PogoPlug Adds Cloud Storage, Customers Scratch Heads
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If even 10" tablets are too small for you, then this comparatively gargantuan 65" slate may suit your taste better. Developed by Istanbul-based company Ardic, what could be the world's largest Android tablet is a touchscreen high-definition LCD with support for basic gestures like scrolling and pinch and zoom. The LCD isn't a full-fledged tablet, however ? it still needs to be controlled by a dock-connected 10" Honeycomb slate made possible by modifying Android to support 1080p high-definition output.
Once connected to the smaller tablet, the 65" giant works like any other Honeycomb device out there, including the capacity to play games like Fruit Slice as the developer demonstrates on the video above. Right now, the display can only recognize two-finger input but Ardic plans to incorporate multi-touch input soon. While it still depends on another device to work, the gigantic tablet has features akin to other slates on the market like front and rear cameras, a microSD card slot, and even 3G and wifi internet connectivity.
As Engadget puts it, this isn't just another crazy prototype. The company is marketing the product as an alternative to touch-enabled interactive white boards called Smart Boards, and is already in talks with some customers from the education and business sectors.
[via Engadget]
This article was written by Mariella Moon and originally appeared on Tecca
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Space around Earth is anything but a barren vacuum. The area seethes with electric and magnetic fields that change constantly. Charged particles flow through, moving energy around, creating electric currents, and producing the aurora. Many of these particles stream in from the solar wind, starting out 93 million miles away on the surface of the sun. But some areas are dominated by particles of a more local source: Earth's atmosphere.
These are the particles being watched by FASTSAT's Miniature Imager for Neutral Ionospheric Atoms and Magnetospheric Electrons (MINI-ME) instrument. For one well-defined event, scientists have compared MINI-ME's observations to those from two other instruments. The event shows a detailed picture of this dynamic region, with a host of interrelated phenomena -- such as electric current and outflowing particles ? occurring together.
"We're seeing structures that are fairly consistent throughout a handful of instruments," says Michael Collier at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is the principal investigator for MINI-ME. "We put all of these observations together and it tells a story greater than the sum of its parts."
Unlike the hotter hydrogen coming from the sun, Earth's upper atmosphere generally supplies cooler oxygen ions that course outward along Earth's magnetic field lines. This "ion outflow" occurs continuously, but is especially strong during periods when there is more solar activity such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections that burst off the sun and move toward Earth. Such activity drives oxygen ions out of our planet's upper atmosphere, particularly in regions where aurora displays are strong.
"These ion outflow events are important because they help us understand the space weather environment around Earth," says Goddard's Doug Rowland who is the principal investigator for FASTSAT's Plasma Impedance Spectrum Analyzer, or PISA instrument. "The heavy ions flowing away from Earth can act as a brake, or damper, on incoming energy from the solar wind. The flow also indicates ways in which planets can lose their atmospheres ? something that happens slowly on Earth, but more quickly on smaller planets with weaker magnetic fields, like Mars."
MINI-ME has been successfully spotting such outflows since the instrument first began to collect data in the winter of 2010. The instrument counts ions as it moves through a part of Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere. This is the region where the particles gain enough speed and energy to overcome Earth's gravity, so it's an ideal place to study the first step in the outflow process.
Late on March 31, 2011, the FASTSAT spacecraft flew through an ion outflow with well-defined areas of increased fast moving, or "energetic," particles.
Simultaneous observations from PISA, which measures the density of material in the atmosphere, also showed that this was a highly structured auroral zone. In addition, the scientists turned to the National Science Foundation's Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment (AMPERE), a mission managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which measures current flow and magnetic features through a network of instruments placed on commercial satellites owned by Iridium Communications. AMPERE data showed current structures that were also consistent with what is expected for an auroral zone.
"This is just one event," says Collier. "But it helps confirm the idea that the current and ion-outflows are all connected. As we continue to go through the data, there will be many more events to follow. We'd like to be able to pin down the origin of all these mechanisms in the ionosphere."
Over time, data like this will allow scientists to determine where these ions come from, what drives them, and how their intensity varies with incoming solar activity.
###
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center: http://www.nasa.gov/goddard
Thanks to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115168/New_FASTSAT_discoveries_paint_detailed_view_of_region_near_Earth
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SINGAPORE (AP) ? Oil prices fell to below $99 a barrel Wednesday in Asia after a report showed U.S. crude supplies rose unexpectedly last week, suggesting demand may remain weak.
Benchmark crude for December delivery was down 80 cents at $98.57 a barrel at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.23 to settle at $99.37 in New York on Tuesday.
Brent crude for January delivery slumped 57 cents to $111.61 a barrel on the ICE Futures Exchange in London.
The American Petroleum Institute said late Tuesday that crude inventories added 1.3 million barrels last week while analysts surveyed by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos., had predicted a drop of 1.5 million barrels.
Inventories of gasoline fell 2.9 million barrels last week while distillates dropped 2.6 million barrels, the API said.
The Energy Department's Energy Information Administration reports its weekly supply data later Wednesday.
Crude has surged from $75 in early October amid growing investor optimism that the U.S. economy will avoid a recession this year. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that retail sales rose in October for the fifth straight month.
"Market momentum remains heavily skewed toward the upside," energy consultant Ritterbusch and Associates said in a report. "We still expect an advance into the $100-102 zone as early as Wednesday."
Traders will also be closely watching the latest figures on industrial production and housing this week.
In other Nymex trading, heating oil fell 0.7 cent to $3.16 per gallon and gasoline futures slid 0.7 cent to $2.59 per gallon. Natural gas dropped 0.2 cent at $3.40 per 1,000 cubic feet.
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NEWARK, N.J. ? Family members of five New Jersey teenagers who vanished on a summer night in 1978 sat riveted in a Newark courtroom Tuesday as the prosecution's star witness testified against the man accused of killing their relatives more than three decades ago.
Lee Evans is on trial for the murders of Melvin Pittman, Ernest Taylor, Alvin Turner, Randy Johnson and Michael McDowell, teens who were last seen on a busy Newark street near a park where they had played basketball on Aug. 20, 1978.
Prosecutors said that after some of the teens stole marijuana from Evans' home, he and his cousin, Philander Hampton, lured the boys, who sometimes helped Evans with odd jobs, to an abandoned house with the promise of hiring them. Instead, prosecutors said, Evans and Hampton herded the boys into a closet at gunpoint and set the house on fire.
Hampton pleaded guilty and was given a 10-year prison sentence in exchange for testifying against Evans. His testimony is considered central for the prosecution in a murder case in which the teen's bodies were never recovered and there is scant physical evidence.
The teens' disappearance had been one of New Jersey's longest-running cold cases until a pair of Newark detectives, on the cusp of retirement, decided to revisit the case and got a confession from Hampton in 2008.
Before that, it had been treated as a missing person's case and was never previously connected to the fire, which destroyed nearly all evidence and hampered the investigation from the outset, because the fire occurred before the five boys were reported missing, investigators said.
Taking the stand late Tuesday afternoon, the 54-year-old Hampton, wearing a baggy white shirt and tie, initially said Evans picked him up the night of Aug. 20, 1978, and told him he intended to murder the five teens. He said Evans gave him a handgun and told him to watch two of the teenagers while Evans rounded up the rest.
A few minutes later in his testimony, when asked by prosecutor Peter Guarino what Evans had told him about his intentions with the teenagers, Hampton said, "He mentioned he wanted to do something to them but didn't say what."
Hampton, who testified for less than 30 minutes on Tuesday, is expected to return to the stand on Wednesday.
Evans, 58, who is representing himself, has maintained his innocence. He has been getting assistance from attorney Bukie Adetula, who largely handled the proceedings Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, Adetula moved for a mistrial after arguing that the prosecution had coached a witness to introduce evidence that previously had been prohibited by State Superior Court Judge Patricia Costello, who is overseeing the case.
Adetula got into a heated exchange with Guarino, out of earshot of the jury, until Costello intervened.
"I'm old-school enough to prefer case law to drama," Costello said. The judge admonished Guarino for allowing a retired Newark police detective to testify about a witness statement that Costello had repeatedly warned him was inadmissible, but she denied the mistrial motion and ordered the case to resume.
Family members of the missing teenagers packed the courtroom Tuesday, reacting visibly to the moments of tension and drama, and listening intently as Hampton recounted what, if his testimony is to be believed, were likely the last moments of their loved one's lives.
Gerald McDowell, a cousin of Michael McDowell, said the teenager's mother and grandparents had passed away never giving up hope that the case would be solved.
He said his aunt, Janet Lawson, who was Michael's mother, was obsessed for decades with her son's disappearance and how the case had run cold.
"My aunt, on her deathbed, her last words were: `Has anyone heard from Michael?'" McDowell said.
___
Follow Samantha Henry at http://www.twitter.com/SamanthaHenry.
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People who can recall life?s events in detail have enlarged region linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder
Web edition : Sunday, November 13th, 2011
WASHINGTON ? Like the fictional detective Carrie Wells on the TV show Unforgettable, some real-life people can remember every day of their lives in detail. Those superrememberers have more bulk in certain parts of their brains, possibly explaining the remarkable ability to recall minutiae from decades ago, researchers said November 13 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
One brain region involved in such incredible recall has been implicated in obsessive-compulsive disorder, hinting that OCD and superior memory might have a common architecture in the brain.
Scientists have long studied people with memory deficits, but there haven?t been many studies on people with exceptional memories. ?Looking at memory from a deficit gave us a lot of insight into memory,? said study coauthor Aurora LePort of the University of California, Irvine. ?Looking at memory from a superior perspective gives us a new tool. It may just broaden our knowledge and ability to know what?s going on.?
In 2006, UC Irvine neuroscientist Larry Cahill and collaborators published a report on a woman who could remember detailed accounts of her life. Cahill and colleagues then began hearing from many people who claimed to have extraordinary memories. After sifting through and eliminating the impostors, the team was left with 11 people who scored off the charts for autobiographical memory. These people could effortlessly remember, for instance, what they were doing on November 2, 1989, and could also tell you that it was a Thursday. ?They?re not going home and saying ?OK, let me write down what I did today and memorize it,? ? LePort said.
Using brain scans, researchers found that people with supermemories had larger brain regions associated with memory, including the left temporoparietal junction and the left posterior insula. What?s more, a brain structure called the lentiform nucleus, a cone-shaped mass in the core of the brain, was bigger in people with exceptional memories. This brain area has been linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder.?
The subjects haven?t been clinically evaluated for OCD, but LePort says that there are some similarities. ?The ability to organize their memories by dates seems to relieve anxiety,? she says.
Researchers don?t know how the brain accomplishes this feat. These people could encode information more effectively, or have a better system of retrieving it, or both. ?Right now, we can see the brain areas that are coming out and speculate about what?s going on,? LePort says.
The team hopes to do further studies examining what?s happening in the brain as these people remember.
One tantalizing lead suggests that genetics might be involved. Though no genetic tests have been performed, some of the volunteers have reported that family members share extraordinary powers of recall, LePort says.
The result ?certainly pushes us beyond the boundaries of what we might normally think,? said memory expert Howard Eichenbaum of Boston University. ?It violates a standard principle that most of us have, which is that normal memory is pretty damn optimized.?
The volunteers are now keeping detailed diaries, so that the scientists can test whether particular kinds of memories are better suited to recollection. People might be better at remembering emotional memories, for instance.
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In Brooklyn, a battle pits Jew against Jew.
In the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, some residents dial 911 to report a crime in progress. Others call a Jew.
Skip to next paragraphThat's unusual enough. But the fact that Crown Heights boasts a Jewish security patrol ? complete with police cars, a riot van and fast fists ? is just the beginning of the remarkable story of one the most insular communities in the United States. Crown Heights actually has two Jewish security forces, the product of a cleft in a sect of Hasidic Judaism that's obsessed with the impending arrival of the messiah.
Tensions between the two security forces, each devoted to keeping the peace, degenerated into a violent clash in 2007. The bloody confrontation deepened Jew-vs.-Jew tensions and culminated in a bitter courtroom battle.
The whole complicated, convoluted and captivating saga unfolds in the smart and perceptive Among Righteous Men: A Tale of Vigilantes and Vindication in Hasidic Crown Heights. The book is by former Christian Science Monitor staff reporter Matthew Shaer, who embedded himself in a Brooklyn enclave united by men in beards and black hats but torn by religious conflict.
Crown Heights has a tangled history of racial tension and religious fervor featuring Lubavitcher Jews. They believe that the messiah will arrive soon or ? in the case of a splinter group inside the sect ? that the messiah already showed up in the person of a Brooklyn rabbi who died in 1994.
In the 1990s and earlier, the Lubavitcher Jews in Crown Heights and their local Jewish security force focused on violence from blacks as the neighborhood became "Exhibit A in the race wars," as Shaer puts it.
Over time, however, the threat of crime lessens. Meanwhile, the sect-within-a-sect grows in numbers after the death of the rabbi; believers say he's the messiah and will return from the dead.
Now, Shaer writes, "any spat in Crown Heights was at least as likely to be between two Jews as between a Jew and a black man."
In December 2007, a fight breaks out at a decrepit and overcrowded dormitory for young men who follow the late rabbi and want to become rabbis themselves.
The security force of the not-so-messianic Lubavitcher faction responds before the police. In moments, a small room is full of violence, some of it caught on camera. Soon, a half dozen alleged instigators ? the Shomrim Six, named after their security force ? would find themselves in an American legal system they consider to be almost a foreign land.
As Shaer explains, Lubavitcher Jews of all stripes isolate themselves into their 16-block territory of Crown Heights, the "only world that matters." Even though they make up only about a third of Crown Heights residents, they boast their own rabbinical court system, their own ambulances and security forces, and their own dress code.
Even the young are isolated. While they "browse the Web and watch TV and bicker with alacrity about the latest headlines," Schaer writes, the decades-old words of a local rabbi about the Crown Heights territory remain true: "eight blocks away was the end of the world."
Shaer, a stranger in this land, is a rare neutral observer in the detached world of Lubavitcher Jews and seems to have gained trust on both sides. His prose is carefully balanced and respectful but still peppered with gems of wordsmithery.
On one side are the "old-school" Lubavitcher Jews, who are appalled by their fellow Jews who seem even more filled with the spirit than they are. The super-sized fervor is "somehow disgraceful, even here, among the ritually fervent," Shaer writes. These traditional types consider their more messianic brethren to be dirty, smelly, pushy, standoffish. Shaer notes the irony of Jews ? ever the target of anti-Semetism ? slurring each other with such stereotypes, just as some secular Jews do to Hasidic Jews.
On the other side, the true believers, especially the young, fill their bedrooms with photographs of the late rabbi and spread the word about him through stickers and fliers.
Now both factions would find themselves facing each other in American court, just about the last place any self-respecting Lubavitcher Jew would want to go.
The community's perspective after the trial, Shaer writes, was something like this: "Were there not holy laws in place preventing one Jew from sullying the reputation of another Jew before a goyish judge?"
The reality was that the isolated enclave inside Crown Heights had sprung a devastating leak. And not, for once, because of outsiders.
The trial, full of many characters with many motives, is a bit hard to follow and almost entirely populated by men. (Readers may wish they could learn more about the women in the Lubavitcher community, who wear wigs, jewelry, and fashionable boots.)
Still, the journey from a vicious dormitory fight to a harshly lit courtroom is a fascinating one. In "Among Righteous Men," Schaer proves himself a worthy guide through a maelstrom in a world-within-a-world.
Randy Dotinga is a regular contributor to the Monitor's Books section.
Join the Monitor's book discussion on Facebook and Twitter.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/3JMJk1Ytg-o/Among-Righteous-Men
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New York ? The Roberts Court will rule on a complex, politically explosive issue in the middle of a heated presidential campaign. Here's what all the fuss is about
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The one-two punch of complicated health-care reform legislation and impenetrable legal arcana may seem better suited to a university law seminar than a "political and constitutional blockbuster." But the sharply divided Supreme Court practically guaranteed political fireworks by agreeing on Monday to decide the constitutionality of President Obama's signature Affordable Care Act right in the heat of the 2012 election. Here, a guide to the Supreme Court's "biggest case of the century":
What's the time frame for the ACA ruling?
The Supreme Court will hear 5 1/2 hours of oral arguments over two days in March or April 2012, and hand down its decision before the end of June ? right in the midst of the presidential campaign.?
How split is the court?
Right down the middle.?Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan are liberal, and widely expected to support Obama's law. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts are conservative. Swing voter Anthony Kennedy could go either way ? and is often the court's deciding vote.
What exactly is the court deciding on "ObamaCare"?
Four things, really. First, whether the law can even be challenged, or if the Anti-Injunction Act ? which prevents taxpayers from challenging a tax or penalty before it goes into effect ? pushes any legal challenge back to 2015, after the individual mandate (which requires Americans to obtain health insurance) kicks in. Then, the justices will decide if the individual mandate is constitutional. If the mandate is ruled unconstitutional, the court will decide whether that invalidates the entire Affordable Care Act. Finally, to the surprise of just about everybody, the justices agreed to decide if the law's expansion of Medicaid is an infringement on states' rights.
What have lower courts ruled?
Four federal appeals courts have weighed in on the law, with two ? in Washington, D.C., and Michigan ? upholding the ACA's individual mandate, the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit court striking it down (but arguing that the lack of a mandate didn't bring down the rest of the law), and the Virginia-based 4th Circuit citing the Anti-Injunction Act to dismiss the case. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the 11th Circuit appeal. None of the lower court judges have endorsed the Medicaid part of the case.
What's the Medicaid issue about?
The ACA extends Medicaid ? a state-administered health care program largely paid for with federal funds ? to include low-income adults.?Republican officials in 26 states argue that that?amounts to federal coercion, since states that fail to comply will lose all their Medicaid funding. Since no lower court judge bought that argument, it's a real stunner the Supreme Court took up the issue. Well, it's probably out of courtesy to the 26 states, says Ilya Shapiro at?Cato @ Liberty. But "as a practical matter, this could be a bigger deal than the individual mandate." Congress attaches "plenty of strings to the grants it gives states," and if the justices side with the 26 states, it could cripple Congress' future ability to tie the money it doles out to policy issues.
What are the arguments for striking the law down?
The central question with the individual mandate is whether the Constitution's Commerce Clause allows Congress to regulate not just interstate economic activity, but also what opponents call economic "inactivity" ? in this case,?not?buying health insurance. Does punishing Americans for not purchasing health insurance lie outside Congress' power "to regulate commerce"? Opponents say the ACA is a massive overreach of that constitutional authority.
And for upholding it?
The "key flaw" in the opponents' case is the "failure to recognize that literally everyone at some point will use the health care system," so "everyone is already making an 'affirmative' active economic choice to purchase health insurance or to self-insure," says Erwin Chemerinsky in the Los Angeles Times. Unless the conservative justices indulge in partisan politics, "this should be an easy case to predict ? the law is clearly constitutional." It's also a good first step to "reduce medical costs and provide health insurance to all Americans," says the San Jose Mercury News in an editorial. Besides, "the most recent polls indicate a majority of Americans now support moving forward with the reforms."
Any guesses on how the justices will rule?
There's no consensus among court-watchers. ACA opponents should be cheered by the "whopping 5.5 hours of oral argument," instead of the typical one hour,?says Orin Kerr at?The Volokh Conspiracy. Clearly, at least some justices are taking the challenges very seriously. "Kennedy will be the decider," says Harvard's Noah Feldman at?Bloomberg, and he'll probably be persuaded that it's best to kick the issue down the road, or even uphold the law. "You don't need a law degree to know how the Supreme Court is going to vote, says Jeffrey Toobin at?The New Yorker, "just know which way the wind is blowing." If "Obama looks like a lame duck" when the court decides the case, Kennedy will be more likely to undo the president's signature issue. If Obama "looks like a winner," "ObamaCare" will probably win, too.
Sources: Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, SCOTUSblog, Slate, Cato, CNN, New Yorker, San Jose Mercury News, Bloomberg View, Los Angeles Times, Volokh Conspiracy
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KAPOLEI, Hawaii ? President Barack Obama on Sunday tied the hopes of a faster American economic recovery to the booming Pacific Rim region, saying "we're not going to be able to put our folks back to work" unless the Asia-Pacific region is successful as an engine for the world.
"We consider it a top priority," Obama said of the region where his administration is pouring in time and political capital to expand exports and business ties.
The president spoke as he dove into a day of summit diplomacy, proudly using his home state of Hawaii as the American foothold to the Pacific. He gathered with leaders of 20 other nations of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, whose nations span from Chile to China and account for roughly half the world's trade and economic output.
In the midst of a hard re-election bid, Obama kept his message on jobs, even as he privately lobbied for help on containing the Iranian nuclear threat.
He was to cap the summit with a solo news conference in which topics on and off his scripted agenda were likely to emerge.
Born in Hawaii, Obama reveled in having the world stage on his home turf, while back east the Republicans seeking to oust him from the White House assailed his foreign policy record.
Obama used his moment to signal to business executives and Asian leaders that the United States has shifted from a post-9/11 war focus to re-engagement all across the Pacific.
"We represent close to 3 billion people, from different continents and cultures," Obama told his APEC partners on Saturday, ahead of some luau entertainment. "Our citizens have sent us here with a common task: to bring our economies closer together, to cooperate, to create jobs and prosperity that our people deserve so that they can provide for their families."
The president is on a 9-day venture away from Washington's daily political gridlock. He will visit Australia and Indonesia before returning to the White House on Nov. 20.
On Saturday, largely a day of sideline meetings here, Obama prodded the skeptical leaders of Russia and China for support in dialing back Iran's nuclear ambitions, but without winning endorsement from either man. Neither Russian President Dmitry Medvedev nor Chinese President Hu Jintao publicly echoed Obama's push for solidarity over Iran.
Obama did announce the broad outlines of an agreement to create a transpacific trade zone encompassing the United States and eight other nations before going into meetings with Hu and Medvedev where he raised a new report from the U.N. atomic agency. The report asserted in the strongest terms to date that Iran is conducting secret work to develop nuclear arms.
Russia and China remain a roadblock to the United States in its push to tighten international sanctions on Iran. Both are veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council and have shown no sign the new report will change their stand.
Alongside Medvedev, Obama said the two "reaffirmed our intention to work to shape a common response" on Iran.
Shortly after, Obama joined Hu, in a run of back-to-back diplomacy with the heads of two countries that have complicated and at times divisive relations with the United States, occasional partners in joint international endeavors, but also frequent rivals or adversaries on more difficult issues, especially those with strategic implications.
Obama said that he and the Chinese leader want to ensure that Iran abides by "international rules and norms."
Obama's comments were broad enough to portray a united front without yielding any clear indication of progress.
Medvedev, for his part, was largely silent on Iran during his remarks, merely acknowledging that the subject was discussed. Hu did not mention Iran at all.
White House aides insisted later that Russia and China remain unified with the United States and other allies in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and that Obama, Hu and Medvedev had agreed to work on the next steps. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said the new allegations about Iran's programs demand an international response.
"I think the Russians and the Chinese understand that," he said. "We're going to be working with them to formulate that response."
As the president held forth on the world stage, Republicans vying to compete against Obama for the presidency unleashed withering criticism in a debate in South Carolina. It was a rare moment in which foreign policy garnered attention in a campaign dominated by the flagging U.S. economy.
"If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon," said Romney, a former Massachusetts governor.
Iran has insisted its nuclear work is in the peaceful pursuit of energy and research, not weaponry.
More broadly, Obama is seeking while in Hawaii to position the United States as a key player among economies that already account for 44 percent of world trade, a figure the administration believes will grow.
For businesses, Obama said, "this is where the action's going to be."
On the Pacific trade pact, Obama said details must still be worked out, but said the goal was to complete the deal by next year.
The eight countries joining the U.S. in the zone would be Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Obama also spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda about Japan's interest in joining the trade bloc.
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