Bringing together Boston's CleanTech news and events

Joe Ristaino just did something that would have been unimaginable a year or two ago: He turned down a job offer.

NEW YORK — In its 73-year history, the Beetle has evolved from the hippie ride of choice to a cute chick car. Now Volkswagen is reinventing it again.

TOKYO — Toyota Motor Corp. resumed car production at all of its plants in Japan yesterday for the first time since the March 11 earthquake. The factories will run at half capacity, due to parts shortages.

WASHINGTON — Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills were mixed in yesterday’s auction, with rates on three-month bills rising to the highest point since late March.

WASHINGTON — Builders are more pessimistic about the housing market this month, a dismal sign at the start of the spring buying season.

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices yesterday considered making it easier to challenge some patents, reviewing a case that led to changes in Microsoft’s Word software and may force the company to pay a $300 million award.

NEW YORK — Oil slipped more than 2 percent yesterday after Standard & Poor’s lowered its long-term outlook for US debt, raising concerns about the economy and expectations of cuts in government spending.

NEW YORK — Citigroup , the third-largest US bank, reported a 32 percent drop in first-quarter earnings, a smaller decline than analysts estimated, as it cut reserves for future losses and consumer-banking profit rose.

DETROIT — General Motors Co. will raise car and truck prices by an average of $123 per vehicle because of higher oil and metal costs.

Amedisys Inc. , a provider of home health services, has agreed to buy the Boston-based hospice company Beacon Hospice for about $125 million.

NEW YORK — Synthes Inc. has confirmed it is in talks about a possible takeover by Johnson & Johnson. It is potentially the biggest deal in the 125-year history of J&J, which is trying to recover after pulling more than 50 products off the market since the start of 2010.

NEW YORK — The Greeks reject a debt restructuring out of hand. The European Central Bank fears that such a move would spread financial panic. And, meanwhile, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund insist that their recipe of bailouts combined with sharp spending cuts make restructurings unnecessary.

Stocks fell more than 1 percent yesterday after a major US bond rating agency took a dim view of the nation’s budget deficits and said the political path to addressing the problem was unclear.

The Community Bank in Brockton, one of a handful of local lenders that ran into trouble after the housing market sank, is taking additional steps to get back on solid financial ground.

Two robots made by iRobot Corp. of Bedford explored buildings inside Japan’s damaged nuclear reactor Sunday and sent back data that indicated radiation levels are still too high to allow human repair crews to go inside.

The hiring market is anything but slow for the fast-food king. McDonald’s is holding a national hiring event today to fill 50,000 positions, including 2,200 in Massachusetts — the biggest hiring initiative in company history — to keep up with an uptick in business and a growing number of 24-hour stores. But these jobs, for everything from cashiers to maintenance ...

NEW YORK — Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are seeking review of an April 11 court ruling enforcing a $65 million settlement with Facebook Inc. over their assertions that company founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for the social networking site.

WASHINGTON — Yahoo plans to extend the amount of time it retains records on what its users search for online, less than 2 1/2 years after breaking from the other big Internet search engines and promising to delete such data promptly.

Papa John’s International Inc., the pizza chain, reported late Friday that cochief executive and president Jude Thompson had resigned after a year on the job — the second CEO to leave in about three years. Founder John Schnatter will take on sole responsibility for the CEO duties.