Ariel Castro, who is being held on $8 million bail after being charged with multiple counts of kidnapping and rape, appears to have written a chilling confession back in 2004. Reporters for Channel 19 Action News have posted excerpts from the letter, which police found while searching the house where Castro allegedly imprisoned three women for a decade. In the letter Castro admits that “I am a sexual predator” and that he needs help. He also wonders why he kidnapped a third woman when he “already had 2 in my possession.” The letter is reportedly a suicide note, with Castro saying he wanted to kill himself and give his money to his captives. He also blamed his victims, saying they “made the mistake of getting in a car with a total stranger.”

Via:

Multiple sources say that the man living there had written a suicide note years ago outlining what he did and why. Ariel Castro is sitting in the city jail, so of course, he never did take his own life.

But Gallek has learned that in the note, Castro talks about a sex addiction and needing help. It puts some blame on the victims for getting in the car with him, and it refers to family problems and a poor childhood.

Castro and his two brothers, Pedro and Olin, are being held in jail in separate cells. A source who's been in the jail says the suspects are getting a lot of verbal abuse from other inmates.

And in a tearful interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, the daughter of suspected Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro begged Gina DeJesus -- her former childhood friend -- to forgive any role she had in enabling the abduction. “I am absolutely so so sorry,” the 22-year-old cried. Arlene was one of the last people to see Gina in 2004 on the day she was kidnapped—but claims she had no idea that it was her own father who did it. “[We were] not that close,” Arlene told GMA. “Every time we would talk it would just be short conversations, just a hello.” The kidnapper’s daughter says she hopes to see Gina, and introduce her to her kids.

UPDATE: The Rana Plaza death toll is now at 1,000.

At least eight people were killed in Bangladesh Thursday after an 11-story garment factory went up in flames. The fire was fueled by huge piles of acrylic products used to make sweaters. By the time firefighters arrived on the scene of the Tung Hai Sweater Ltd. Factory in the capital of Dhaka, the first few floors of the building were already engulfed in flames. Speaking to reporters, the deputy director of the fire service Mamun Mahmud described the occupants' desperate attempt to flee the building. "We recovered all of them on the stairwell on the ninth floor," he said. The deadly fire comes as the death toll from an eight-story building collapse in Dhaka passed 900 this week.

Via:

The identities of the victims of Wednesday's fire showed the entanglement of the industry and top Bangladeshi officials. The dead included the factory's managing director, Mahbubur Rahman, who was also on the board of directors of the powerful Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. Along with him was senior police official Z.A. Morshed and Sohel Mostafa Swapan, head of a local branch of the ruling party's youth league.

Independent TV, a local station, reported that Rahman had plans to contest next year's elections as a candidate for the ruling party and had been meeting friends to discuss his future when the fire broke out.

It was not immediately clear what caused the fire, which began soon after the factory workers went home for the day and took three hours to bring under control. Mahmud speculated it might have originated in the factory's ironing section. Officials originally said the building also housed several floors of apartments, but later said it was just a factory.

The garment factory building collapse death toll has now climbed to 930 making the collapse of Rana Plaza the world's deadliest industrial accident since India's Bhopal disaster in 1984.

The discovery of three women in a Cleveland home who all had gone missing separately about a decade ago brings to mind cases of abductions elsewhere. Elizabeth Smart says she is elated by the women's rescue. The Salt Lake City woman was kidnapped at age 14 from her bedroom. She was freed nine months later when she was found walking with her captor on a suburban street in March 2003.

Smart also discussed this week how conservative "abstinence only" programs that emphasize sexual purity can be detrimental to victims of human trafficking and rape.

Smart advised the Ohio women to focus on moving forward and letting go of the past. And she urged people to allow the family privacy so they can heal and "find their own pathway back to some sense of well-being."

She also advised the women not to let their alleged kidnappers continue to control their lives.

"He's stolen so much from them already, they deserve to be happy. And I would tell them I hope that they realize there is so much ahead of them, that they don't need to hold on to the past," Smart said. "They don't need to relive everything that's happened, because it's proof, their rescue is proof that there are good people out there."

Speaking at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum on Wednesday, Smart answered the question many Americans who followed her story on the national news wondered, why didn't she just run away as soon as she was brought outside?

She explained that some victims don't run away after being raped because they feel worthless, especially if they have been raised in conservative religious cultures that push abstinence-only education and emphasize sexual purity:

Smart said she “felt so dirty and so filthy” after she was raped by her captor, and she understands why someone wouldn’t run “because of that alone.”

Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

Since her rescue, Smart created the Elizabeth Smart Foundation to bring awareness to predatory child crimes and speaks about her own experience.

Smart says children should be educated that "you will always have value and nothing can change that."

The House Republican bill H.R. 1406 is the latest in a string of GOP attacks on workers' rights. The bill would force an unnecessary choice between overtime pay that workers rely on and time off that they may never be able to take advantage of. H.R. 1406 -- the "Working Families Flexibility Act" -- would give employers the ability to offer compensatory time off in exchange for any overtime wages the worker has earned.

The Republican-led House of Representatives passed the bill on Wednesday that they say gives workers more time off - rejecting criticism from the White House, unions, women's groups and others that the measure is a sham that would force more work for less pay.

Backed by business (There's a shocker.), the bill is part of an effort by budget-slashing Republicans to project a "kinder and gentler image," particularly with women and working families.

On a nearly party-line vote of 223-204, the House approved the measure and sent it to the Senate where President Barack Obama's majority Democrats appear certain to kill it.

The bill would permit workers in the private sector, like those now in the public sector, to swap overtime pay for compensatory time off. They would get 1-1/2 hours time off for each hour of overtime, based on a standard 40-hour work week.

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Senator Warren Introduces the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act, her first piece of stand-alone legislation, on Wednesday, May 8, 2013. The bill would enable students who are eligible for federally subsidized Stafford loans to borrow at the same rate the big banks get through the Federal Reserve discount window.

From her floor speech:

“Some people say that we can’t afford to help our kids through school by keeping student loan interest rates low,” said Senator Warren. “But right now, as I speak, the federal government offers far lower interest rates on loans, every single day–they just don’t do it for everyone. Right now, a big bank can get a loan through the Federal Reserve discount window at a rate of about 0.75%. But this summer a student who is trying to get a loan to go to college will pay almost 7%. In other words, the federal government is going to charge students interest rates that are nine times higher than the rates for the biggest banks–the same banks that destroyed millions of jobs and nearly broke this economy. That isn’t right. And that is why I’m introducing legislation today to give students the same deal that we give to the big banks.”

“Big banks get a great deal when they borrow money from the Fed,” Senator Warren continued. “In effect, the American taxpayer is investing in those banks. We should make the same kind of investment in our young people who are trying to get an education. Lend them the money and make them to pay it back, but give our kids a break on the interest they pay. Let’s Bank on Students… Unlike the big banks, students don’t have armies of lobbyists and lawyers. They have only their voices. And they call on us to do what is right.”

Add your voice. Please click here to tell your senators to cosponsor the Bank On Student Loan Fairness Act.

You can view the full text of Senator Warren's speech here.

Via Occupy Wall St.:

One of the points Occupy Wall Street made, by choosing to occupy space in Manhattan and not in DC, was that it's really Wall Street who runs things, not the government.

The votes in the House Financial Services Committee today underscore that point with stark clarity.

Today the Committee considered a slew of bills that tear down many of the Wall Street reforms passed in 2010. These reforms were already imperfect, as Wall Street sent the full force of its lobbying to the Hill in 2010 to compromise these reforms as much as possible.

Wall Street, having succeeded in 2010 in watering down the reforms meant to regulate them two years after they ruined the economy, did not rest. They have been lobbying nonstop since then to do everything they could to gut these reforms even more.

Today, nine deregulatory bills were considered, and nine were passed. The most egregious, HR 992, which we wrote about on Monday, passed 53-6. This bill is named "Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act", but it should be called, "If Banks Get Bailed Out, We'll Get Sold Out. Again." This is the bill that makes the cost of doing business for Wall Street lower by exploiting the implicit backing of the Federal Government. It allows banks to hold risky derivatives in the insured depository--that part of the bank that is insured by the FDIC. As we wrote yesterday, this is dangerous because derivatives are senior in bankruptcy--derivatives counterparties get paid out first.

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"LOCKDOWN," is a ten minute documentary by Mutual Aid Media on the Tar Sands Blockade -- a group of activists and landowners in Texas who have built a campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. This short documentary follows activists as they plan an action camp, lead workshops, and execute a lockdown.

Attorney Susan Burke and retired Air Force Staff Sgt. Colleen Bushnell join Current TV’s John Fugelsang to react to a Pentagon report that shows an increase in the number of reported sexual crimes in the military between 2012 and 2011.

Bushnell describes her experience navigating the military justice system after reporting that she had been the victim of sexual assault. “There were systems put in place that appeared to be as if they were support systems, but they’re not empowered to actually help the victim,” Bushnell says. “Currently the way the system works is very perpetrator centric, rather than victim-centric.”

UPDATE: Laura Clawson over at Daily Kos reports:

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh:

... appeared to blame broader society, noting that 20% of women report they had been sexually assaulted "before they came into the military.""So they come in from a society where this occurs," he said. "Some of it is the hookup mentality of junior high even and high school students now, which my children can tell you about from watching their friends and being frustrated by it."

That's right, a hookup culture of consensual sexual encounters is to blame for high rates of sexual assault in the military coupled with low rates of reporting of said sexual assaults and low rates of conviction in the rare cases that are reported. Also, apparently the fact that sexual assault is too common outside the military is a decent excuse for high rates of sexual assault in the military. If you're Gen. Mark Welsh and you're looking to blame women for the appalling rates of sexual assault taking place under your command.

So we can safely say that the understanding of and concern about sexual assault at the highest levels of the Air Force is ... lacking. Pitifully, offensively lacking. It's not just Welsh and Krusinski, either. Two different three-star generals in the Air Force have overturned sexual assault convictions in recent cases. In one, Lt. Gen. Susan Helms, President Obama's nominee for vice commander of the Air Force's Space Command, overturned a verdict of aggravated sexual assault against a captain; "In a memo that recently came to light, she explained that in reading through the evidence, she found the captain’s defense credible." The jury didn't, but screw that, Lt. Gen. Helms did.

Similarly, Lt. Col. James Wilkerson was sentenced to a year in prison and dismissal by a jury of male Air Force officers. Only then Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin "declined to approve the conviction because he did not think that there was enough evidence to say that he was guilty," according to a spokesman.

All of which raises the question: Who's going to be the three-star general to overturn Krusinski's conviction, should he be convicted? The Air Force is already asserting jurisdiction over his case, so the stage is set.

Come fly the friendly skies of Sequesterless Airlines! It worked for the air traffic controllers, it can work for you, too. See what happens when everyone inconveniences business class and congressional passengers.

Your morning open thread begins below...

A Michigan-based nuclear power plant has been shut down due to water leakage from the tank, which exceeded its capacity. Inspectors are now investigating the problem to ensure that the public and the plant are safe.

The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant, located in Covert Township, Michigan, was removed from service Sunday morning after the water tank exceeded its site threshold and leaked.

Via:

"This tank has leaked before. It leaked in 2012. The plant had to shut down to repair the leak to the tank," federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng said. "It's a repeat occurrence."

The leakage in 2012 caused water seepage into the plant's control room. Sunday's shutdown happened after the water tank exceeded a 38-gallon daily leak limit set after last year's shutdown.

"The NRC resident inspectors are closely following the plant's actions to identify the source of the leakage and repair the tank," Mitlyng said.

She also said inspectors "are evaluating these actions to make sure that the plant and the public continue to be safe."

The plant is owned by New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. and has been under extra NRC scrutiny after numerous safety issues. It's shut down nine times since September 2011, including in February for a different water leakage problem.

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