest, his rival Rick Santorum went on the attack, calling the front-runner "desperate" while promising to compete aggressively to win the state where Romney grew up.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama's long-sluggish poll numbers have inched up, the unemployment rate has dropped five months in a row, the stock market shows signs of life and the Republican presidential contenders are slicing each other up in a primary battle that shows no sign of ending soon.

WASHINGTON Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney got a much-needed boost Saturday, winning a key symbolic vote over former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania among some of the nation's most active Republican voters and besting the field in the Maine caucuses.

WASHINGTON Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney got a much-needed boost Saturday, winning a key symbolic vote over former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania among some of the nation's most active Republican voters and besting the field in the Maine caucuses.

PORTLAND, Maine Mitt Romney is thanking Maine voters after the state party chairman declared him the winner of that state.

WASHINGTON Mitt Romney added to his lead in the race for delegates Saturday with a narrow victory in the Maine Republican presidential caucuses.

PORTLAND, Maine Republican presidential contender Ron Paul says he wishes all the Maine caucuses would have met on Saturday.

WASHINGTON Mitt Romney has won The Washington Times/CPAC Presidential Straw Poll of conservative activists.

WASHINGTON The new budget that President Barack Obama is sending to Congress aims to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade by restraining government spending and raising taxes on the wealthy. To help a weak economy, Obama's proposal Monday requests increases in transportation, education and other areas.

A profile of Maine, site of the Republican caucus on Feb. 11:

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama's new budget proposal will ask Congress to devote millions for a new trade enforcement center and more U.S. inspectors in China as the administration takes aim at unfair trade practices abroad, a senior administration official said Saturday.

ORLANDO, Fla. Add another dance move to Michelle Obama's repertoire. This one has to do with a certain celebrity platypus.

DALLAS In just the past few days, she's danced with cheering school kids, chatted with troops, swapped ideas with busy parents and engaged in a friendly cooking competition with stars from "Top Chef."

BOSTON Mitt Romney faulted President Barack Obama's original push to require church-affiliated employers to pay for birth control as an "assault on religion," but as Massachusetts governor, Romney was largely silent about a state law that required virtually the same contraceptive coverage.

WASHINGTON It's not like he wasn't warned.

LONGWOOD, Florida Gearing up for a tough political season ahead, Michelle Obama said Saturday she's trying to get as much done as possible before the general election campaign starts to drown out everything else.

J.R. Childress is up before the sun, bustling about in the French colonial brick house he built. He helps pack his wife's lunch, downs some eggs or cereal for breakfast, pores over online and newspaper job listings and hopes - even prays - this will be the day when his fortunes turn around.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama is pressuring Congress to extend a payroll tax cut for the rest of the year as another deadline nears for Congress to act or see taxes go up for millions of working people.

PORTLAND, Maine Mitt Romney narrowly won Maine's Republican caucuses, state party officials announced Saturday, providing his campaign with a much-needed boost after three straight losses earlier this week. But the former Massachusetts governor won just a plurality of the Maine vote, suggesting he still has work to do to unite GOP voters behind his candidacy.

WASHINGTON Staggered by Rick Santorum's surge, Mitt Romney is trying to reset his presidential campaign by defining himself as a strict conservative.

WASHINGTON What birth control debate? A half-century after the introduction of the pill, acceptance of birth control by American women is virtually universal.

WASHINGTON A political tip sheet for the rest of us outside the Washington Beltway, Friday, Feb. 10, 2012:

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama expects the federal budget deficit to reach $1.33 trillion this year, administration officials said Friday evening, the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama expects the federal budget deficit to reach $1.33 trillion this year, administration officials said Friday evening, the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama attempted to quell a political firestorm over health care and religion Friday, saying he would still assure that every woman in America gets free contraception but agreeing that religious institutions will not be forced to provide it. Instead, insurers will.

SAN DIEGO House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi predicts that five large states will put Democrats in striking distance of gaining control of the House after the November elections.