China has stopped taking thousands of tons of recyclable trash from the U.S., which could mean huge garbage back-ups for cities.

For years China has been one of the main importers of recyclable trash from the U.S. but the country just can’t take it anymore—literally. Quartz reports that the Chinese have put up an import wall on foreign waste and recycling stations in the US are backing up with plastic bottles and products that aren’t going anywhere.Most people likely don’t know that the majority of the trash and recyclables collected in the US isn’t re-processed here, it’s sent to other countries.

Receive smaller checks than they were owed.

Ninety-six thousand homeowners who were victims of foreclosure abuse continued their unlucky streak last week. Rust Consulting, the firm hired to distribute the victims’ share of a $3.6 billion settlement over faulty and fraudulent foreclosures serviced by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, issued compensation checks for less money than the victims were supposed to receive.

Read it at Washington Post

Silicon Valley advocacy group runs pro-conservative ads.

Fwd.Us, a nonprofit advocacy group created by Mark Zuckerberg and other big Silicon Valley leaders, is coming under fire for running ads supporting the Keystone XL pipeline, and another ad that criticized health-care policies championed by President Obama. The push, in support of three conservative lawmakers, is claiming to be part of a new approach by Silicon Valley to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Liberal groups like the Sierra Club have criticized the move and have questioned some of the big names behind the group, including clean-tech investor John Doerr, Bill Gates, and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

Read it at The New York Times

Will limit ads to kids, label calorie counts.

As obesity rates skyrocket worldwide, soda makers like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have come under fire for their marketing strategies as well as the sugary content of their beverages. Now Coke, the world’s largest drink maker, will not only cut down on its advertising targeting children but also announced it will now label all its drinks worldwide with calorie counts, and work to promote its less sugary products.

Read it at The Wall Street Journal

Pier Marco Tacca

Founder of Italian fashion house passes away at 92.

Ottavio Missoni, the patriarch of the iconic fashion brand known for its zigzag-patterned knitwear, died Thursday in his home in northern Italy. He was 92 years old. Missoni founded the company in 1953 with his wife, Rosita Jelmini, who survives him. They went on to create a fashion dynasty, with the couple’s three children all working to expand the family business. Launched in 1966, the brand never conformed to fashion trends. “I've never done what was fashionable," Missoni told WWD in February 2011. "I didn't want to work with preset schemes, and I paint my own way.” Missoni’s death comes only months after his eldest child, company CEO Vittorio Missoni, disappeared with his wife and four others while flying a small plane en route to a Venezuelan island. Tragically, they were never found. 

Read it at The Daily Beast

National Review's Reihan Salam considers a scary hypothetical: how will the public respond to a 2016 GOP presidential candidate if nearly a decade of "Doom Is Coming" fiscal warnings turn out to be less than accurate?[I]magine 2016 in the unlikely but not completely impossible event that a budget surplus does materialize. Republican elevation of the deficit issue will allow the Obama administration and its Democratic allies to declare “mission accomplished,” all without taking the blame for entitlement reform.

Sony headquarters in Tokyo on Thursday. (Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty)

Reports first annual profit in five years.

After five years of no cash flow, Sony has reported an annual profit in its fiscal fourth quarter, buoyed by asset sales at its U.S. headquarters in New York and Tokyo office buildings. The Japanese electronics giant reported a net profit of roughly 94 billion yen, or $948.5 million, in the January-March quarter, compared with a loss of 255 billion yen a year earlier. The weakening of the yen (down more than 20 percent against the U.S. dollar) has worked in Sony’s favor, making Japanese goods cheaper for foreign buyers and boosting profits of exporters. Sony said it hopes to make its television business profitable this year after nine years of losses, adding new ultra-high-definition models to its product lineup.

Read it at The Wall Street Journal

Nokia executives unveiling the Asha 501 on Thursday in New Delhi. (Raveendran/AFP/Getty)

In attempt to compete with Google’s Android.

Can Asha bring Nokia back from the brink? Nokia has unveiled a $99 touch-screen phone with social apps in an attempt to gain a foothold in the smartphone market. Once the world’s largest cellphone maker, Nokia now holds only a sliver of the market dominated by Apple and Samsung and hopes the low-priced Asha will tempt consumers as they upgrade from basic phones. Nokia said its smartphone will initially run on a second-generation network but will soon be available in 3G and will start shipping worldwide in June. The company said Asha’s design was inspired by its higher-end Lumia smartphone and is targeted at “young, socially inspired” people.

Read it at The Wall Street Journal

Bangladeshi firefighters in Dhaka on Thursday. (STRDEL/AFP/Getty)

At least eight killed.

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.

Read it at Fox

Ringo Chiu/Zuma, via Corbis

Paying a living wage comes at a cost, but it can help the bottom line, says Charney, who has built a retail empire without resorting to cheap overseas labor. Daniel Gross talks to the controversial chief executive.

“The era of cheap labor is coming to an end,” says Dov Charney, the founder and chief executive officer of apparel chain American Apparel.For decades, the fabric and garment industries have been engaged in a constant chase for cheaper labor—from the mills of England to New England in the 19th century; to the sweatshops of the Lower East Side of Manhattan a century ago to textile plants in South Carolina in the first half of the 20th century; to the Philippines, South Korea, and China in the second half of the 20th century; and now to places like Bangladesh and Africa.