President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to soothe rocky relations Tuesday, declaring that any talk of a rift is unfounded. Obama said the U.S.-Israeli bond is unbreakable.”The United States is committed to Israel’s security,” Obama said as the two leaders addressed reporters in the Oval Office. “We are committed to that special bond. And we are going to do what’s required to back that up, not just with words, but with actions.”

For the Israeli leader’s part, Netanyahu said of solving years of strife with Palestinians: “We’re committed to that peace. I’m committed to that peace.” And he said that reports of the demise of the U.S.-Israel relationship are “flat wrong.”

“There’s a depth and richness of this relationship that is expressed every day,” Netanyahu said before the two leaders headed into a working lunch.

Trying to add a sense of urgency, Netanyahu said he and Obama discussed specific steps that could be taken in the coming weeks to move the peace process forward, without elaborating. “When I say the next few weeks, that’s what I mean,” he said. “The president means that, too.”

Obama hailed Israel’s decision to greatly ease its three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip as “real progress.” And he said he believes Netanyahu wants peace with the Palestinians and is serious about resuming the face-to-face Mideast peace talks that broke off in December 2008.

Netanyahu and Obama spoke as protesters gathered across the street in Lafayette Park and chanted, “No more aid, end the blockade,” referring to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

After heavy international pressure, including from Obama and other top U.S. officials, Israel’s decision to ease its Gaza blockade will let in most consumer goods. The ban on exports from Gaza and limits on shipments of construction material remain.

Obama and Netanyahu also spoke about efforts to end Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, including sanctions that Obama signed into law last week. That legislation followed a fourth round of United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran.

Netanyahu said the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is the most prominent danger to peace, and called on other nations to follow the U.S. example and adopt their own unilateral sanctions on Iran.

Facing the prospect of an acrimonious nomination fight that threatened to reprise last year’s healthcare debate, President Obama will bypass the Senate to appoint a new head of the federal Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs, the White House announced Tuesday evening.

Dr. Donald Berwick, a Harvard pediatrician and expert on healthcare quality, was nominated in April to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, one of the top healthcare positions in government.But with Republicans lining up to oppose Berwick, Obama will make a recess appointment Wednesday, administration officials said.

“Many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a blog post Tuesday announcing the decision.

“But with the agency facing new responsibilities to protect seniors’ care under the Affordable Care Act, there’s no time to waste with Washington game-playing.”

With Congress away, Berwick will be able to assume his new assignment without going through a confirmation process.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accused the administration of sneaking Berwick through, calling the recess appointment and the lack of a confirmation hearing “truly outrageous.”

“As if shoving a trillion-dollar government takeover of healthcare down the throat of a disapproving American public wasn’t enough, apparently the Obama administration intends to arrogantly circumvent the American people yet again by recess-appointing one of the most prominent advocates of rationed healthcare to implement their national plan,” McConnell said in a statement. Approximately 47 million people are enrolled in Medicare, and 58 million people are enrolled in Medicaid.

Berwick, 63, is a leading advocate of expanding research into the comparative effectiveness of various medical treatments, a major focus of the new healthcare law that many experts think is crucial to improve the quality of care that Americans receive and cut waste in the system.

He has been praised by the American Medical Assn., healthcare groups, consumer advocates and former CMS directors, including Dr. Mark McClellan and Thomas A. Scully, both of whom served in the George W. Bush administration.

But GOP senators accuse Berwick of embracing cutbacks to Americans’ access to healthcare, citing his laudatory comments about the British healthcare system, which evaluates the cost of medical treatments in making coverage decisions.

“The decision is not whether or not we will ration care,” Berwick told an interviewer last year. “The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.”

The cost of BP Oil spill is increasing week after week as reports come from the company sources. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has till now cost the company nearly $3bn according to the company on Sunday. The total includes the cost of containing the spill and cleaning up the oil, and the cost of drilling relief wells. It also includes the $147m paid out in compensation to some of those affected by the spill.

But BP again warned that the total cost of the spill is likely to be much higher. The cost is already significantly higher than the $2.65bn cost reported a week ago. BP said there were now 44,500 people working on the spill response – nearly 5,000 more than a week ago. But the company also confirmed that efforts to collect oil from the surface of the water had been temporarily placed on hold due to Hurricane Alex, which is currently passing through the region.

Oil is continuing to leak into the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in April. BP said two relief wells being drilled to stop the leak are still on course for completion by August.

Meanwhile there is news that waves as high as six feet (1.8 meters) may persist for most of this week off the Louisiana coast. This would force BP to postpone already-delayed efforts to double the amount of oil being captured from a leaking Gulf of Mexico well.

Wave heights in the area of the Gulf that includes BP’s Macondo well are expected to average from 3 feet to 6 feet through July 8, the National Weather Service said yesterday on its website.

The Helix Producer I, a floating platform that can gather 25,000 barrels of crude a day, can’t hook into subsurface equipment connected to the well on the sea floor until wave heights decline to 3 feet or less, said Bryan Ferguson, a spokesman for London-based BP. High waves kicked up by Hurricane Alex last week, followed by a 6-foot chop during the weekend, made it impossible to make the link, he said.

“All the subsea hardware is in place but they’re waiting for the sea state to calm down,” Ferguson said yesterday in a telephone interview from Houston.

The delay is the latest setback in London-based BP’s efforts to halt the worst oil spill in U.S. history. The disaster began April 20 when explosions and fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers, triggering leaks in the well a mile below the surface that fouled beaches, killed wildlife and shut a swath of federally controlled fishing grounds that cover an area the size of Nebraska.

The owner of the Helix Producer I, Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc. of Houston, is awaiting calmer seas before the 24- year-old vessel can connect a tube to a buoy 300 feet under water that is linked to the well through a pipe, Ferguson said.

With delays of forming self government in Iraq and days approaching near the time when US and allied soldiers would leave the country in the hands of democratic government, in a bid to speed up the formation of new government, Vice President of the U.S., Joe Biden met two Shiite political leaders that would lead to a formation of peaceful nation and urged both the leaders to enter into negotiation to speed up the formation of government.

Biden met first with secular Shiite Ayad Allawi, who won the most seats in Iraq’s parliament by a razor-thin margin over Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The two sides have made little progress toward an agreement in the nearly four months since the election, but Iraqi officials say they hope to reach a deal in coming days.

“Everybody is fearful a change will happen if the power gets out of their hand,” said Hajim al-Hassani, a Sunni legislator from Maliki’s State of Law bloc. “The Shiites don’t want to lose the power, the Kurds don’t want to be weaker, and the Sunnis want to come back and be much more powerful in the formation of the government.”

Members of Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc called the meeting with Biden “positive.” During the 1 1/2 -hour session, Biden highlighted the U.S. commitment to a “long-term strategic” relationship with Iraq, said Maysoon al-Damluji, a member of the bloc who attended the meeting. Biden was escorted by U.S. Ambassador Christopher R. Hill and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top military commander in Iraq, as well as other officials from the U.S. Embassy. At the end of the meeting, Allawi and Biden spoke privately for 15 minutes.

Biden then met with Maliki at the prime minister’s residence. “The message that Biden conveyed is that the government should be formed by Iraqis without any regional interference,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said on state television.

Biden and the entire US government are concerned about the impediment in forming the government, Dabbagh said, because the U.S. administration does not want a security vacuum. “America knows the limits of its interference,” Dabbagh said. “Biden said, ‘I’m here not to support any party or side,’ ” and did not give specific suggestions, he said.

Later Sunday, Iraqi police said five mortar rounds landed inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, where Biden had been meeting with Iraqi officials earlier in the day. An official at the U.S. Embassy said in an e-mail that “a small explosion” was being investigated but that no one was injured. One round apparently landed inside the embassy compound; loudspeakers called for people to remain under cover.

After arriving here Saturday, Biden aides stressed that the summer troop drawdown to 50,000 by Sept. 1 would not be affected by the formation of a government or the lack of one. There are currently 77,500 U.S. troops in Iraq. As Biden and U.S. troops celebrated the holiday, two suicide bombers struck in western and northern Iraq.

The worst assault occurred in Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad, when a female suicide bomber slipped past four checkpoints and blow herself up just external the governor’s office. Five people were killed and 37 were wounded, said Maj. Firas al-Dulaimy, a police spokesman.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said Saturday it has helped seize a submarine capable of transporting tons of cocaine. DEA officials said that the diesel electric-powered submarine was constructed in a remote jungle and captured near a tributary close to the Ecuador-Colombia border. Ecuadorean authorities seized the sub before it could make its maiden voyage.

The sophisticated camouflaged vessel has a conning tower, periscope and air-conditioning system. It measured about nine-feet-high from the deck plates to the ceiling and stretched nearly a 100 feet long. The DEA says it was built for trans-oceanic drug trafficking.

One person has been taken into custody. DEA Andean Regional Director Jay Bergman said the submarine’s nautical and payload capacity is a serious development. Colombia’s drug cartels have been known to use home-built submarines to smuggle large amounts of cocaine past U.S. and Colombian patrol boats to Central America en route to the United States.

Colombian authorities have discovered these vessels from time to time in recent years. In August 2007, U.S. forces intercepted a submarine-like vessel packed with tons of cocaine off the coast of Guatemala. And in July 2008, Mexico’s navy seized a homemade submarine carrying a drug shipment off the Pacific coast. DEA officials said that the diesel electric-powered submarine was constructed in a remote jungle and captured near a tributary close to the Ecuador-Colombia border. Ecuadorean authorities seized the sub before it could make its maiden voyage.

Mrs Chapman, 28, told Alex Chapman she had “suffered a lot” because of her decision to put her career ahead of a chance to start a family with him. But she said she was determined to make her new life in America work, adding: “It’s never too late to be happy and succeed.”

Mrs Chapman, who was arrested in the US last weekend as part of an 11-strong suspected spying ring, was married to public school-educated Mr Chapman for four years before they divorced in 2006. But the couple remained close friends and were in regular phone and email contact. Mr Chapman told The Daily Telegraph he and his then wife had discussed having a baby and he believes they would have started a family together if she hadn’t become obsessed with a new career after “secretive” meetings with Russians.

He said: “She had to choose between her career and having a baby, and she chose her career. It was a really, really hard thing for both of us, but especially Anna.

“The Anna I knew when we got married wouldn’t have done that. At the time, she had already begun having secretive meetings with people she called ‘Russian friends’. Looking back, I think she was being conditioned [by them]. She didn’t seem happy.”

On March 29, Mrs Chapman emailed her ex-husband from New York and disclosed she was still haunted by her decision. She wrote: “I suffered a lot by loving you and losing you …” then referred to her decision not to have a baby.

Mr Chapman told her not to “dwell on painful things” and she replied: “I think it’s never too late to be happy and to succeed … being happy is like business. You have to plan, achieve and enjoy.”

MI5 is investigating whether Mrs Chapman, the daughter of a former KGB agent, was recruited as a spy while she was living in London between 2002 and 2006. Earlier this week, an MI5 officer interviewed Mr Chapman, 30, near his home in Stuckton, Hants.

Mrs Chapman moved out of the marital home in 2005. Between the end of 2004 and 2006, she flitted between jobs at Barclays, a hedge fund and an aircraft hire firm, rubbing shoulders with businessmen including Philip Green and Vincent Tchenguiz.

Two more suspects admitted yesterday that they were Russian citizens living in the US under false identities, prosecutors said. In court papers, prosecutors said Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills told authorities their real names were Mikhail Kutzik and Natalia Pereverzeva. They followed Juan Lazaro, who prosecutors claimed on Thursday admitted he was a member of the Russian intelligence service.

A judge ordered Mr Zottoli, Mrs Mills and another man, Mikhail Semenko, be detained, saying they were “at risk of flight”. Mrs Chapman was denied bail earlier this week.

President Barack Obama renewed his push for U.S. immigration reform on Thursday, reaching out to Hispanic voters despite minimal chances that Congress will pass such legislation this year.

In a broad speech that did not break new policy ground, Obama, a Democrat, called for Republican support to pass a law that addresses the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country without disrupting the economy or violating American values.

Obama has been under pressure to keep his promise from the 2008 presidential campaign to overhaul U.S. immigration rules. A tough new law in Arizona has brought the issue to the forefront of public debate, galvanizing Hispanics, who are an important constituency for November’s congressional elections.

The president, speaking at American University, criticized the Arizona law but made no mention of a potential lawsuit by his administration to block it before it goes into affect on July 29. The U.S. Justice Department is expected to file a lawsuit challenging the law shortly.

Obama did not lay out a timetable for passing national reform but said he was ready to pursue the issue if Democrats and Republicans could work together. “I’m ready to move forward, the majority of Democrats are ready to move forward and I believe the majority of Americans are ready to move forward,” he said.

“Reform that brings accountability to our immigration system cannot pass without Republican votes. That is the political and mathematical reality.”

Both Democrats and Republicans are aware of that political reality, and some in the opposition party accused the president of pandering to his voter base. Obama’s speech on immigration came a day after he ripped Republicans for opposing financial reform and siding with big oil companies, new signs of a White House gearing up for tough elections in the fall. Democrats, who control both houses of Congress, are widely expected to lose seats.

But with energy legislation, financial reform and the economy topping his agenda, Obama is unlikely to make immigration a centerpiece of his campaign to help Democrats hold on to power.

“In an environment where the Democrats feel vulnerable and where the economy is so bad, trying to say we need to give eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants is a very tough sell politically, and for the public,” said Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Netanyahu’s remarks elicited an angry response from the soldier’s family. “We are saddened by the fact that after four years in which Gilad is rotting away in some dark Hamas basement, the only that thing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu manages to do is reenact a press conference held by his predecessor [Ehud] Olmert in March 2009 and brandish a list of four things that he did for our son, yet the list does not include freeing Gilad from Hamas,” said Shalit’s father, Noam.

Speaking yesterday at the Ruppin Institute of Agriculture, Emek Hefer, where the family was resting in the middle of its 12-day protest march to Jerusalem, Noam Shalit accused the premier of fear-mongering to rouse public opinion to his side. “The prime minister chose to repeat the same old doomsday scenarios from 25 years ago, or even six years ago, about terrorists who are released from jail and resume murdering Israelis,” Shalit said. “As if things have not changed since then, as if there aren’t security services in the state of Israel whose job it is to prevent this – and they know how to deal with terrorists who pose any kind of threat.”

“The heads of the security forces and numerous IDF chiefs of staff, both current and retired, support a prisoner swap despite the steep price and the risks it entails,” said Shalit. “They are convinced that the security forces will know how to deal with imminent threats, all the while knowing that the risk entailed in abandoning Gilad is an existential one for the state and its citizens.”

Shalit criticized Netanyahu’s call for the public to pressure Hamas “at a time when he himself is unable to adhere to any means of pressuring [Hamas].”

Shalit cited the premier’s decision to agree to the release of Hamas officials from jail, as well as the government’s decision to lift the blockade over Gaza. “I call on you, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to listen to the voices of the masses that are marching with us and take strength from them to make this tough decision before it will be too late,” he said.

The Palestinian president made a fresh bid to win over public opinion in Israel by giving a rare interview to Israeli journalists in which he cast himself as a serious partner for peace talks.

Abbas gave the interview, reported in major Israeli newspapers yesterday, as Washington’s special Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, visited the region to try to find enough common ground to allow direct talks to resume.

Also yesterday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced he has accepted a German mediator’s proposal to release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a captive Israeli soldier who has been held by Hamas militants in Gaza for four years. But Netanyahu said the most dangerous prisoners would not be allowed to return to their homes and “mass murderers’’ would not be freed.

Speaking in a southeast Wisconsin city hit hard by the recession, President Obama on Wednesday touted economic gains made since he took office and chastised congressional Republicans who he said were standing in the way of economic reforms.

Referring to “a minority of senators from the other party,” the president questioned their tactics in blocking an economic relief package designed to extend unemployment benefits, increase access to small-business loans and fund public sector jobs in education and law enforcement.

“As we speak, they’re using their power to stop this relief from going to the American people,” he said. “In fact, they won’t even let these measures come up for a vote.”He also directed criticism at House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R- Ohio), who recently characterized a Wall Street overhaul package currently before Congress as “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.”

“This is the same crisis that led to the loss of 8 million jobs,” Obama said to loud applause. He called Boehner “out of touch with the struggles of everyday families.”

About 1,300 people packed Memorial Hall in downtown Racine for the event, which began with prepared remarks by Obama, then became a town-hall-style forum, with the president striding the stage, microphone in hand, suit jacket off. Audience members mostly supported Obama, thanking him before asking polite questions about topics including mortgage reform, the trade deficit and last year’s economic stimulus package.

The president said he judged the stimulus package a success, saying it provided emergency relief at a time when the economy was shrinking at a rate of 6% and hemorrhaging 750,000 jobs a month. He also touted what he described as tax cuts that went to 95% of Americans, but he acknowledged that most people didn’t notice that their taxes had been cut because it was an adjustment of the withholding in payroll.

“Most of us didn’t know it,” he said, joking that the more politically astute way to deliver the cuts would have been to send each taxpayer “one big check with my picture on it.” He noted that private sector jobs have increased for five consecutive months but acknowledged that much work remained in places such as Racine, which has the second-highest unemployment rate in Wisconsin.

“I know that for a lot of Americans — for Racine and many other communities — it’s not headed there fast enough,” he said. “Not if you’re out of work. Not if you can’t pay the mortgage. Not if you can’t take care of your family. I understand that.”

The big news tonight is that the Portland (Ore.) police have decided to take a fresh look at a masseuse’s allegations that Al Gore sexually assaulted her in October 2006. The move seems to have been prompted by the decision of the woman, 54-year-old Molly Hagerty, to out herself in a National Enquirer story that went live earlier in the day.

“Consistent with our policy regarding open investigations, the Police Bureau will not be commenting on any additional specifics regarding this case at this time,” a spokeswoman for the Portland police said.

Hagerty spoke exclusively to the Enquirer, which reported that she is in possession of “crucial DNA evidence” from her encounter with the former vice president, and that she also has a corroborating witness (a friend to whom she relayed details of the encounter hours after it happened) and a hotel surveillance tape to bolster her case.

Last week, when the Enquirer ran a story detailing Hagerty’s police report (without naming her), the tabloid’s executive editor said that she had asked for $1 million for her story — but that the Enquirer had refused to pay anything. It is unclear whether any financial arrangements were made between then and now, although it appears that Hagerty provided the Enquirer with extensive cooperation in that time. After last week’s story ran, the tabloid said that it had only conducted a brief interview with her.

Hagerty initially filed a complaint with Portland police through a lawyer in early 2007 — several months after the supposed assault. She then refused to meet with police on three different occasions, only to step forward in early 2009 to make a voluntary statement to police. She then amended that statement in June 2009. Police declined to pursue the matter further, citing a lack of evidence.

In a brief statement, the Portland Police Bureau did not say why it was reopening the investigation. Police earlier said they considered the case closed because there was no evidence.

Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Gore, said the former vice-president “unequivocally and emphatically” denied making unwanted sexual advances toward the woman and that he welcomed the investigation.”Further investigation into this matter will only benefit Mr Gore,” Kreider said.

She also said “the Gores cannot comment on every defamatory, misleading and inaccurate story generated by tabloids.”

The masseuse alleges Gore made unwanted sexual advances during a massage appointment on October 24, 2006, at the downtown Hotel Lucia, where Gore was reportedly registered as “Mr Stone.” Gore was in Portland to deliver a speech on climate change. The story first broke when the National Enquirer reported the allegations a week ago.