It is clear that the planet is in deep trouble, from war to global warming, from disease or just the threat of disease to the growing economic squeeze on the mass of humanity. Our leaders try to keep us in a state of fear in order to convince us that we need them to protect us. But they are the real enemy of people of conscience everywhere. What can you do about it?

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A journalist who chronicled Russian military abuses against civilians in Chechnya, garnering awards and accolades from around the world, was found shot to death Saturday in her apartment building. Prosecutors suspect her killing could be connected to her investigative reporting.

Anna Politkovskaya, 48, was found dead in an elevator in the building in central Moscow, police, prosecutors and a colleague said.

Prosecutors have opened a murder investigation, said Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman for the Moscow prosecutor's office. Investigators suspect the killing could be linked to her work, Vyacheslav Rosinsky, Moscow's first deputy prosecutor, said on state-run Rossiya television.

Rosinsky said a pistol and bullets were found at the site of the crime. The RIA-Novosti news agency, citing police officials, reported that Politkovskaya was shot twice, the second time in the head.

The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that work was under way on a composite sketch of the attacker based on footage recorded by a security camera at the building. The assailant, believed to have acted alone, wore black.

What changes has the shift from communism to capitalism brought for the ordinary Pole? Has life improved? What are the benefits of western-style democracy? The editors of Signs of the Times discuss these questions with Oliwer, a man from Poland who has also travelled extensively in the former communist countries.

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Dear President Samuelson,

As the founder and co-chair of Scholars for 9/11 Truth (st911.org), I want to write in support of Steven Jones, whom I invited to become my co-chair when I founded Scholars in December 2005. In the brief span of time since, the society has made a tremendous impact with the public relative to 9/11. We are dedicated to exposing falsehoods and revealing truths and have more than 300 members divided into four categories, including civil engineers, mechanical engineers, aeronautical engineers, pilots, and other experts.

A little quiz for the weekend to test how well you have been paying attention to the evolution of world politics over the past few years:

As you are all well aware, the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants to destroy all Jews and the Jewish state with them. Like all good anti-Semites, he loathes Jews simply because they are Jews, and breathlessly awaits the day when Iran has the capacity to implement the 'final solution', once and for all. Or so you have been led to believe by the US, Israeli and British governments...

CARACAS- Venezuela's state security agencies have detected plans of a destabilization process in the country to be set in motion if opposition presidential candidate Manuel Rosales remains without a prayer to win the December 3 elections.

The revelation came in a commentary in the Vea newspaper, and also assures that extra measures have been taken to protect the life of President Hugo Chavez.

"A new element has been added: a possible connection with the sophisticated Israeli secret service, Mossad, capable of doing absolutely anything," assured the journalist.

Chavez warned Saturday that US President George W. Bush had ordered his assassination after the Venezuelan president's speech at the UN General Assembly last Wednesday. In his address, Chavez dubbed Bush as the "devil."

BERLIN -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has told the media that Syrian people "want to make peace with Israel", instead of striving to "wipe the Jewish nation off the map."

In an interview with the weekly Der Spiegel magazine released on Monday, Assad said that Syria welcomed the U.S. intervention in the Middle East, but Washington must "listen to" the aspirations of the people in the region.

A Jewish rabbi living in the West Bank has called on the Israeli government to use their troops to kill all Palestinian males more than 13 years old in a bid to end Palestinian presence on this earth.

Extremist rabbi Yousef Falay, who dwells at the Yitzhar settlement on illegally seized Palestinian land in the northern part of the West Bank, wrote an article in a Zionist magazine under the title "Ways of War", in which he called for the killing of all Palestinian males refusing to flee their country, describing his idea as the practical way to ensure the non-existence of the Palestinian race.

Tactical nuclear weapons would be required to penetrate the defenses Iran has constructed around its nuclear facilities, according to Col. (res.) Shlomo Mofaz, an international consultant on terrorism and intelligence and a research fellow at the Institute of Counterterrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.

Mofaz argued that any preemptive action - not necessarily launched by Israel - against Iran's nuclear facilities would need to employ tactical nuclear weapons.

"The Iranians have invested a lot of money to hide their weapons and infrastructure underground. The most sensitive items are below the surface," he said.

"American experts have said they are not sure that conventional weapons would be able to infiltrate these sites," he said. "Based on information from public sources, any attack should use tactical nuclear weapons."

As reported in Time magazine on Monday, a recent Pentagon report outlining US military options to the Iranian threat mentions the difficulty of locating all targets. It also states that Iran's reinforced facilities constitute a strategic challenge to any military action. The report suggests that repeated air strikes using laser and satellite guided missiles would be necessary.

Mofaz added that the Iranians have studied US and Israeli techniques for destroying infrastructure and weapons stores, and therefore have built these bunkers as a response.

As the UN Security Council begins the process of bringing potential sanctions against Iran to a vote, Mofaz stressed that the Iranian strategy in relation to the UN was one of foot-dragging, an attempt to buy time while the nuclear drive advances.

"The Iranian administration is gaining more time to push forward to finish its program," said Mofaz, adding that the sanction moves had come too late.

According to Mofaz, there are two essential aspects to an Israeli response to the threat from Iran: The need to deploy the Arrow antimissile system - which would be effective only if Teheran were to employ a small number of missiles, but not against larger volleys - and to develop a second-strike capability.

"Second-strike capabilities are based on the assumption that Israel has nuclear weapons," he noted, "something which has not been confirmed by the Israeli government."

Regarding a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, Mofaz said that according to the principles of the IDF, as first set out by David Ben-Gurion, "Israel must have full capability to defend itself; there must be a program and plan to deal with the Iranian threat... The IDF needs to have the capability to eliminate this threat."

Mofaz warned, however, that both the appropriate timing for such a strike and whether the IDF was capable of destroying Iran's nuclear program were unknown.

"The difficulty of such a strike stems from the possibility that there are many unidentified nuclear development sites and the limited usefulness of conventional air strikes against nuclear facilities," he said.