President Barack Obama was at the White House during the incident.

An individual threw the object over the north fence of the complex, Secret Service spokesman Shawn Holtzclaw said in an emailed statement.

That person was apprehended without incident, he said.

“All protective sweeps of the metal object were met with negative results. The White House has returned to normal operations,” Holtzclaw said.

The north side of the White House was placed on a security lockdown for a couple of hours after the incident, which took place on the U.S. Memorial Day holiday.

Reporters were not allowed to leave the White House compound through its northwest gate and flashing lights from emergency responders could be seen nearby.

Obama had visited Arlington National Cemetery earlier in the day as part of the annual commemoration for armed services members.

 (Reporting by Jeff Mason and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama and new Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday ended a frosty period in bilateral ties by agreeing to tackle climate change and strive to settle a long-lasting trade dispute over Canadian softwood lumber exports.

The neighboring countries are traditionally close but relations had soured under former prime minister Stephen Harper, who hectored the White House in a failed bid to push through U.S. approval for the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Obama and Trudeau, whose Liberals came to power last November promising better cooperation with Washington, pledged joint steps to fight global warming, including cutting methane emissions from oil and gas operations.

The countries committed to cutting emissions of methane by 40 to 45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025, to take steps to fight climate change in the Arctic, and to speed development of green technologies.

They also told officials to look for solutions to a lengthy dispute over exports of Canadian softwood lumber, as well as promising to make it easier for goods and people to cross the long shared border.

“I am grateful that I have him as a partner … When it comes to the central challenges that we face, our two nations are more closely aligned than ever,” Obama told a news conference after talks with Trudeau.

“The President and I agree on many things including, of paramount importance, the direction we want to take our countries in to ensure a clean and prosperous future,” said Trudeau.

In another sign of friendlier bilateral ties, Trudeau invited Obama to address the Canadian Parliament this year.

Americans have been captivated by the photogenic Trudeau, 44, whose father, Pierre Trudeau, was prime minister from 1968 through 1979, and again from 1980 to 1984.

His visit will be capped by a state dinner on Thursday but that could be overshadowed by the race to succeed Obama in November’s presidential election. Candidates for the Republican nomination will hold a debate on Thursday night.

Trudeau declined to say what he would do in case the next president was Donald Trump, who has mused about tearing up the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“The friendship between our two countries goes far beyond any two individuals or any ideologies,” he said.

“I have tremendous confidence in the American people, and look forward to working with whomever they choose to send to this White House later this year.”

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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Near the end of a Michigan debate that featured sharp clashes over trade and the auto industry bailout, as well as a lengthy discussion of religion, Clinton and Sanders both said they could not wait to face the brash billionaire in the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

“I think Donald Trump’s bigotry, his bullying, his bluster, are not going to wear well on the American people,” Clinton said. “We have to end the divisiveness, we have to unify the country.”

Sanders said he would “love” to run against Trump and noted many opinion polls showed him faring better against him than Clinton did. He and Clinton urged voters to compare the substance of their debate with the Republican versions, which last week featured name-calling and Trump defending his penis size.

“We are, if elected president, going to invest a lot of money in mental health,” Sanders said, then cracked a joke. “And when you watch these Republican debates, you know why we need to invest in mental health.”

Trump frequently says he will beat either Clinton or Sanders. “I am the one person that she does not want to run against,” he said of Clinton on Saturday.

The debate in Flint, which is suffering a water contamination and public health crisis, came as Sanders has struggled to slow Clinton’s march to the presidential nomination. Sanders picked up some good news on Sunday with a projected win in Maine’s caucus.

Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state and first lady, has spoken on the campaign trail of the need for more love and kindness, a contrast to Trump’s rhetoric about his plans to deport illegal immigrants and temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country.

“I don’t intend to get into the gutter with whoever they nominate, but instead to lift our sights,” Clinton said in the debate.

Describing herself as a “praying person,” she said it was hard to imagine living under the pressure of the White House “without being able to fall back on prayer and on my faith.”

Sanders, asked if he was deliberately keeping his Jewish faith in the background on the campaign trail, said his father’s family was wiped out in the Holocaust. He described going shopping with his mother as a boy in Brooklyn, New York, and seeing people with numbers on their arms from Nazi concentration camps.

“I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being,” Sanders said.

‘DISASTROUS’ TRADE POLICIES

Earlier, the two candidates exchanged angry jabs over trade, with Sanders accusing Clinton of backing “disastrous” trade policies that moved manufacturing jobs out of cities like Flint and Detroit and shifted them overseas.

But Clinton said Sanders’ opposition to the 2009 auto bailout, a crucial issue in a state that is home to the U.S. auto industry, would have cost millions of jobs. The bailout, which Clinton supported, passed Congress and has been credited with helping save the U.S. industry.

Sanders, 74 a U.S. senator from Vermont and democratic socialist, also questioned the sincerity of Clinton’s conversion to opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed 12-nation Pacific Rim trade deal.

The two contenders cut each other off on several occasions, a rare occurrence in a race that has been much more polite than the raucous Republican presidential campaign.

“Excuse me, I’m talking,” Sanders said to Clinton when she tried to interrupt. “If you’re going to talk, tell the whole story,” Clinton responded.

Sanders pressed his charge that Clinton was too close to Wall Street and demanded again that she release the transcript of paid speeches she has given to Wall Street firms. Clinton said she would release them when all the candidates, including Republicans, also release transcripts of similar talks.

‘THERE AIN’T NOTHING!’

Throwing up his hands, Sanders said: “I’ll release it. Here it is. There ain’t nothing! I don’t give speeches to Wall Street!”

The debate was held in Flint to highlight the city’s water contamination crisis, and both candidates expressed outrage at Flint’s plight and demanded Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s resignation.

The crisis in Flint, a predominantly black city of 100,000, was triggered when an emergency city manager installed by Snyder switched the city’s water supply to the nearby Flint River from Lake Michigan to save money.

The change corroded Flint’s aging pipes and released lead and other toxins into the water supply, exposing thousands of residents including children to high lead levels that have sparked serious health problems.

(Additional reporting by Alana Wise, Luciana Lopez and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Caren Bohan and Peter Cooney)

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NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. (Reuters) – A plan to block Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump struggled to gain traction on Friday as rival candidates rejected it, while Democrats revelled in the chaos they hoped would boost their chances of keeping the White House.

The country’s top elected Republican, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, said he was not interested in an effort to draft him into the White House race.

And U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative presidential hopeful, ruled out a deal to pick a compromise Republican candidate at the party’s July convention, which senior party figures see as their best chance to stop the unpredictable billionaire.

“The D.C. power brokers will drop someone in who is exactly to the liking of the establishment. If that will happen we will have a manifold revolt in this country,” Cruz said at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington.

“You want to beat Donald Trump, you beat Donald Trump with the voters,” he said.

Party leaders worry Trump would not be able to beat Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the election, but time is running out after he won most of the states that voted in this week’s Super Tuesday.

Senior Republicans also fear Trump’s plans to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and ban Muslims from entering the United States will turn off voters in November and upset U.S. allies.

Others note his past support for liberal policies and question whether he has any agenda other than advancing himself.

“I don’t think he actually carries the conservative mantle. He’s a little too crass for me,” said Michele Minter, a San Diego executive assistant who was attending CPAC.

Trump, a former reality TV star, often plays by his own set of rules. He cancelled plans to speak at CPAC, normally an essential stop for ambitious Republicans, and will instead attend a rally in Kansas.

The real estate magnate, who is drawing support from many blue-collar Republicans concerned about illegal immigration and stagnant wages, has won most Republican nominating contests and leads in many polls for the primary contests still to come.

“I’m not a normal Republican,” he said to huge cheers at a rally in Warren, Michigan.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, the only candidate to ever challenge Trump’s months-long lead in opinion polls, officially ended his White House bid.

“There are a lot of people who love me, they just won’t vote for me,” Carson said in a speech at CPAC, held in National Harbor, Maryland.

RYAN ‘NOT INTERESTED’

A new group called the Committee to Draft Speaker Ryan filed papers with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday, seeking to raise money to push Ryan as a Republican alternative.

Ryan, a budget wonk who was the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2012, is seen by many in the party as a unifier after he took the speaker’s job last year to unite establishment Republican lawmakers and conservative upstarts in the House.

“He is flattered, but not interested,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in an email on Friday.

As Trump cements his front-runner status, senior party figures hope to deny him enough delegates to clinch the nomination, which would give them the chance to choose a compromise candidate at their convention in Cleveland.

The last time that happened at a Republican convention was  in 1948 when Thomas Dewey was nominated.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said there was an 85 to 90 percent chance that the party will not face that scenario this year.

Mitt Romney and John McCain, the party’s last two presidential nominees, called on Republicans to halt Trump’s rise by backing whichever candidate was strongest in their state, a form of tactical voting.

Few elected officials are rallying behind the “Dump Trump” banner. The party’s 31 state governors, for example, are not lining up behind an alternative. Only five have endorsed Florida Senator Marco Rubio and one has backed Cruz, in a sharp contrast to previous years when governors overwhelmingly endorsed the party’s eventual nominee.

Rubio has only one state so far and is gearing up for what could be a make-or-break contest in his home state on March 15. Cruz said Saturday he planned to open 10 campaign offices there, in what could be an effort to force the rival senator out of the race.

Trump is expected to extend his lead on Saturday, when a total of 155 delegates are at stake in Kansas, Louisiana, Maine and Kentucky.

Democrats were happy to let Republicans fight amongst themselves. “We can sit back and let them light their own dumpster fire and wait until they’re finished,” said Eddie Vale, spokesman for American Bridge, a Clinton-allied group which collects negative research on Republican candidates.

“They’re giving us so much great video footage that we could run ads between now and November of nothing but Republicans attacking Trump,” Vale told Reuters.

Nationally, Trump has the support of 41 percent of Republican voters, compared to 19 percent who back Cruz and 16 percent who back Rubio, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling data.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Emily Stephenson, Eric Beech, and Ginger Gibson; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Bill Trott and Alistair Bell)

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