President-elect Barack Obama announced Sunday that Gen. Eric Shinseki is his nominee to be secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Shinseki, a Vietnam veteran and former Army chief of staff, was replaced after questioning former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s strategy in Iraq.

AUTO INDUSTRY: In an interview on NBC News’ Meet the Press Sunday, Obama said he believes government assistance for U.S. automakers should be conditioned on major changes in the way those companies operate. They “can’t keep on putting off the kinds of changes that they, frankly, should have made twenty or thirty years ago,” he said. “If they want to survive, then they better start building a fuel-efficient car.”