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By Julia Edwards and Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House is considering small steps in the near term to ease the threat of deportation for some undocumented immigrants, but advocates in communication with the administration expect President Barack Obama to make bigger changes later in the year. With legislation to reform U.S. immigration policy stalled in Congress, Obama has come under increasing pressure from the immigrant community to take executive action to curb the rate of deportation that has reached a record level under his presidency. In the coming weeks, an Obama-ordered review of deportation enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security is expected to conclude that certain steps should be taken to ensure that some immigrants who have not committed serious crimes should be allowed to remain in the United States, according to several sources familiar with the review.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The suspension of peace talks between Israel and Palestinians on Thursday delivered the harshest blow yet to Secretary of State John Kerry's ambitious, if perhaps quixotic, hope of ending the decades-long impasse at the cost of focusing on other crises around the world. But Kerry refused to accept defeat, saying "we will never give up our hope or our commitment for the possibilities" of Mideast peace.