MiamiHerald.com

HOTEL COPIES: A copy of The Miami Herald will bedelivered to your room. A credit of US$0.25 will beposted to your account if delivery is declined. INTERNATIONAL EDITION MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

108TH YEAR I ©2011 THE MIAMI HERALD

At U.N., Obama faces tough Mideast moment

INDEXNEWS EXTRA ............3ATHE AMERICAS ...........4AOPINION ........................7A COMICS & PUZZLES ...6B

9 KILLED AS PLANE CRASHES INTO STANDS AT NEVADA AIR SHOW, 5A

U.S. DRONE CRASHES IN PAKISTAN; TALIBAN GRABS DEBRIS, 6A

MORTGAGE DEBACLE COSTS U.S. BANKS $66 BILLION,BUSINESS FRONT

RODGERS AND PACKERS HOLD OFF CAM NEWTON,SPORTS FRONT

BY BEN FELLER Associated Press

WASHINGTON — U.S. Presi-dent Barack Obama once envi-sioned this would be the moment when world leaders would gather to herald a new state of Palestine.

What waits for him instead at the United Nations this week is closer to a diplomatic nightmare that may isolate the United States, anger Congress, deepen the Mid-east divide and cloud the rest of his agenda.

Fed up with failed talks with Israel, the Palestinians plan to ap-peal directly to the United Nations for statehood. Obama is adamant that that approach will undermine the chances of a Palestinian state by ignoring the unresolved issues with Israel. So now he is in the un-enviable spot of opposing an effort whose goals he supports and he’s nearly standing alone in doing so.

From the U.S. perspective, the options are not good.

Should the Palestinians press their case for full U.N. member-

ship to the Security Council, as seems likely, the United States will veto it.

If the Palestinians go before the General Assembly for a lesser but still elevated form of member rec-ognition, the United States lacks a veto there and will simply vote against it, placing it fi rmly in the minority and perhaps infl aming the Arab world.

U.S. diplomats were making a furious effort to sway the Palestin-ians to drop their bid and restart talks with Israel over borders and security. But as the time grew short ahead of Obama’s scheduled arrival in New York on Monday, his administration already was trying to look beyond any U.N. ac-tion in hopes of infl uencing what-ever comes next.

“This is lose, lose, lose,” said Andrew Exum, a senior fellow with the Center for a New Ameri-can Security. “A resolution before the U.N. Security Council will hurt

TURN TO OBAMA, 2A•

U.S. increases frequency of Yemen drone strikesBY KAREN DEYOUNG Washington Post Service

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has signifi cantly increased the frequency of drone strikes and other air attacks against the al Qaeda affi liate in Yemen in recent months amid rising concern about political collapse there.

Some of the strikes, carried out by the military’s Joint Special Op-erations Command, have been fo-cused in the southern part of the country, where insurgent forces have for the fi rst time conquered and held territory as the Yemeni government continues to strug-gle against escalating opposition to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule.

Unlike in Pakistan, where the CIA has presidential authoriza-tion to launch drone strikes at will, each U.S. attack in Yemen, as well as those being conducted in nearby Somalia, most recently on Thursday near the southern port city of Kismayo, requires White House approval, senior adminis-tration offi cials said.

The offi cials, who were not au-thorized to discuss the matter on the record, said intended targets must be drawn from an approved

list of key members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula deemed by U.S. intelligence offi cials to be in-volved in planning attacks against the West. White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan last week put their number at “a couple of dozen, maybe.”

Although several unconfi rmed strikes each week have been re-ported by local media in Yemen and Somalia, the administration has made no public acknowledgment of the escalated campaign, and of-fi cials who discussed the increase declined to provide numbers.

The heightened air activ-ity coincides with the administra-tion’s determination this year that AQAP, as the Yemen-based group is known, poses a more signifi cant threat to the United States than the core al Qaeda group based in Paki-stan. The administration has also concluded that AQAP has recruit-ed at least a portion of the main insurgent group in Somalia, al Sha-bab, to its anti-Western cause.

From its initial months in offi ce, the administration has debated whether to extend the air attacks

TURN TO YEMEN, 2A• n Yemeni forces kill 12 at mass protest, 3A

A BIG EYEFOR THE SKY

BY GIDEON LONG Special to The Miami Herald

THE PARANAL OBSERVA-TORY, Chile — For years, the clear skies above the Atacama Desert have made northern Chile a paradise for astronomers, and the powerful telescopes here have captured some remarkable images from distant corners of the universe.

But now, engineers are work-ing on two massive projects that will make the current telescopes look like toys. Once fi nished, Chile will arguably be the best place in the world for stargazers.

“Chile really is a dream place for astronomy,” says Henri Bof-fi n, chief astronomer at Paranal, one of the country’s most impor-tant observatories. “If you want to do modern astronomy and you want to do it in the southern hemisphere, you have to do it in Chile.”

One of the two telescopes is being built at Paranal. When it is completed in 10 years, it will be the most powerful eye on the sky anywhere in the world.

The size of a football stadium, its main mirror will be 138 feet wide. That is four times bigger than the mirrors on any existing telescopes anywhere.

It is impossible to make a single curved, high-precision mirror of that size, so engineers in Europe will ship almost 1,000

small hexagonal mirrors to Chile. The mirrors will then be fi tted together like pieces in a gi-ant jigsaw puzzle.

Even basic construction work on the new telescope will be a challenge. Paranal is 8,530 feet up

TURN TO CHILE, 2A•

CHILE’S NEW TELESCOPES PUSH THE BOUNDARIES OF ASTRONOMY

PHOTOS COURTESY EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY

Workers checking a telescope at the Paranal Observatory. Below, a view of the observatory site in the Atacama Desert.

Obama to call for higher tax rate for millionairesBY JACKIE CALMES New York Times Service

WASHINGTON — U.S. Presi-dent Barack Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earn-ings as middle-income taxpay-ers, according to administration offi cials.

With a special joint congressio-nal committee just starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Obama’s effort to raise the po-litical pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future savings from Medicare and Medicaid.

Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his pro-posal the Buffett Rule, in a ref-erence to Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who has com-plained repeatedly that the rich-

est U.S. citizens generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because invest-ment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.

Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is un-clear how much revenue his plan would raise.

Obama’s proposal is certain to draw opposition from Repub-licans, who have staunchly op-posed raising taxes on the affl u-ent because, they say, it would discourage investment.

It could also invite scrutiny from some economists who have disputed Buffett’s assertion that the megarich pay a lower tax rate overall. Buffett’s critics say many of the rich actually make more from wages than from investments.

The Obama proposal has little chance of becoming law unless Republican lawmakers bend.

TURN TO TAXES, 2A•

Brazil judge’s murder shows vigilante power BY JULIANA BARBASSA Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO — Judge Patri-cia Acioli was known for wielding a “heavy hammer,” especially against rogue police offi cers who have formed vigilante gangs. She had put more than 60 offi cers behind bars, most of them for murder.

The Rio de Janeiro state judge paid for that fearlessness: Acioli was shot to death in front of her house last month. And all of the 21 bullets that hit her came from a lot issued to police, including some in Sao Goncalo, the city where she worked.

While violence and impunity

are common in Brazil, the brazen murder of Acioli was an especially heavy blow, a message of intimi-dation from the vigilante militias.

The slaying was “a wound to the lawful state, to democracy; the fi gure of the judge is a symbol of justice,” said Denise Frossard, a retired judge who presided over some of Rio’s fi rst cases against the militias in the 1990s. “If she is a judge and can be killed, how can a citizen feel secure enough to be a witness?”

Acioli’s death was the fi rst mur-der of a judge in the state’s history, though Frossard herself survived three assassination attempts and had eight security guards ensur-ing her safety while she was on the bench.

Violent militias have grown in power and scope in recent years, taking over poor communities formerly controlled by drug deal-ers and coercing residents to pay for illegal utility hookups, trans-portation, and security.

Their members include former and current police, fi refi ghters

TURN TO BRAZIL, 2A•

FELIPE DANA/AP

Mourners carry the coffin of Judge Patricia Acioli during her funeral in Niteroi, Brazil.

19PGA01.indd 119PGA01.indd 1 9/19/2011 5:00:45 AM9/19/2011 5:00:45 AM