Seattle philanthropist killed in avalanche on Washington mountain

The body of a locally well-known Seattle entrepreneur was found Friday after the man was reported missing when he didn’t return to a trailhead near a mountain outside the city.

Search and rescue officials found Doug Walker, 64, around 10:30 a.m. King County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement friends called authorities Thursday evening after Walker didn’t return to the trailhead near Granite Mountain, 45 miles east of Seattle.

About 60 search and rescue members searched for Walker through the night. A snow debris field indicated that he was caught in an avalanche, the sheriff’s office said.

The Seattle Times reported Walker was an REI board member, a founder of the Seattle Parks Foundation and also served on the Wilderness Society’s governing council. The also helped out with summer outdoor programs for city kids.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray issued statements of remembrance.

"Seattle has lost one of its most passionate and inspirational civic leaders in business, philanthropy and conservation," Murray said in a statement. "Doug's seemingly endless amount of energy and dedication to our region was infectious and inspired everyone around him to engage and help make a difference."

Jewell said Walker "was a champion of access to the outdoors for all people." The two had been friends since they began serving on REI's board in 1996. Walker met with White House senior staff just two weeks ago to discuss private philanthropic support for government programs to boost access for kids to the outdoors, she said.

Walker was described by officials as an experienced outdoorsman. He took many people into the mountains for the first time, and was with Jewell the first time she climbed Mount Rainier with her son, she told the Times.

Walker was one of the partners who founded software company Walker, Richer & Quinn in 1981. He was also a co-founder of Social Venture Partners.

Indian military base near Pakistan attacked by gunmen

Combatants infiltrated an Indian air force base near the border with Pakistan on Saturday and exchanged fire with security forces for hours, leaving at least four gunmen and two Indian troops dead, officials and news reports said.

Although it was unclear who staged the attack, it was being seen as a possible attempt to undo recent progress made in relations between rivals India and Pakistan, coming just a week after the first visit to Pakistan in 12 years by an Indian prime minister.

The attack at the Pathankot air force base began a couple of hours before dawn, and by late morning it appeared that the violence had ended with the killing of the gunmen by Indian forces. But just two hours later, fresh gunfire erupted, with an air force helicopter firing at an area of the base. Shots could also be heard from inside Pathankot, a major air force base located about 267 miles north of New Delhi.

Air force spokeswoman Rochelle D'Silva said troops were conducting combing operations of the entire base in order to be able to fully secure it. She added that the full number of casualties would be clear once the base was completely secured.

The defense ministry said there had been intelligence reports about a likely attack on military installations in Pathankot, and that the air force had been prepared to thwart any attackers.

"Due to the effective preparation and coordinated efforts by all the security agencies a group of terrorists were detected by the aerial surveillance platforms as soon as they entered the Air Force Station at Pathankot," the ministry said in a statement.

Despite the intelligence on a possible attack, at least two air force troops were killed in the gun battle, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Citing police, they also said at least four gunmen had been killed.

The attack began at around 3 a.m., when a group of gunmen entered the section of the base where the living quarters are located, the defense ministry said. The attackers, however, were unable to penetrate the area where fighter helicopters and other military equipment are kept, it said.

Police said they were investigating whether they had come from the Indian portion of Kashmir or from Pakistan. The Himalayan region of Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, but is claimed in its entirety by both.

Rebels routinely stage attacks in Indian-held Kashmir, where they've been fighting since 1989 for an independent Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training Kashmir's insurgents, a charge Islamabad denies, and the attack was viewed by many in India as an attempt to unravel recent progress in the country's relationship with its archrival.

The violence came just a week after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unannounced visit to Pakistan to meet with his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. The visit was seen as a potential sign of thawing relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. The two leaders also held an unscheduled meeting at the Paris climate change talks last month.

Ahead of Modi's visit to Pakistan, the national security advisers of both countries had met in Thailand. The foreign secretaries of both nations are scheduled to meet in Islamabad later this month.

In the past, the contentious issue of Kashmir has halted talks between the rivals.

"These kinds of attacks are nothing new and have generally been the outcome of the dispute of India and Pakistan over Kashmir," said Noor Ahmed Baba, a political scientist at Central University in Indian Kashmir's capital, Srinagar.

Baba said that there were elements in both countries that would like to see the peace process fizzle out, and that all sides must "exhibit political maturity and sagacity to defeat the vested interests."

Pathankot, in Punjab state, is on the highway that connects India's insurgency-wracked Jammu and Kashmir state with the rest of the country. It's also very close to India's border with Pakistan.

Pakistan's foreign ministry condemned the attack. "Building on the goodwill created during the recent high-level contacts between the two countries, Pakistan remains committed to partner with India as well as other countries in the region to completely eradicate the menace of terrorism afflicting our region," it said in a statement.

Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh told reporters that India wants peace with Pakistan, but "if there is any kind of terror attack on India, we will give it a fitting reply."

India's defense minister, national security adviser and the chiefs of the army, navy and air force met Saturday to discuss the situation.

In July, gunmen staged a similar attack at a police station and a moving bus near Gurdaspur, a border town in India's Punjab state. The three attackers then killed four policemen and three civilians before being shot dead by security forces.

NYC man pushes woman to safety before elevator crushes him

A 25-year-old man has been crushed to death on New Year's Eve by a falling elevator in New York City.

Police say the accident happened around midnight Thursday in an apartment building on Broome Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The victim was identified as Stephen Hewett-Brown, of the Bronx.

Witnesses tell the Daily News that the victim died after heroically shoving a woman out of harm's way.

Manuel Coronado tells the newspaper that Hewett-Brown "said `Happy New Year' and pushed her out."

A police spokesman says he has no information on the exact circumstances of Hewett-Brown's death.

Police say no criminality is suspected. The city Buildings Department is investigating the accident.

ISIL counterattacks target Iraqi troops in Ramadi

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has continued to launch a series of deadly attacks against Iraqi government forces on the edges of the western city of Ramadi, days after they were driven out of the city centre.

The latest attacks killed at least 11 members of the Iraqi security forces, sources told Al Jazeera on Saturday. 

Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Belawi told the Associated Press news agency that ISIL struck security forces with a series of car bombs in two areas on the city's outskirts.

Belawi said the troops repelled the attacks and did not lose territory.

Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, fell to ISIL in May, marking a major setback for US-backed Iraqi forces. Iraqi troops retook the city centre on Monday, but ISIL fighters are still holed up in parts of the city.

"The majority of these are outside downtown Ramadi to the north and east," Colonel Steve Warren, the Baghdad-based US coalition spokesman, said.

"We haven't seen ISIL mass enough combat power to move Iraq off their positions."

Iraqi officials said gains in Ramadi lay the groundwork for an eventual assault on Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, which fell to ISIL in June of 2014.

On Friday coalition planes launched five air strikes near Ramadi targeting ISIL tactical units, heavy weaponry and fighting positions.

Near Mosul, three air strikes destroyed an ISIL fighting position and a facility used to make car bombs, a coalition statement said Saturday.

Reaction to Rwandan President's Decisions to Run for Third Term

The United States is deeply disappointed that President Paul Kagame has announced his intention to run for a third term in office.

With this decision, President Kagame ignores an historic opportunity to reinforce and solidify the democratic institutions the Rwandan people have for more than twenty years labored so hard to establish.

The United States believes constitutional transitions of power are essential for strong democracies and that efforts by incumbents to change rules to stay in power weaken democratic institutions. We are particularly concerned by changes that favor one individual over the principle of democratic transitions.

As Rwanda moves toward local elections this year, presidential elections next year, and parliamentary elections in 2018, we call upon the Government of Rwanda to ensure and respect the rights of its citizens to exercise their freedom of expression, conscience, and peaceful assembly -- the hallmarks of true democracies.

The United States remains committed to supporting the free and full participation of the Rwandan people in the electoral processes ahead.

Israeli police searching for gunman who killed two in Tel Aviv

Israeli police are searching for a gunman who killed two people in an attack in Tel Aviv.

Spokeswoman Luba Samri says police remained on "heightened alert" Saturday. She says police and special forces searched for the shooter throughout the night.

The gunman opened fire outside a bar on a main street in Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon, killing two people and wounding at least three others before fleeing the scene.

The suspect has been identified as Nesha'at Milhem, a 29-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel from Arara, a town in central Israel. 

Local Arabic-language media reports said that Milhem, who did a stint in Israeli prison in 2006, was identified when his father called and informed police after seeing footage related to the incident on television. 

Israel's Channel 2 also noted that Milhem's cousin was shot and killed by a police officer in 2006.  

Speaking to Israel's army radio, the owner of the bar said that "a man with automatic weapon arrived and started shooting people all over the place".

On Friday night, Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told Israel's Channel 2 that the motive behind the attack is still unclear. "There is no definitive indication that this was a nationalist act," he said.

Over the past three months, Palestinians have protested against Israel's ongoing occupation, as well as incursions by right-wing settler groups into the Al-Aqsa mosque — the third holiest site for Muslims — in East Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health stated Friday that Israeli soldiers or settlers in 2015 shot and killed 179 Palestinians, including unarmed protesters, bystanders and alleged attackers. Of that total, 143 have been killed since Oct. 1, when tensions escalated sharply. 

Palestinian assailants have since Oct. 1 killed 23 Israelis, including soldiers and civilians. 

Chicago's historic property tax increase expected to burden working class

CHICAGO — Helen Alexander tried to make her new apartment building a little nicer when she moved in a year and a half ago.

The 56-year-old grandmother scrubbed the hallways and planted a garden outside the four-unit building in the Belmont Craigin neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side. She lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her 21-year-old granddaughter and shih tzu. A lifelong resident of Chicago, she can name the address of the house in which she was born.

“It’s scary,” Alexander said. “It’s scary when you not knowing where you’re going to be, where you’re going to go, and if you can stay in your apartment.”

Alexander pays $1,050 per month in rent, but that’s likely to increase. In October, Chicago’s city council passed a historic property tax increase — said to be the largest in the city’s modern history. Chicago landlords are likely to pass that cost onto tenants like Alexander, who is barely getting by as is.

That burden, activists say, is going to displace long term, lower-to-middle income residents in Chicago’s diverse communities, hastening gentrification of the city that has already been called the most segregated in the United States. Overall rent in the city jumped more than seven percent between 2013 and 2014.

Around half of all Chicago’s residents are renters, according to the Chicago Rehab Network. According to real estate website Zillow, Chicagoans put an average 21 percent of their income towards rent between 1985 and 2000. That percentage is now more than 30 percent. According to Census data, more than half of Chicago’s renters are paying more than a third of their incomes in rent — a rate that the federal government defines as unaffordable.

And that was before the new property tax.

“I don’t have no more money to give that landlord,” said Alexander, who lives on a fixed income and pays more than a third of her income on rent. “I’m just one of those scared as hell, just waiting to see what’s going to happen.”

On Oct. 28, Chicago’s city council passed Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s $7.8 billion budget in a 35-15 vote. The budget included a 72 percent property tax increase worth some $550 million, to be fully implemented by 2019, raising the overall tax bill 13 percent. For every $250,000 of a home’s appraised value, property owners will see a $500 increase in annual property taxes.

“It’s now to the point where working families cannot give anymore,” said Diane Limas of Communities United, a grassroots organization in Chicago. “Our backs are bending already, and I’m afraid that this tax increase on working families is the straw that’s going to break the camel’s back.”

For tenants, this means higher rent. Nearly one-third of the city’s rental stock is composed of two-to-four-flat buildings, according to the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University. A higher property tax will be spread between fewer tenants in buildings like these. In 2014, Communities United, a grassroots advocacy organization in northwest Chicago, analyzed census data and found that, in some neighborhoods, the property tax increase could translate to a rent hike upwards of $100 per month.

Data for 2015 is not yet complete, but according to rental service Zumperrents were still on the rise even before the property tax increase. Rent for one-bedroom units in Chicago have increased by more than 13 percent this year — though cities like Oakland and Phoenix saw higher increase of 19 and 15.4 percent, respectively.

“I don’t have secure income,” said Veronica Solis, who supports her family by selling corn flour in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood, where she’s lived for two decades. “And with the increase of property tax, it’s going to affect me even more.”

Solis pays $1,100 per month in rent, and said her friends and neighbors share her concerns of having their rents hiked to account for the property tax and a $9.50-per-month garbage fee that was also tacked on to the new budget.

“That’s not enough to pay the rent and bills,” Crescencia Delgado, a resident of Albany Park — a diverse neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side — said of her husband’s minimum wage job. “So how are we going to be able to afford that [property tax increase]?”

Helen Slade, an Albany Park property manager, said she will have to pass the property tax hike onto her tenants. The most conservative estimate she’s been able to come up with is an additional $20 per month.

“That’s a lot for some of our tenants,” She said. “It’s unavoidable. We’ll have to pass it on.”

Proponents of the increase say it is needed to stabilize the troubled finances of the country’s third largest city. The property tax hike will largely go toward backing up Chicago police and firefighter pensions. Earlier this year, Moody’s Investors Service knocked the city’s credit to junk statusbecause of its $20 billion pension deficit.

The city’s public school system is also facing a looming crisis. If state money doesn’t come through, Chicago Public School District officials are warning of possible layoffs amid discussion of school closures, consolidation, and cuts. Chicago Public Schools relies on the state for nearly $500 million.

“It’s one thing to raise our taxes, but our services aren’t getting better,” Limas said. “Our services are getting worse and worse. As working families are paying more and more, the services from our city are getting less and less.”

“All of this affects the children,” Solis said. “Everything goes hand in hand. And they’re the future of this country, and this is the problem.”

Limas and others have informally proposed alternatives to the tax increase, including a so-called “luxury tax” or raising taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents, who they say can afford to pay more.

“There’s ideas on the table,” Chicago Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa said at a Communities United press conference ahead of the city council’s October vote. “Whether it’s a TIF surplus, whether it’s the revenue ordinances the Progressive Caucus brought forth that are now being held in the Finance Committee — there’s more that we could do to mitigate this property tax increase before Oct. 28.”

He added: “Unfortunately, I don’t think that we have a partner in the mayor’s office that’s willing to do that.”

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement released by the Mayor’s office the day the budget was passed, Emanuel commended the city council for moving to stabilize the city’s troubled finances.

Back in Chicago’s northwestern neighborhoods, residents and property owners are trying to plan — or brace — for the next step.

“The diversity and the areas that look like this, they’ll be gone,” Limas said. “To lose that, it would be a catastrophe.”

“I think the desire to make money off real estate is the problem,” Slade said. “I think if we as a society saw housing as a protected right instead of a way to make money, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

Helen Alexander of Belmont Craigin said she’s waiting to hear from her landlord if her rent will go up.

“I’m just hurt, confused, and don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said.

“I just hope somebody will look out for us.”