Analysis: The next stop for Palestinians could be global courts

(Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly's overwhelming vote to recognize Palestine as a non-member state offers little prospect for greater clout in world politics but it could make a difference in the international courts.

The formal recognition of statehood, even without full U.N. membership, could be enough for the Palestinians to achieve membership at the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), where member states have the power to refer for investigation alleged war crimes or crimes against humanity.

With its upgraded status at the U.N., the Palestinians may now seek to apply to the ICC for membership and authority to file war-crimes charges against the Israeli government and its officials.

That threat of so-called "lawfare" has already prevented some Israeli civilian and military leaders from traveling abroad out of fear they'd be arrested as war criminals.

"Israelis are afraid of being hauled to The Hague," said Robert Malley, the Middle East program director for the International Crisis Group.

The Palestinians have long planned to use non-membership statehood at the U.N., once obtained, as a way to enter the ICC. One Palestinian negotiator, in talking to the International Crisis Group, called the strategy a "legal or diplomatic intifada" against Israel.

When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the United Nations in September he specifically accused Israel of committing war crimes.

Israeli officials have said the country's armed forces strictly adhere to international law and argue the true aim of Palestinians' accusations is to isolate Israel.

Last spring, the ICC's former chief prosecutor turned down a 2009 Palestinian request for prosecution of Israel's actions in the 2008-2009 Gaza war with Hamas, specifically noting that Palestine was only a U.N. observer entity.

In September, the new ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said a General Assembly vote could make the difference.

"What we have also done is to leave the door open and to say that if this -- if Palestine is able to pass over that (statehood) hurdle, of course, under the General Assembly, then we will revisit what the ICC can do," Bensouda said during a talk in New York.

The Hague-based ICC is the one international venue where individuals can be criminally charged. All 117 countries that ratified the Rome Statute, which created the court, are bound to turn over suspects.

The United States and Israel have not joined the Rome Statute, but that would not prevent the Palestinians from pursing cases under the treaty. ICC arrest warrants and rulings carry geopolitical weight even when they can't be enforced. An indictment of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi last year helped mobilize international support for the rebels who opposed him.

Of course, if the Palestinians enter the legal battlefield, they, too, risk being accused and prosecuted in the venues where they'd try to target Israelis.

There is no guarantee for either side that the ICC prosecutor would follow through on charges. The ICC has procedural obstacles that could head off any prosecution there.

Some commentators argue that, like lawyers in any legal fight, both the Palestinians and Israelis have exaggerated the stakes in what's more of a political and public-relations drama.

"The concern that something dramatic would change is overblown," said Rosa Brooks, a professor of international law at Georgetown University who has also served in policy roles at the State and Defense departments.

And it's important to remember that the ICC is a political organization as much as a legal one -- cases are initiated by member governments and the U.N. Security Council -- so geopolitical considerations can trump a strictly legal case.

(Reporting by Joseph Schuman; Editing by Eileen Daspin and Lisa Shumaker)

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Lohan arrested over NY fight, charged over LA crash

NEW YORK: US actress Lindsay Lohan was arrested for assault in New York Thursday, and also charged over a car crash in California, in a double legal blow which could in theory land her back to jail.

The perennially troubled 26-year-old, who is struggling to get her life back on the rails and remains on probation for a 2011 jewellery theft, was arrested in the early hours after a fight at a New York nightclub, police said.

"She was charged with assault" and ordered to appear at a later date, a New York Police Department (NYPD) spokeswoman said, adding that the "Mean Girls" actress allegedly struck another woman.

In California, meanwhile, she was charged with three misdemeanours for allegedly lying to police about whether she was driving a Porsche that crashed into a truck on the Pacific Coast Highway in June.

Santa Monica police spokesman Richard Lewis said she was charged with wilfully resisting, obstructing or delaying a police officer, giving false information and reckless driving.

Lohan allegedly told officers that she was not driving the car at the time of the crash, but a police statement said "information was developed that Lohan was the driver of the Porsche when the accident occurred."

The Santa Monica charges carry potential jail terms of up to a year.

The latest charges could lead to jail time for Lohan for violating probation, after she pleaded no contest to stealing a necklace from a jewellery store near her home in Venice, west of Los Angeles, in January 2011.

Lohan - once a promising young starlet after earning plaudits for her roles in "The Parent Trap" and "Freaky Friday" as a child - has been trying to rebuild her life after a series of run-ins with the law.

Despite a widely praised performance in "Mean Girls" in her late teens, she has become more famous for drug problems that have led to several prison stays.

She has been given jail terms a number of times in recent years, but has avoided spells of more than a day or two behind bars either because of appeals or prison overcrowding.

In March, a Los Angeles judge ended Lohan's probation on a drink-driving charge after a long string of court appearances, and changed her sentence for the jewellery theft from formal to informal probation, ending in May 2014.

Judge Stephanie Sautner also told her to "stop the nightclubbing" and behave more maturely.

The LA City Attorney's Office said Thursday that prosecutors were awaiting paperwork from Santa Monica and New York before deciding if they will pursue Lohan for probation violation.

"We're just waiting for all the information," said its spokesman Frank Mateljan.

Lohan recently starred in "Liz and Dick," a television biopic about film legend Elizabeth Taylor and her stormy relationship with actor Richard Burton. The film has earned mixed reviews.

The respected Hollywood Reporter's critic called it "both an awful mess and an instant classic of unintentional hilarity", adding: "Lohan is woeful as Taylor from start to finish."

-AFP/fl

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BJP calls paper a ‘whitewash’, seeks SIT probe into projects

MUMBAI: The state BJP on Thursday hit out at the government, saying the white paper on the irrigation scam was a "whitewash". Senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis demanded an SIT probe into all irrigation projects in the state. The demand was made during a debate on a news channel.

"Based on the information we have received from government sources, the white paper seems nothing but a whitewash ... We have all the details of the scam," senior BJP leader Vinod Tawde told the media.

Stating that the white paper does not seem to have addressed two key issues—financial irregularities and flawed policy decisions—Tawde said, "The BJP will bring out a 'black paper' on the scam during the winter session of the state legislature in Nagpur."

Meanwhile, the newly formed Aam Aadmi Party has also prepared a "black paper" on the irrigation scam, reports PTI. On December 2, Arvind Kejriwal will release the document in Roha, Raigad district, the stronghold of Maharashtra irrigation minister Sunil Tatkare.

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Clinton releases road map for AIDS-free generation

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an ambitious road map for slashing the global spread of AIDS, the Obama administration says treating people sooner and more rapid expansion of other proven tools could help even the hardest-hit countries begin turning the tide of the epidemic over the next three to five years.

"An AIDS-free generation is not just a rallying cry — it is a goal that is within our reach," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who ordered the blueprint, said in the report.

"Make no mistake about it, HIV may well be with us into the future but the disease that it causes need not be," she said at the State Department Thursday.

President Barack Obama echoed that promise.

"We stand at a tipping point in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and working together, we can realize our historic opportunity to bring that fight to an end," Obama said in a proclamation to mark World AIDS Day on Saturday.

Some 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and despite a decline in new infections over the last decade, 2.5 million people were infected last year.

Given those staggering figures, what does an AIDS-free generation mean? That virtually no babies are born infected, young people have a much lower risk than today of becoming infected, and that people who already have HIV would receive life-saving treatment.

That last step is key: Treating people early in their infection, before they get sick, not only helps them survive but also dramatically cuts the chances that they'll infect others. Yet only about 8 million HIV patients in developing countries are getting treatment. The United Nations aims to have 15 million treated by 2015.

Other important steps include: Treating more pregnant women, and keeping them on treatment after their babies are born; increasing male circumcision to lower men's risk of heterosexual infection; increasing access to both male and female condoms; and more HIV testing.

The world spent $16.8 billion fighting AIDS in poor countries last year. The U.S. government is the leading donor, spending about $5.6 billion.

Thursday's report from PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, outlines how progress could continue at current spending levels — something far from certain as Congress and Obama struggle to avert looming budget cuts at year's end — or how faster progress is possible with stepped-up commitments from hard-hit countries themselves.

Clinton warned Thursday that the U.S. must continue doing its share: "In the fight against HIV/AIDS, failure to live up to our commitments isn't just disappointing, it's deadly."

The report highlighted Zambia, which already is seeing some declines in new cases of HIV. It will have to treat only about 145,000 more patients over the next four years to meet its share of the U.N. goal, a move that could prevent more than 126,000 new infections in that same time period. But if Zambia could go further and treat nearly 198,000 more people, the benefit would be even greater — 179,000 new infections prevented, the report estimates.

In contrast, if Zambia had to stick with 2011 levels of HIV prevention, new infections could level off or even rise again over the next four years, the report found.

Advocacy groups said the blueprint offers a much-needed set of practical steps to achieve an AIDS-free generation — and makes clear that maintaining momentum is crucial despite economic difficulties here and abroad.

"The blueprint lays out the stark choices we have: To stick with the baseline and see an epidemic flatline or grow, or ramp up" to continue progress, said Chris Collins of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.

His group has estimated that more than 276,000 people would miss out on HIV treatment if U.S. dollars for the global AIDS fight are part of across-the-board spending cuts set to begin in January.

Thursday's report also urges targeting the populations at highest risk, including gay men, injecting drug users and sex workers, especially in countries where stigma and discrimination has denied them access to HIV prevention services.

"We have to go where the virus is," Clinton said.

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Accused WikiLeaker Manning Speaks for First Time

Private First Class Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified and confidential military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, took the stand in a military court today to make his first public statements since his arrest in 2010.

Manning appeared confident and animated at a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade in Maryland as he described the mental breakdowns and extreme depression he suffered during his first year in detention, from cells in Iraq and Kuwait to the Marine base at Quantico in Virginia. Within weeks of his arrest, Manning said, he became convinced he was going to die in custody.

"I was just a mess. I was really starting to fall apart," the 24-year-old former Army intelligence analyst said. Manning said he didn't remember an incident while in Kuwait where he bashed his head into a wall or another where he fashioned a noose out of a bed sheet as his civilian attorney, David Coombs, said he had, but Manning did say he felt he was "going to die... [in] an animal cage."

"I certainly contemplated [suicide]. There's no means, even if the noose... there'd be nothing I could do with it. Nothing to hang it on. It felt... pointless," he said. Manning had been on suicide watch since late June 2010, a month after his initial arrest in Baghdad.

Brendan Smialkowski/AFP/Getty Images

Manning faces 22 charges related to his alleged use of his access to government computers to download and pass along a trove of confidential government documents and videos to WikiLeaks, including the 2010 mass release of 250,000 State Department cables detailing years of private U.S. diplomatic interactions with the governments and citizens the world over. The unprecedented document dump became known as "Cablegate."

Earlier this month Coombs wrote on his blog that Manning was willing to plead guilty to some lesser offenses. On Thursday the military judge in the case said eight lesser charges could be reviewed by Manning's defense attorneys for a potential plea deal, but a response likely won't be determined until December.

The most serious charge Manning now faces, aiding the enemy, could bring a penalty of life in prison should he be found guilty.

Manning's defense has argued for all charges to be dropped, citing a perceived breach of Manning's right to speedy trial and his "unlawful pretrial punishment" while in custody at the Marine brig in Quantico.

But in today's hearing, Manning described his time in custody prior to his stay at Quantico as an ordeal of its own.

He recounted an incident in Baghdad when he fainted from the heat in his cell. Later in Kuwait, Manning said he was initially given phone privileges he used to call an aunt and friend in the United States, but that privilege was taken away a short time later.

After his alarming breakdown in June 2010, Manning told a mental health specialist that he really "didn't want to die, but [he] just wanted to get out of the cage," saying he believed his life had "just sunk."

Manning was given medication that improved his mood to the point that the young soldier felt he "started to flatten out" and resigned himself to "riding out" whatever was coming his way.

After he had been held in Kuwait, Manning said he was "elated" when he learned he was being transferred back to America. He had feared being sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba or to a U.S. facility in Djibouti in Africa.

"I didn't think I was going to set foot on American soil for a long time," he said.

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Egypt assembly seeks to wrap up constitution

CAIRO (Reuters) - The assembly writing Egypt's constitution said it could wrap up a final draft later on Wednesday, a move the Muslim Brotherhood sees as a way out of a crisis over a decree by President Mohamed Mursi that protesters say gives him dictatorial powers.

But as Mursi's opponents staged a sixth day of protests in Tahrir Square, critics said the Islamist-dominated assembly's bid to finish the constitution quickly could make matters worse.

Two people have been killed and hundreds injured in countrywide protest set off by Mursi's decree.

The Brotherhood hopes to end the crisis by replacing Mursi's controversial decree with an entirely new constitution that would need to be approved in a popular referendum, a Brotherhood official told Reuters.

It is a gamble based on the Islamists' belief that they can mobilize enough voters to win the referendum: they have won all elections held since Hosni Mubarak was toppled from power.

But the move seemed likely to deepen divisions that are being exposed in the street.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies called for protests on Saturday in Tahrir Square, setting the stage for more confrontation with their opponents, who staged a mass rally there on Tuesday.

The constitution is one of the main reasons Mursi is at loggerheads with non-Islamist opponents. They are boycotting the 100-member constitutional assembly, saying the Islamists have tried to impose their vision for Egypt's future.

The assembly's legal legitimacy has been called into question by a series of court cases demanding its dissolution. Its popular legitimacy has been hit by the withdrawal of members including church representatives and liberals.

"We will start now and finish today, God willing," Hossam el-Gheriyani, the assembly speaker, said at the start of its latest session in Cairo, saying Thursday would be "a great day".

"If you are upset by the decree, nothing will stop it except a new constitution issued immediately," he said. Three other members of the assembly told Reuters there were plans to put the document to a vote on Thursday.

ENTRENCHING AUTHORITARIANISM

Just down the road from the meeting convened at the Shura Council, protesters were again clashing with riot police in Tahrir Square. Members of the assembly watched on television as they waited to go into session.

"The constitution is in its last phases and will be put to a referendum soon and God willing it will solve a lot of the problems in the street," said Talaat Marzouk, an assembly member from the Salafi Nour Party, as he watched the images.

But Wael Ghonim, a prominent activist whose online blogging helped ignite the anti-Mubarak uprising, said a constitution passed in such circumstances would "entrench authoritarianism".

The constitution is supposed to be the cornerstone of a new, democratic Egypt following Mubarak's three decades of autocratic rule. The assembly has been at work for six months. Mursi had extended its December 12 deadline by two months - extra time that Gheriyani said was not needed.

The constitution will determine the powers of the president and parliament and define the roles of the judiciary and a military establishment that had been at the heart of power for decades until Mubarak was toppled. It will also set out the role of Islamic law, or sharia.

The effort to conclude the text quickly marked an escalation, said Nathan Brown, a professor of political science at George Washington University in the United States.

"It may be regarded with hostility by a lot of state actors too, including the judiciary," he said.

Leading opposition and former Arab League chief figure Amr Moussa slammed the move. He walked out of the assembly earlier this month. "This is nonsensical and one of the steps that shouldn't be taken, given the background of anger and resentment to the current constitutional assembly," he told Reuters.

Once drafted, the constitution will go to Mursi for approval, and he must then put it to a referendum within 15 days, which could mean the vote would be held by mid-December.

COURTS DECLARE STRIKE

Deepening the crisis further on Wednesday, Egypt's Cassation and Appeals courts said they would suspend their work until the constitutional court rules on the decree.

The judiciary, largely unreformed since the popular uprising that unseated Mubarak, was seen as a major target in the decree issued last Thursday, which extended his powers and put his decisions temporarily beyond legal challenge.

"The president wants to create a new dictatorship," said 38-year-old Mohamed Sayyed Ahmed, an unemployed man, in Tahrir.

Showing the depth of distrust of Mursi in parts of the judiciary, a spokesman for the Supreme Constitutional Court, which earlier this year declared void the Islamist-led parliament, said it felt under attack by the president.

In a speech on Friday, Mursi praised the judiciary as a whole but referred to corrupt elements he aimed to weed out.

"The really sad thing that has pained the members of this court is when the president of the republic joined, in a painful surprise, the campaign of continuous attack on the Constitutional Court," said the spokesman Maher Samy.

Senior judges have been negotiating with Mursi about how to restrict his new powers.

Mursi's administration insists that his actions were aimed at breaking a political logjam to push Egypt more swiftly towards democracy, an assertion his opponents dismiss.

The West worries about turbulence in a nation that has a peace treaty with Israel and is now ruled by Islamists they long kept at arms length.

Trying to ease tensions with judges, Mursi said elements of his decree giving his decisions immunity applied only to matters of "sovereign" importance, a compromise suggested by the judges.

A constitution must be in place before a new parliament can be elected, and until that time Mursi holds both executive and legislative powers. An election could take place in early 2013.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Marwa Awad; Writing by Edmund Blair and Tom Perry; Editing by Will Waterman and Giles Elgood)

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Only path to Palestinian state is direct talks: Clinton

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that the only path towards a Palestinian state was through direct negotiations, on the eve of a contentious United Nations vote.

"I have said many times that the path to a two-state solution that fulfills the aspirations of the Palestinian people is through Jerusalem and Ramallah, not New York," Clinton told reporters, reiterating US opposition to the Palestinian bid to upgrade its UN status.

"We have made very clear to the Palestinian leadership that we oppose Palestinian efforts to upgrade their status at the UN outside of the framework" of direct negotiations.

The top US diplomat warned that no matter what happened on Thursday at the United Nations "it will not produce the outcome" that everyone desires.

"The only way to get a lasting solution is to commence direct negotiations," Clinton stressed.

"And we need an environment conducive to that and we urged both parties to refrain from actions that might, in any way, make a return to meaningful negotiations that focus on getting to a resolution more difficult."

The United States earlier on Wednesday pressed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas not to seek elevated UN status, in a last-ditch bid to avert a damaging showdown at the United Nations.

US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Middle East envoy David Hale met with Abbas at his hotel but failed to get the Palestinian leader to withdraw his resolution or make amendments, officials said.

US officials have reaffirmed that the United States will vote against the Palestinian motion if the vote goes ahead as planned on Thursday.

- AFP/xq

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Indira Gandhi lent Indian politics the dynastic shift: Ramachandra Guha

BANGALORE: The Congress led by Indira Gandhi fostered a generation of hero worship and dynasty politics after 1969. This inspired many others like Muthuvel Karunanidhi, who started off with noble intentions to fight against caste discriminations, to do the same and has led to a centralization of politics in present India, said Ramachandra Guha, on Wednesday.

He was speaking during the launch of his latest book, Patriots and Partisans.

The 54-year-old historian went on to add that Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the most charismatic leaders of Indian politics, has been slowly losing his popularity because of the Congress's dynastic politics.

"Sins of seven successive generations have been bestowed on Nehru," he said light-heartedly.

The highest paid non-fiction writer of the country also slammed the phenomenon called the 'Congress chamchagiri'. "I saw a long queue of Congress party members waiting outside Rahul Gandhi's house during his birthday, a couple of years ago, braving scorching sun. Nevertheless, Rahul didn't come out to greet them while the 100 kilogram cake they had brought for him disintegrated leaving a trail from the Congress general secretary's house till the Indira Gandhi circle," he said.

He said that scientific institutions in Delhi couldn't achieve the success of ones in other parts of the country as officials chosen in the capital-based institutions are often selected on the recommendation of politicians.

Guha went on to add that massacre of Muslims in Hyderabad during the annexation of the state by the Indian army happened before the constitution came into being in 1950, but it is sad that the perpetrators of 1984 Sikh massacre and 2002 Muslim massacre in Gujarat, which were initiated by Congress and BJP, respectively, haven't still been punished.

He slammed right and left wing politicians, saying that the citizens have allowed the Hindu rightists' claims to be truly patriots of the country because the left is often considered anti-patriotic because their fatherland has always been a different country - depending upon the prevalence of Marxists movements in these countries, like China, the USSR, Cuba and currently Venezuela - and also due to the high decibel levels and angry outbreaks of the saffron brigade.

"Violence unleashed by left ( Naxalites) and right (Hindu fundamentalists) is against democracy, liberalism, religious plularism and tolerance, the idea that our Constitution promotes. Citizens should protect the country from these extremisms," he said.

TOO EARLY

Guha had a word of advice for the Arvind Kejriwal-launched Aam Aadmi Party, saying that it's too early for them to participate in the 2014 general elections. "Their current economic policies are a bit naive," he added.

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Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals

CHICAGO (AP) — Preventing surgery-linked infections is a major concern for hospitals and it turns out some simple measures can make a big difference.

A project at seven big hospitals reduced infections after colorectal surgeries by nearly one-third. It prevented an estimated 135 infections, saving almost $4 million, the Joint Commission hospital regulating group and the American College of Surgeons announced Wednesday. The two groups directed the 2 1/2-year project.

Solutions included having patients shower with special germ-fighting soap before surgery, and having surgery teams change gowns, gloves and instruments during operations to prevent spreading germs picked up during the procedures.

Some hospitals used special wound-protecting devices on surgery openings to keep intestine germs from reaching the skin.

The average rate of infections linked with colorectal operations at the seven hospitals dropped from about 16 percent of patients during a 10-month phase when hospitals started adopting changes to almost 11 percent once all the changes had been made.

Hospital stays for patients who got infections dropped from an average of 15 days to 13 days, which helped cut costs.

"The improvements translate into safer patient care," said Dr. Mark Chassin, president of the Joint Commission. "Now it's our job to spread these effective interventions to all hospitals."

Almost 2 million health care-related infections occur each year nationwide; more than 90,000 of these are fatal.

Besides wanting to keep patients healthy, hospitals have a monetary incentive to prevent these infections. Medicare cuts payments to hospitals that have lots of certain health care-related infections, and those cuts are expected to increase under the new health care law.

The project involved surgeries for cancer and other colorectal problems. Infections linked with colorectal surgery are particularly common because intestinal tract bacteria are so abundant.

To succeed at reducing infection rates requires hospitals to commit to changing habits, "to really look in the mirror and identify these things," said Dr. Clifford Ko of the American College of Surgeons.

The hospitals involved were Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles; Cleveland Clinic in Ohio; Mayo Clinic-Rochester Methodist Hospital in Rochester, Minn.; North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in Great Neck, NY; Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago; OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Ill.; and Stanford Hospital & Clinics in Palo Alto, Calif.

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Online:

Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org

American College of Surgeons: http://www.facs.org

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Factory Workers: We Were Locked in, Flames Spread

More survivors of the factory fire in Bangladesh that killed more than 100 garment workers this weekend have told human rights and international labor groups they were actually locked in by security gates as the flames spread.

"The police and the fire department are confirming that the collapsible gates were locked on each floor," said Charles Kernighan, executive director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights. "The fire department said they had to come in with bolt cutters to cut the locks."

The toll of the garment factory blaze now stands at 112, but Kernighan and others interviewed by ABC News said they believe the number may actually be much higher. The destruction inside made it difficult to identify bodies, and Kernighan said factory officials have yet to make public a list of the 1,500 workers believed to be working in the nine-story building at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, when the fire broke out in a first floor warehouse.

Kalpona Akter, a labor activist based in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka, spoke with a number of survivors, who described a scene of horror as workers started to smell smoke, and then the power went out and they were thrown into darkness.

"Then they ran to the stairs and found it was already fire caught in the stairs," she said. "They broke one window in the east side of the factory and … they started to jump."

Akter said many groups of relatives worked together in the factory, and when the lights went out, many began to scream in search of their mothers and sisters and daughters. She said she also heard accounts of managers shutting the gates as alarms sounded to prevent workers from walking off the job, apparently thinking it was a false alarm.

Fire Kills Over 100 Factory Workers in Bangladesh Watch Video

Bangladesh Garment Factory Fire Leaves 112 Dead Watch Video

More Than 100 Dead in Bangladesh Garment Factory Fire Watch Video

Authorities in Bangladesh announced three arrests, all supervisors from the factory, whom the police accused of negligence in their handling of the incident.

A journalist who attended the police press conference told ABC News the three men were arrested "because they did not perform their duty" and prevented workers from escaping from the factory, instead of helping them get out.

Also Wednesday, there were new reports that clothing found in the burned-out remains included large quantities of sweat shirts with labels for Disney, the parent company of ABC News. Like Wal-Mart and Sears, Disney said today it had no idea the Tazreen Fashions Limited factory was not supposed to be making its clothes.

"None of our licensees have been permitted to manufacture Disney-branded products in this facility for at least the last 12 months," a Disney statement read.

As with Disney, other retailers continue to question how their products could be found in a factory they did not know they had hired. Li & Fung, a Hong Kong supplier that works with several large brands, confirmed it was producing clothes in the factory for a Sean Combs label, ENYCE. But in a statement to ABC News Wednesday, Li & Fung said it had not brought clothes to the factory for any other client, including Sears, Disney and Wal-Mart.

Asked why it hired a factory that had been cited by at least one auditor for having safety problems, Li & Fung said it was investigating that question.

"As this tragic event is still under official investigation by the authorities, and since Li & Fung will conduct our own investigation, it would be premature to comment on our prior assessment of the factory's compliance," the statement said.

Labor rights groups said the American clothing companies have an obligation to know where their clothing is being manufactured.

"They have the power to make demands on the factory owners, they don't do it though," Kernighan said. "Because they want to keep cutting the prices, and cutting the prices, and cutting the prices."

Click Here for the Blotter Homepage.

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