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A stretch of Manhattan Beach is closed as U.S. Coast Guard scientists investigate mysterious balls of tar or oil that have washed ashore.

Fire officials say it appears to be about a barrel or two of oil — nothing like the spill from a pipeline that created a 10-square-mile slick off the Santa Barbara County coast last week.

However, a two-mile stretch of beach was closed Wednesday from Manhattan into neighboring Hermosa Beach.

The cause of the goo is a mystery. There's a refinery and oil pipeline nearby but the Coast Guard didn't find the sheen from a spill. It also might be residue from the Santa Barbara spill.

Finally, natural seepage has been known to leave tar balls on the sand — and beachgoers' feet.

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Identity thieves used social security numbers and other data to access the tax filings of more than 100,000 Americans this year, the IRS has admitted. In a statement, IRS commissioner John Koskinen said the "Get Transcript" feature, which allows people to access tax returns and other filings from previous years, was targeted by "extremely sophisticated criminals" who were then able to obtain an estimated $50 million in fraudulently claimed tax refunds.

Security researcher Michael Krebs wrote about the problem back in March, but the IRS said it was only alerted to the thefts when technicians noted a higher-than-usual number of people using the Get Transcript feature from February to mid-May. Koskinen said that of 23 million downloaded transcripts, there were more than 200,000 attempts to use the feature — which has been temporarily disabled — from "questionable email domains." More than 100,000 of those attempts cleared the IRS' authentication procedures.

Although it admits to paying millions of dollars to crooks, the tax agency says its central computer system is still secure, and that the social security, address, and other personal information for taxpayers was obtained elsewhere. Koskinen didn't specify where that information had come from, but said that 80 percent of the identity theft the IRS was dealing with related to organized crime, and that the people involved had access to a "tremendous amount of data."

Congress is asking the IRS for more details about the case, but if the agency can keep the amount it pays to data-stealing crooks to $50 million, it will be an improvement on previous years. Just two years ago, in 2013, Koskinen said the IRS paid out $5.8 billion in fraudulent refunds to identity thieves.

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Fiat Chrysler boss shakes up global car business

Mary Barra, chief executive of General Motors, received a lengthy and unusual email back in March from one of her direct competitors, Sergio Marchionne.

Ms. Barra had never met Mr. Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. And she was in no way expecting their first contact to be an offer to discuss a potential blockbuster of a merger.

The email, according to two people familiar with it, laid out in detail how global car makers needed to consolidate to save money and suggested that a combination of GM and Fiat Chrysler could cut billions of dollars in costs and create an automotive superpower.

His analysis did not interest Ms. Barra or other GM executives and board members. Instead, Mr. Marchionne’s request for a meeting on the subject was turned down, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It was a rare rejection for Mr. Marchionne, the mastermind behind the merger between the Italian automaker Fiat and Chrysler, the American car company that required a government bailout to survive the last recession.

Mr. Marchionne, however, is not one to be put off by rejection.

A month later, on April 29, in a routine analyst conference call, he doubled down.

Instead of following the usual script, in which chief executives discuss the current state of their operations, Mr. Marchionne stunned the Wall Street analysts by devoting the entire call to his sudden and intense appeal to automakers to merge.

“I think it is absolutely clear that the amount of capital waste that’s going on in this industry is something that certainly requires remedy,” he said. “A remedy in our view is through consolidation.”

Amazon's sales reporting change could raise tax bill

Amazon, the global online retailer, is changing the way it records sales in a move that could see it paying more tax.

Transactions carried out in European markets were previously recorded in Luxembourg, with which Amazon had a low-tax agreement.

Now sales made through subsidiaries in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy will be registered in those countries, the retailer has said.

Amazon had received heavy criticism for its tax avoidance policies.

"More than two years ago, we began the process of establishing local country branches of Amazon EU Sarl, our primary retail operating company in Europe," the company said in a statement.

"As of 1 May, Amazon EU Sarl is recording retail sales made to customers through these branches in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy.

"Previously, these retail sales were recorded in Luxembourg."

Amazon added that it was "working on opening a branch for France".

In recent years, the European Union has intensified its investigations into the tax deals negotiated by global companies with countries such as Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

It suspects that such deals amount to illegal state aid and distort competition.

Last year, the European Commission - the EU's executive arm - launched a formal investigation into Amazon's tax arrangements with Luxembourg.

And the EU is also looking into tech giant Apple's tax dealings in Ireland, coffee-shop chain Starbucks' dealings in the Netherlands, and Italian carmaker Fiat's agreement with Luxembourg.

At least 104 people died due to ignition switch defect.

The failure of the automaker General Motors or GM about ignition switch defect resulted in loss of life of at least 104 people.

The unveiling could make General Motors to pay a record fine in addition to what it is paying to victims and to cover the cost of replacing 2.6 million switches in older model cars.

The Justice Department found General Motors of criminal wrongdoing. Company has accepted the defect and carrying out investigation which can act in company’s favor.

This makes them separate from Toyota, who hid reports of unintended acceleration in vehicles and had to pay $1.2 billion as fine.

In the investigation, it was seen that whether or not GM has intentionally not disclosed the issue.

General Motors said, “We are cooperating fully with all requests, but we are unable to comment on the status of the investigation including timing.”

Mary Barro, GM CEO has repeatedly apologized for the switch defect. She has also brought in independent counsel, Kenneth Feinberg to go through the claims and know who are eligible for compensation.

The number has increased to 104 deaths from 13 deaths and more cases are under review.

The defective switches could easily move from run position to accessory position while the car was being driven.

The change disabled the brakes, power steering and also deactivated the air bags.

GM is cooperating with the inquiry, but its penalty will be considerable seeing the 104 deaths taken place due to the defect.

Last year some of the company employees were dismissed, and former employees were also under investigation and they are chances that they may face criminal chance.

In 2014, GM has sent around $3 billion on recalls and other safety issues and $600 million have been set aside for compensation of victims.

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Forget politics and religion. One of the biggest debates on Wall Street these days is whether oil and energy stocks are toxic or terrific.

In some ways, it looks like a smart move. Oil plunged below $45 a barrel in January. Back then, people couldn't seem to sell energy stocks fast enough. In recent weeks, oil has staged a mini-rally. Now it's trading around $60 a barrel.

That's still far from the glory days of over $100 a barrel that the industry saw as recently as last summer, but for drillers, it's a lot easier to make a profit when oil is back around the $60 mark. Bank of America thinks "the bottom is well behind us."

Stay away from oil?

But there are still plenty of naysayers. Goldman Sachs (GS) just predicted that oil will return to $45 a barrel in the fall. Cheap gas prices should make many Americans happy and help boost the U.S. economy, but they won't aid corporate energy profits.

Prominent investor Jeffrey Gundlach has gone as far as saying that it "makes no sense" to buy oil or energy stocks now.

"Too many people think it's cute to make a distressed play on energy," said Gundlach, founder of DoubleLine Capital, which manages over $63 billion. "Usually the people who buy because they think it's clever end up selling to other people at a lower price."

Valuations are still high

Oil prices may be lower than they were a year ago, but the stocks don't look that cheap, according to research by investment strategist Ed Yardeni.

"The energy earnings outlook still remains pretty dismal compared to a year ago" says Yardeni.

How to play it...safe

Most investors already have exposure to energy because they own mutual funds that invest in many U.S. stocks from different industries. So if energy rebounds, you get a win. And if it plummets again, you are protected somewhat.

If you want to go further than that, you will probably want to do your homework and only buy certain energy stocks (that's what the hedge funds did) or buy a fund that just tracks the crude oil price.

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