Its Model S sedan (base priced at $62,400, after federal tax credits) was just named Motor Trend Car of the Year. Reviewers at Consumer Reports gave the lithium-ion battery powered vehicle a rave.

And the company, headed by billionaire innovator Elon Musk, 41, posted a profit for the first time in its 10-year history — powered in part by zero-emission environmental credits.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
Amazon faces a grilling from members of Britain's Parliament over its extremely low U.K. corporate tax payments, Reuters reported Friday. As NPR noted on Thursday, Amazon has the subject of intense scrutiny after it was revealed that the Internet retailer's U.K. unit paid only slightly more in taxes than it received in government grants because its sales are routed through Luxembourg.

(Most recent update: 12:50 p.m. ET.)

Saying that "foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection," the outgoing head of the Internal Revenue Service told Congress on Friday that he and the agency want to apologize for the targeting of some conservative groups during the 2012 campaign cycle.

"Mistakes were made, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan motivation," the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service writes in USA Today's op-ed pages.