A letter addressed to President Barack Obama was found to contain Ricin Wednesday, the FBI announced, the same day Senate office buildings were partially evacuated following the discovery of “suspicious items” on the Hill.

“A second letter containing a granular substance that preliminarily tested positive for ricin was received at an offsite mail screening facility. The envelope, addressed to the President, was immediately quarantined by U.S. Secret Service personnel, and a coordinated investigation with the FBI was initiated,” the FBI announced.

For the second straight day, U.S. Capitol Police investigated a fresh potential threat to lawmakers: “Suspicious items” that led them to clear three floors in two Senate office buildings, according to a spokeswoman.

“Currently, we’re investigating two separate issues,” Lt. Jessia Baboulis told Yahoo News. Capitol Police “have asked that people remain off the first and third floors of the Hart office building, and the third floor of Russell,” another office building.

Asked whether there was any sign that those situations were linked to a letter addressed to Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, which tested positive of the poison Ricin, Baboulis replied: “None at this time.”

The suspicious letters and items on the Hill follow heightened tensions in the wake of Monday’s deadly Boston Marathon bombings.

The letter sent to the president was never near the president or the White House. Following anthrax scares in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, the White House moved all mail processing off-site. The screening facility that caught the president’s letter Tuesday is “not located near the White House complex,” Leary noted in his statement.

“On 4-16-13, a letter addressed to the President containing a suspicious substance was received at the remote White House mail screening facility. This facility routinely identifies letters or parcels that require secondary screening or scientific testing before delivery,” Leary said.

“The Secret Service is working closely with the U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI in this investigation,” he said.

News of the intercepted letter to the president was reportedly announced to senators during a briefing Tuesday evening.

Jordan: President Barack Obama warned Friday that an “enclave for extremism” could fill a leadership void in war-torn Syria, a chilling scenario for an already tumultuous region, especially for Jordan, Syria’s neighbor and a nation at the crossroads of the struggle for stability in the Middle East.

In a significant step toward easing regional tensions, Obama also brokered a phone call between leaders from Israel and Turkey that resulted in an extraordinary apology from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a deadly 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla. The call marked a diplomatic victory for the president and a crucial realignment in the region, given Israel’s and Turkey’s shared interests, in particular the fear that Syria’s civil war could spill over their respective borders.

Obama said he remains confident that embattled Syrian leader Bashar Assad’s government will ultimately collapse. But he warned that when that happens, Syria would not be “put back together perfectly,” and he said he fears the nation could become a hotbed for extremists.

“I am very concerned about Syria becoming an enclave for extremism, because extremists thrive in chaos,” Obama said during a joint news conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah II. “They thrive in failed states, they thrive in power vacuums.”

More than 70,000 people have been killed during the two-year conflict in Syria, making it by far the deadliest of the Arab Spring uprisings that have roiled the region since 2011. Longtime autocrats in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya have been ousted, ushering in new governments that are sometimes at odds with the Obama administration and its Mideast allies.

Obama’s 24-hour stop in Jordan marked his first visit to an Arab nation since the 2011 Mideast protests began. Jordan’s monarchy has clung to power in part by enacting political reforms, including parliamentary elections and significant revisions to the country’s 60-year-old constitution. Still, tensions continue to simmer, with the restive population questioning the speed and seriousness of the changes.

Protecting Abdullah is paramount to U.S. interests. The 51-year-old king is perhaps Obama’s strongest Arab ally and a key player in efforts to jumpstart peace talks between Palestinians and Israel. Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel, and that agreement has become even more significant given the rise of Islamist leaders in Egypt, which was the first Arab country to ink a treaty with the Jewish state, in the 1970s.

Egypt’s new leaders have so far pledged to uphold the treaty, though there are strong concerns in Israeland the U.S. about whether that will hold.

By virtue of geography, Jordan’s future is particularly vulnerable to the turmoil in the Middle East. It shares borders with Iraq, Israel and the West Bank, in addition to Syria. More than 460,000 Syrians have flowed across the Jordanian border seeking refuge since the civil war began, seeking an escape from the violence.

The flood of refugees has overwhelmed the country of 6 million people, straining Jordan’s resources, including health care and education, and pushing the budget deficit to a record high $3 billion last year. Abdullah also fears the half-million refugees could create a regional base for extremists and terrorists, saying recently that such elements were already “establishing firm footholds in some areas.”

Obama announced that his administration planned to work with Congress to allocate $200 million to Jordan to help ease the financial burden.

Despite the influx, Abdullah firmly declared Jordan would not close its borders to the refugees, many women and children.

“This is something that we just can’t do,” he said. “It’s not the Jordanian way. We have historically opened our arms to many of our neighbors through many decades of Jordan’s history.”

Obama had come to Jordan from Israel, where he spent three days coaxing Netanyahu to apologize to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Israel’s role in the deaths of nine Turkish activists during a naval raid on a Gaza-bound international flotilla. The 20-minute phone call took place just before Obama departed, in a trailer on the airport tarmac near a waiting Air Force One, and resulted in the restoration of normal diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“The timing was good for that conversation to take place,” Obama said, adding that the phone call was the first step in rebuilding trust between Israel and Turkey.

The president opened the last full day of his Mideast trip with a series of stops around Jerusalem and Bethlehem, all steeped in political and religious symbolism.

Accompanied by Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres, Obama laid wreaths at the graves of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism who died in 1904 before realizing his dream of a Jewish homeland, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995.

Obama and his hosts arrived at the Herzl grave site under cloudless skies. Obama approached Herzl’s resting place alone and bowed his head in silence. He turned briefly to ask Netanyahu where to place a small stone in the Jewish custom, then laid the stone atop the grave.

“It is humbling and inspiring to visit and remember the visionary who began the remarkable establishment of the State of Israel,” Obama wrote in a guestbook. “May our two countries possess the same vision and will to secure peace and prosperity for future generations.”

At Rabin’s grave a short walk away, Obama was greeted by members of the late leader’s family. He initially placed a stone on Rabin’s wife’s side of the grave, then returned to place one atop Rabin’s side. In a gesture linking the U.S. and Israel, the stone placed on Rabin’s grave was from the grounds of the Martin Luther King memorial in Washington, the White House said.

Friday’s stop at Herzl’s grave, together with Obama’s earlier viewing of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient Hebrew texts, were an attempt by the president to emphasize his view that the rationale for Israel’s existence rests with its historical ties to the region and with a vision that predated the Holocaust. Obama was criticized in Israel for his 2009 Cairo speech in which he gave only the example of the Holocaust as reason justifying Israel’s existence.

Obama was to make a stop Saturday at Petra, Jordan’s fabled ancient city, before flying back to Washington.

JERUSALEM: Insisting “peace is possible,” President Barack Obama on Thursday prodded both Israelis and Palestinians to return to long-stalled negotiations with few, if any, pre-conditions, softening his earlier demands that Israel stop building settlements in disputed territory.

The president made his appeal just hours after rockets fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza landed in a southern Israeli border town, a fresh reminder of the severe security risks and tensions that have stymied peace efforts for decades.

Obama, on his second day in the Middle East, shuttled betweenJerusalem and Ramallah, reaching out to the public as well as political leaders. He offered no new policies or plans for reopening peace talks but urged both sides to “think anew” about the intractable conflict and break out of the “formulas and habits that have blocked progress for so long.”

“Peace is possible,” Obama declared during an impassioned speech to young people in Jerusalem. “I’m not saying it’s guaranteed. I can’t even say that it is more likely than not. But it is possible.”

The deep disputes dividing the Israelis and Palestinians have remained much the same over the years, and include deciding the status of Jerusalem, defining borders and resolving refugee issues. Palestinians have been particularly incensed over Israeli settlements in disputed territories, and the Israelis’ continued construction has also drawn the condemnation of the United States and other nations.

Further settlement activity is “counterproductive to the cause of peace,” Obama said. But in a notable shift, he did not repeat his administration’s previous demands that Israel halt construction. Instead he urged the Palestinians to stop using the disagreement as an “excuse” to avoid talks.

“If the expectation is that we can only have direct negotiations when everything is settled ahead of time, then there is no point for negotiations,” Obama said during a joint news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. “I think it is important to work through this process even if there are irritants on both sides.”

Abbas said Palestinians remain committed to seeking peace with Israelis, but he made clear that settlement construction had made his people distrustful of Israel’s intentions.

“This is very dangerous that people and the new generation reaches the conviction that it’s no more possible to believe in the two-state solution,” he said.

Obama has sided with the Palestinians on the settlement issue during his first four years in office. However, when Israel reluctantly declared a 10-month moratorium on construction, the Palestinians balked at returning to negotiations until shortly before the suspension expired and talks foundered shortly thereafter.

WASHINGTON: When President Barack Obama steps into the Middle East’s political cauldron this coming week, he won’t be seeking any grand resolution for the region’s vexing problems.

His goal will be trying to keep the troubles, from Iran’s suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon to the bitter discord between Israelis and Palestinians, from boiling over on his watch.

Obama arrives in Jerusalem on Wednesday for his first trip toIsrael as president. His first priority will be resetting his oft-troubled relationship with now-weakened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and evaluating the new coalition government Netanyahu laboriously cobbled together.

The president also will look to boost his appeal to a skeptical Israeli public, as well as to frustrated Palestinians.

“This is not about accomplishing anything now. This is what I call a down payment trip,” said Aaron David Miller, an adviser on Mideast peace to six secretaries of state who is now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.

For much of Obama’s first term, White House officials saw little reason for him to go to the region without a realistic chance for a peace accord between the Israelis and Palestinians. But with the president’s one attempt at a U.S.-brokered deal thwarted in his first term and the two sides even more at odds, the White House has shifted thinking.

Officials now see the lowered expectations as a chance to create space for frank conversations between Obama and both sides about what it will take to get back to the negotiating table. The president will use his face-to-face meetings to “persuade both sides to refrain from taking provocative unilateral actions that could be self-defeating,” said Haim Malka, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The trip gives Obama the opportunity to meet Netanyahu on his own turf, and that could help ease the tension that has at times defined their relationship.

The leaders have tangled over Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, and Netanyahu has questioned Obama’s commitment to containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Netanyahu also famously lectured the president in front of the media during a 2011 meeting in the Oval Office, and later made no secret of his fondness for Republican challenger Mitt Romney in last year’s presidential campaign.

Beyond Mideast peace, the two leaders have similar regional goals, including ending the violence in Syria and containing the political tumult in Egypt, which has a decades-old peace treaty with Israel.

The president’s trip comes at a time of political change for Israel.

Netanyahu’s power was diminished in January elections and he struggled to form a government. He finally reached a deal on Friday with rival parties, creating a coalition that brings the centrist Yesh Atid and pro-settler Jewish Home parties into the government and excludes the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties for the first time in a decade.

Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, acknowledged that with a new government, “you don’t expect to close the deal on any one major initiative.” But he said starting those conversations now “can frame those decisions that ultimately will come down the line.”

Among those decisions will be next steps in dealing with Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

Israel repeatedly has threatened to take military action should Iran appear to be on the verge of obtaining a bomb. The U.S. has pushed for more time to allow diplomacy and economic penalties to run their course, though Obama insists military action is an option.

The West says Iran’s program is aimed at developing weapons technology. Iran says its program is for peaceful energy purposes.

Another central difference between the allies on Iran is the timeline for possible military action.

Netanyahu, in a speech to the United Nations in September, said Iran was about six months away from being able to build a bomb. Obama told an Israeli television station this past week that the U.S. thinks it would take “over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon.”

Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., tried to play down any division on the Iranian issue ahead of Obama’s trip. He said Friday that “the United States and Israel see many of the same facts about the Iranian nuclear program and draw many similar conclusions.”

Obama’s visit to Israel may quiet critics in the U.S. who interpreted his failure to travel there in his first term as a sign that he was less supportive of the Jewish state than his predecessors. Republican lawmakers levied that criticism frequently during last year’s presidential campaign, despite the fact that GOP President George W. Bush did not visit Israel until his final year in office.

The centerpiece of Obama’s visit will be a speech in Jerusalem to an audience mainly of Israeli students. It’s part of the president’s effort to appeal to the Israeli public, particularly young people.

He will make several cultural stops, all steeped in symbolism, in the region. They include the Holocaust memorial Yad Veshem; Mount Herzl, where he’ll lay wreaths at the graves of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, and the Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin; and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, a revered site for Christians.

Traveling to the West Bank, Obama will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah. Obama and Fayyad will visit a Palestinian youth center, another attempt to reach the region’s young people.

Obama will make a 24-hour stop in Jordan, an important U.S. ally, where the president’s focus will be on the violence in neighboring Syria. More than 450,000 Syrians have fled to Jordan, crowding refugee camps and overwhelming aid organizations.

The White House said Obama had no plans to visit a refugee camp while in Jordan, though he will be discussing with government officials how the U.S. can increase its assistance

PYONGYANG, North Korea:  A new North Korean video portrays President Barack Obama and American troops in flames and says the North conducted its recent nuclear test because of U.S. hostility.

The video follows a string of critical rhetoric against the United States. Another video posted earlier this month showed an American city being attacked by missiles.

The most recent video, posted Sunday by a YouTube account affiliated with a pro-reunification government agency, shows a blazing fire superimposed over footage of Obama, and ends with a generic simulation of a nuclear device exploding underground.

The United States currently is negotiating in the Security Council for stronger U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang following a Feb. 12 nuclear test in the far northeast, the country’s third since 2006.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. : President Barack Obama was facing the prospect of rattling around the White House without his family during a long weekend, so he arranged a golf outing with some buddies.

In Florida.

He high-tailed it south after a speech Friday in Chicago on building a stronger middle class and he won’t return to Washington until Monday, the Presidents Day federal holiday.

Obama flew into the airport in West Palm Beach and was driven for nearly an hour to coastal Palm City and behind the gates of the Floridian Yacht and Golf Club, the resort that will be his home away from home for the weekend.

It’s a weekend with the boys, presidential style.

Eyebrows might have been raised at the thought of the president, any president, skipping out of Washington, without his family, for some “me time” hundreds of miles away from the Oval Office. First lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha are on an annual midwinter ski vacation out West.

As it turns out, a president going on vacation alone isn’t all that uncommon.

And, Obama has gone off on his own in the past, too.

During the weekend, the avid first golfer was expected to take full advantage of the club’s private, 18-hole course, which opened in 1996 and is owned by Jim Crane, a Houston businessman who also owns Major League Baseball’s Astros, according to golfnow.com.

“A quiet weekend of golf,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

The president was not expected to leave the private club, which fronts the St. Lucie River, until he heads back to Washington.

Members of the club and their guests have access to one of eight cottages, a 68-slip deep water marina, the club’s 61-foot Viking yacht, a 24-foot Hurricane Deck Boat and the club’s private helicopter service with two on-site helipads.

The White House arranged for the reporters who travel with the president to stay at a hotel in Port St. Lucie, about a 20-minute drive away from Palm City. They were not expected to see the president again until it’s time for the return trip home.

Obama’s longtime friend from Chicago, Eric Whitaker, joined him aboard Air Force One for the trip from Chicago to Florida. The two have played golf together in the past. Another regular member of Obama’s golf foursomes is White House trip director Marvin Nicholson, who also traveled with the president on Friday.

America’s presidents have been taking solo vacations for decades, according to Larry Knutson, a former White House reporter for The Associated Press who wrote a book about presidents and their vacations.

Although Bess and Margaret Truman visited him there just a couple of times, President Harry Truman vacationed most often by himself in tropical Key West, Fla. Many aides, all men, accompanied him.

Truman enjoyed the male companionship and his wife may have stayed away out of a desire to not interrupt his cherished late afternoon and evening games of poker. Truman vacationed in Key West 11 times between November 1946 and March 1952; his wife and daughter joined him for the first time in November 1948, after his surprise victory in that year’s election campaign.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt often visited his cottage at Warm Springs, Ga., alone; wife, Eleanor, didn’t much care for the place or the Southern atmosphere. Roosevelt was at Warm Springs, on his own, when he died in April 1945.

He also often traveled solo to his home in Hyde Park, N.Y., during World War II. The first lady often did not accompany Roosevelt on his wartime visits to Shangri-La, which is now the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, or when he traveled on the presidential yacht or on Navy warships.

In 1997, President Bill Clinton was in Florida for fundraising and to play in a golf tournament when he stumbled on steps at the home of golf pro Greg Norman and needed surgery to repair a torn tendon in his right knee. He was treated at a hospital in West Palm Beach before being flown to Washington for the operation.

Obama’s stay at the Floridian isn’t his first vacation without his wife and daughters.

In 2010, Obama was left alone in Washington as his 49th birthday approached. The first lady had taken Sasha with her to Spain for a vacation with friends, and Malia was away at camp.

Rather than stay in the White House by himself, he fled, with family dog Bo, home to Chicago for an intimate dinner with friends there that included Oprah Winfrey, Whitaker and White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, a fellow Chicagoan.

Obama took the oath of office officially for a second term shortly before noon at a low-key ceremony in the White House Blue Room, as required by the constitution.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts swore him in at the official ceremony, and will do it again at a ceremonial swearing-in on Monday. Four years ago, the two flubbed the 35-word oath at the inauguration ceremony.

The private ceremony was witnessed by the first family and a press poll, and broadcast by cable networks. First Lady Michelle Obama held the bible of her family for the president to swear in.

“Good job, Daddy,” said Obama’s daughter Sasha after the ceremony.

“I did it,” replied Obama.

Earlier in the morning, Vice President Joe Biden was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor at a private ceremony at the Naval Observatory, the vice presidential residence.

According to the VP’s office, Biden personally selected Sotomayor, who was the first Hispanic and fourth female judge to administer an oath of office for presidents and vice presidents.

After Biden’s swearing-in, Obama and Biden participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

As the date fell on a Sunday, both Obama and Biden will be sworn in again at a public inauguration ceremony Monday. Obama will place his hand on two Bibles, one owned by President Lincoln, the other by Dr. Martin Luther King, and recite the presidential oath. He will also deliver his inaugural address at the ceremonial swearing-in.

This marks the seventh time that a U.S. president has taken the oath ceremonially on Monday following an Inauguration Day that fell on a Sunday, and also the second time the ceremonial swearing- in falls on the Martin Luther King Day.

An estimated 800,000 people may attend Monday’s inauguration and parade, almost half of the crowd who flooded to the capital four years ago to watch the historic inauguration of the first African American President.

The three-day inauguration festivities kicked off Saturday. With Saturday dubbed as the National Day of Service, the first family began with a service event at a Washington D.C. area elementary school, joining forces with about 500 volunteers to complete a school makeover. The first lady also hosted a star- stubbed Kids’ Inaugural Concert that honors the country’s military families.