Factory

After the Bangladesh factory fire that killed more than 100 workers in November, retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. fired a supplier making clothes at the facility. Now that supplier has come forward to say it wasn't aware its clothes were stitched there, reports say. Success Apparel said in a statement to Bloomberg that it placed an order with Simco, a Wal-Mart-approved supplier, to fulfill orders. Simco then doled out about 7% of the order to Tuba Group, owner of the now infamous Tazreen Design factory in Bangladesh, according to Success.

WASHINGTON - President Obama heads to a toy factory in Pennsylvania on Friday with a Christmastime message for Republicans: Extend the middle-class tax cuts or risk hurting businesses such as The Rodon Group, the maker of Tinkertoy and Angry Birds building sets. With Obama's televised trek to the factory floor in Hatfield, the message war between the two sides goes visual and sharpens with the seasonal competition for consumers' attention. Obama is expected to reiterate that any deal with Congress must ask the wealthiest to pay higher tax rates.  House Republicans countered with a public relations campaign of their own, tapping the president and chief executive of Gorski Engineering, a small business located about 15 miles from the president's stop, where the owner is concerned about possible tax hikes.

HATFIELD, Pa. - With negotiations in Washington apparently going nowhere, President Obama took the fiscal fight outside the Beltway on Friday, restaging it in a toy factory where he tried to pile public pressure on Republicans to accept his tax proposals. In remarks filled with St. Nick puns and yuletide jokes, Obama stood on the factory floor flanked by workers taking a break from the holiday rush, and executives who support his plan to raise taxes on top earners. The message: Take my plan before the year-end deadline or risk damaging the economy.

A Bangladesh garment factory fire that killed 112 people has pushed Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis to call for an investigation into the tragic incident. The fire, which started late Saturday night, swept through a facility outside the city of Dhaka that apparently churned out clothes for many major retailers in the United States, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Sears, the Associated Press reported. In a statement issued Thursday, Solis compared the fire, the worst industrial blaze in Bangladesh history, to the fire in 1911 at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York that killed nearly 150 workers.

Bangladesh police have arrested three managers from the garment factory where more than 100 workers perished in a fire this weekend, a Dhaka police official told reporters Wednesday. The three managers have been accused of stopping workers from escaping the Tazreen Fashions Ltd. factory and even locking the doors as the blaze swept through the building, the deadliest such incident to hit the Bangladeshi garment industry, according to news reports. “If the accused acted responsibly, the victims and other survivors might have escaped the accident,” an unnamed police official told the National News Agency of Bangladesh . Protests continued to rage Wednesday over the calamitous fire, which has captured global attention and thrown new light on dangerous working conditions in this rapidly growing sector.

AMMAN, Jordan -- At least 18 people were killed Tuesday morning when Syrian government warplanes struck an olive press factory on the outskirts of Idlib city, opposition activists said. The building was hit by more than five rockets in an attack that also left 23 injured, said Ahmad Aasi, an opposition activist in Idlib. Those killed were farmers bringing olives from the local harvest and workers at the factory, he said. "They are targeting any gathering of people to kill the largest number possible," Aasi said.

U.S. companies are scrambling to figure out whether clothing they sell was made in the Bangladesh garment factory where at least 112 people died in a fire. Though officials are looking at arson as the cause, there are a number of allegations about the building and how it was operated that may have contributed to the death toll: dummy fire extinguishers, at least one locked door and bosses who ordered the employees back to work after fire alarms went off. There were no emergency exits.

WASHINGTON -- Hurricane Sandy appears to have done a lot more economic damage than many experts thought. The Federal Reserve said Friday that manufacturing production fell across almost all major industries in October - a drop officials blamed on the storms that struck the Northeast late last month. Even with mining activity growing and utility output holding steady, industrial production overall slid 0.4% last month. The Fed thinks Sandy knocked nearly a full percentage point off total production after increasing 0.2% in September.

While most of the country will head routinely to work Friday, workers at General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group will get the day off. Why? It's the start of deer-hunting season, a peculiar benefits quirk stemming from collective bargaining, corporate needs and Midwestern outdoors culture. During contract negotiations in the late 1990s, the automakers agreed to make Veterans Day a paid day off - but with a catch. The United Auto Workers didn't necessarily want to celebrate Veterans Day. Rather, its members wanted a flexible day off in November about the time hunting season starts.

The gig: Morgan Margolis is the chief executive of Knitting Factory Entertainment, which has concert venues, restaurants, record labels, artist management companies and a national touring division. The swiftly diversifying Los Angeles-based company employs 300 people and has annual gross revenue of $35 million on average. Raised in a show-biz family: Margolis, 46, remembers roaming the mean streets of New York's East Village in the 1970s. His parents were actors, and money didn't come easily to the family.