By Lis Wiehl
FOX News Legal Analyst/Former Prosecutor

I will admit to having an uneasy relationship with elevators…going down 18 flights in a few seconds just seems unnatural.  But we all have to rely on them everyday.  And we also have to rely on their proper maintenance.  Little Jacob Neuman lost his life doing just that.

Back in August, 5-year-old Jacob Neuman’s life came to a halt when the elevator he was on shut down.  He attempted to jump down to the hallway floor from the stalled elevator but instead fell backwards tumbling 120 feet down the elevator shaft of his Brooklyn apartment building. New details on Jacob’s accident have just surfaced in a 52-page report by inspectors with the city’s Department of Buildings revealing that the elevator’s technical problems were tied to faulty maintenance by the buildings landlord, the New York City Housing Authority.

The elevator power shutdown that led to the death appears to have been caused by the misalignment and wear and tear of electrical contacts in the motor room control panel, which experts say should have been part of the elevator’s day-to-day routine maintenance.  According to the Buildings Department records, prior to the accident, the elevator had failed 8 of 11 inspections. What’s the point of all these inspections if they let faulty equipment continue to operate? On top of the grief and tragedy, imagine finding out that it was something that could have been prevented with maintenance?

Who is to blame for such a horrible tragedy?

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As seen on “Studio B with Shepard Smith” on December 2.

FRASER SEITEL, PUBLIC RELATIONS EXPERT:

They have two challenges. One, the performance has to be there. The plans have to be viable.
Secondly, public relations, in this case, is critical. They’ ve got to improve their public relations.

Where public relations starts, people don’t understand this, is with action and performance. They have got to perform. At the same time, it seems to me, they have got to emphasize the workers. That is number one. They have got to emphasize the cars, number two. The ceo’ s have got to go on shows like this. But to be more direct and be  transparent in terms of what they would like to do.

Driving across the country is dopey. I mean we’re dumb but we’re not that dumb. That is silly. What they ought to do is start being transparent. They need to say, “we’re all in this together and our workers are important. We want to explain this to the American people, so we’re going to increase the public exposure.”

By Alireza Jafarzadeh
Foreign Affairs Analyst

A week after the UN’s nuclear watchdog released an alarming report on the status of Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran declared that it now has more than 5,000 centrifuges operating and enriching uranium, and that it has launched another rocket into space.

Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization on 11/30 (AP)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report is based on its most recent inspections in early November. It states that Tehran now has nearly 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium (LEU). Several highly regarded nuclear experts have concluded that the amount is enough to build a nuclear bomb when converted into high-enriched uranium (HEU).

The survival of this unpopular regime depends on its being in a state of perpetual crisis. The Iranian theocracy is incapable of acting as a “normal” state or enacting the kind of behavioral changes the free world demands.

Richard L. Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb, told The New York Times, “They clearly have enough material for a bomb.” Garwin’s assessment was shared by Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, who told The Times that the size of Tehran’s LEU stockpile “underscored that they are marching down the path to developing the nuclear weapons option.” Thomas B. Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council referred to the size of Iran’s stockpile as a “virtual milestone,” maintaining that it was enough for an advanced implosion-type bomb.

Other experts say the ayatollahs’ regime still needs more LEU, but they quickly add that it only takes a few months to produce the required amount.

The latest report is all the more alarming because the IAEA’s assessment was based on Iran having around 3,800 centrifuges in operation, not the nearly 5,000 declared on November 26. The report underscores that Tehran is in breach of four UN Security Council resolutions and is defying the international demand that it halt nuclear enrichment and relevant activities.

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By John R. Lott, Jr.
Author/Senior Research Scholar, University of Maryland

Banning guns is in the news. India practically bans guns, but that didn’t stop the horrific Muslim terrorist attacks this last week.

A firefighter rescues guests of The Taj Hotel in Mumbai, India.

A football player concerned for his safety violates New York City’s tough gun control regulations by carrying a concealed handgun, and people call for everything from banning NFL players from carrying guns to demanding that the athlete serve many years in jail.

When police can’t promise to protect law-abiding citizens such Plaxico Burress or the victims in India, why don’t we allow people the right to protect themselves?

Where is the sympathy or debate in either case over letting people defend themselves? Given that the terrorists smuggled their machine guns in with them, would anyone argue that India’s extremely strict gun licensing and artificially high prices for guns helped prevent the terrorist attacks? In fact, the reverse is more likely the case.

Would Plaxico Burress, the New York Giant’s receiver who was arrested yesterday, really have been safer just trusting the police to protect him?

Terrorism

In India, victims watched as armed police cowered and didn’t fire back at the terrorists. A photographer at the scene described his frustration: “There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything. At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, ‘Shoot them, they’re sitting ducks!’ but they just didn’t shoot back.”

Meanwhile, according to the hotel company’s chairman, P.R.S. Oberoi, security at “the hotel had metal detectors, but none of its security personnel carried weapons because of the difficulties in obtaining gun permits from the Indian government.”

India has extremely strict gun control laws, but who did it succeed in disarming?

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Massachusetts senator and former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was left out of the mix on Monday when President-elect Obama announced members of his national security team.  About two-thirds of the Obama cabinet has now been named. Kerry  — who ran for president in 2004 and lost by 34 electoral votes — made Obama the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention that year, helping make Obama, who was running for Senate in Illinois, a rising star within his party.  This year Kerry has been a staunch Obama supporter and became one of his top surrogates during the campaign.

YOU DECIDE: Did Obama leave Kerry out in the cold? Should he have offered him a cabinet post or a position on his White House team? Share your thoughts. Click on “Leave a Comment” below.