Chatter: One alive, 1,000 dead in Bangladesh

NEED TO KNOW

Where there is life, there is hope. But not much. Rescuers scouring the rubble of a collapsed multi-story garment factory in Bangladesh have found a woman alive. Soldiers are passing her food and water as they work to free her from the basement where she has been trapped for 17 days. 

Sadly, she's the exception. Every day, the death toll passes a grim new milestone: the latest count puts it over 1,000 – more than double the total from any other building collapse anywhere in the world – at 1,034. By now the numbers are so high it's hard even to conceive of what they mean. Here's what it looks like in data. And here's what it looks like to the rescuers, survivors and families left behind.

Pakistan prepares. Candidates are wrapping up their final day of campaigning before Pakistan's general election on Saturday, a landmark vote hailed as the country's first-ever democratic transition from one civilian government to another.

It hasn't come easy. More than 100 people have been reported killed in election-related attacks in less than a month, and the Pakistani Taliban says that anyone who votes should be prepared to suffer the same fate. Some Pakistanis, understandably, are not. Ahead of tomorrow's vote, GlobalPost studies whether violence could derail a defining moment in Pakistan's democracy.

WANT TO KNOW

'Operation Jericho.' A sealed-off city whose walls fell when God's trumpets sounded, and the code name for what North Korea claims American Kenneth Bae was up to when he entered the country, and was promptly arrested, late last year. His covert mission supposedly aimed to overthrow the communist regime through Christianity, and involved "plot-breeding bases" in China, missionaries disguised as tourists and, er, a contraband copy of a National Geographic documentary.

North Korea released the details of Bae's "crimes" today in an apparent attempt to settle allegations that he was detained, tried and sentenced without just cause. Oh yeah, 15 years' hard labor for watching National Geographic. Sure, Pyongyang, that seems reasonable.

Captor turned captive. Prosecutors say they plan to seek the death penalty for Ariel Castro, the Ohio man accused of kidnapping, imprisoning and raping three women in his locked Cleveland home over a period of 10 years. In addition to abduction and rape charges, Castro is to be tried for aggravated murder for allegedly forcing one of the women to miscarry at least five times.

Castro remains in custody, in isolation and on suicide watch.

STRANGE BUT TRUE

Go home, Disney, you're drunk. Trademark "Dia de los Muertos" because you want to make a movie about it and sell a ton of merch? That's like… like… killing a load of adorable little puppies so that some bigwig can have a fur coat! (…Oh.)

Thankfully Mickey Mouse Incorporated has seen the error of its ways and called off its bid to acquire exclusive rights to the name of the traditional Mexican holiday. And the dead, um, live to fight another day.