Housing

Whether by necessity or choice, a quarter of Americans take at least one vacation by themselves each year. Some solo travelers are single. Some have partners who dislike travel or have different interests or can't get away. Some just crave freedom. But all face the same question: What's the best trip for the person traveling alone? "The key is to know yourself," said Beth Whitman, author of a guide for women traveling alone and founder of Wanderlustandlipstick.com , a website devoted to advice and tours for women on the go. "There are times when you just need to get away, to recuperate.

The minimalist, loft-style Glass House was designed to make the most of its ocean and sandy beach views. An 11-foot-tall folding door system allows indoor-outdoor living, while channel glass side walls bring diffused natural light into the interiors. Location: 2316 The Strand, Manhattan Beach 90266 Asking price: $11 million Year built: 2001 Architect: Roger Kurath House size: Two bedrooms, three bathrooms, 3,963 square feet Lot size: 3,503 square feet Features: Exposed H beams, curved walls of glass, spiral staircase, living room fireplace, billiard room, media room, circular glass shower with skylight, ocean-view spa bath tub, two-car garage.

Michelle Knight, the longest-held of three women kidnapped and imprisoned in a Cleveland house for years, was discharged Friday from the hospital where she had been cared for after her ordeal. Reportedly in good spirits, Knight left MetroHealth Medical Center on the same day state officials announced that DNA testing had established that Ariel Castro, being held on kidnapping and rape charges, was the father of the 6-year-old girl born to another of the imprisoned women. Like her fellow captives, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, Knight asked for privacy.

WASHINGTON - The ousted head of the Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday for the agency's "foolish mistakes" in singling out conservative groups for intrusive and time-consuming scrutiny, but said that the effort was not driven by partisan motives. Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, whose tenure will end Wednesday after he resigned under pressure this week, said the agency staff's attempts to identify groups with political aims was not "targeting," as it was termed in an inspector general's audit.

Michele and Russell Poland's credit was shot, but they managed to buy their suburban dream home anyway. After a business bankruptcy and a home foreclosure, they turned to a rare option in this era of tightfisted banking - a subprime loan. The Polands paid nearly $10,000 in upfront fees for the privilege of securing a mortgage at 10.9% interest. And they had to raid their retirement account for a 35% down payment. Most borrowers would balk at such stiff terms. But with prices rising, the Polands wanted to snag a four-bedroom home in Temecula near top-rated schools for their 5-year-old son. By later this year, they figure, they'll be able to refinance into a standard loan.

A popular government program enabling underwater borrowers who are current on their mortgages to refinance at lower rates will be extended for two more years.  The Obama administration's Home Affordable Refinance Program had been scheduled to expire at the end of this year. HARP now will run through 2015, regulators announced Thursday . More than 2.2 million borrowers with little or no home equity have refinanced using the 4-year-old HARP, and consumer advocates and lenders welcomed the news of the extension.

Chrysler Group will recall more than 200,000 of its vehicles, including its Ram pickup truck,  Dodge Challengers and Chargers and Jeep Liberty and Patriots for a variety of problems. In the biggest recall, the automaker will inspect and fix about 120,000 Chrysler 300s, and Dodge Challenger and Chargers sedans from the 2011 and 2012 model years because of an airbag problem. The wrong-sized crimps were used in building the airbag wiring harness, and that can can cause the airbag warning light to illuminate.

WASHINGTON - How hot is hot when it comes to housing markets across the country right now? Crazy hot: Some houses sell within days, sometimes within hours, of listing. Then there are the growing numbers that sell even before they formally hit the market - sold through a controversial technique known as "pocket listing. " What's a pocket listing? Essentially it's a private, "off-market" listing, often of short duration. Instead of putting the house on the local Multiple Listing Service, which exposes it to a vast number of shoppers and agents via real estate websites, agents restrict access to information about the house to their own buyer clients or colleagues in the same brokerage, hoping for a quick, full-price sale.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the newest member of the Senate Banking Committee, waited patiently for her first chance to question top financial regulators at a recent hearing on Capitol Hill. When her turn finally came after 90 minutes, Warren quickly showed she wouldn't be following the custom that a freshman senator be seen and not heard. After some pleasantries, the longtime consumer advocate and Wall Street critic lit into the heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion. She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another's hair. Past a cellphone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near-daze. Quietly, the 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered now except homework. "No wonder you're going to Harvard," a girl teased her. Around here, Khadijah is known as "Harvard girl," the "smart girl" and the girl with the contagious smile who landed at Jefferson High School only 18 months ago. What students don't know is that she is also a homeless girl.

BALTIMORE - Greg Cantori plans to downsize when he retires. Really, really downsize. His retirement home is 238 square feet - one-tenth the size of the average new American house - and sits in his Maryland yard. He and wife Renee can hitch it to a truck and take it with them wherever they go. "It's so cheap - that's what's so cool about this," said Cantori, 52, who envisions a surf-and-turf future, alternating between the house and a sailboat. "We bought the house for $19,000.

WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has reached an "agreement in principle" on a sweeping immigration bill that would parallel work underway in the Senate, sources said Thursday. The consensus, reached after a private evening meeting, puts the House on track to unveil a bill in early June. The group of eight Democratic and Republican lawmakers had been stalemated to the point that House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) expressed concern earlier Thursday. U.S. immigration law: Decades of debate "It's been a difficult, arduous process and we haven't fallen apart yet," said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.)

The furor over the Benghazi talking points continues. Republicans still see them as the main event in a campaign to embarrass President Obama. The president, for his part, calls them a "sideshow. " Finally, on Wednesday, the White House released more than 100 pages of internal emails that showed, in excruciating detail, exactly how the talking points were edited - and the emails, at least to our reading, supported the president's characterization. Prepared by intelligence officials and revised in interagency discussions, the now-famous talking points were the basis for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's comments five days after the 2012 attack on the diplomatic compound in Libya that the siege had grown out of a spontaneous reaction to protests in Cairo over an anti-Muslim video.

WASHINGTON - Facing questions about the Justice Department's secret seizure of reporters' phone records, the White House says that it will renew its push for legislation that would offer federal protections to journalists and their sources. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that the White House had asked Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to reintroduce the so-called media shield bill, which would in some cases prevent reporters from being compelled to name confidential sources.

WASHINGTON - Career CIA officers were responsible for administration claims that the armed attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead last fall grew out of a protest of an anti-Islamic video, an incorrect assertion that became a flash point for critics who say the Obama administration deliberately misled the public for political reasons, according to emails released by the White House on Wednesday. The 99 pages of emails from the two days after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack reveal confused and occasionally sharp negotiations among officials at the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the White House and the State Department as they scrambled to craft so-called talking points about a nightlong assault that was still little understood.

WASHINGTON - Congressional Republicans have opened a new line of attack on President Obama's healthcare law, charging that the administration has improperly sought help from the healthcare industry and other outside groups to implement the landmark statute. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for months has been asking foundations, consumer and business groups, insurance companies and others to help enroll uninsured Americans in health insurance this fall, a key goal of the Affordable Care Act. Administration officials say those actions were entirely appropriate.

Two-fifths of the elderly spend more than they earn, often forcing them to dip into savings to pay bills, according to a new study. Among those 65 and older, 40% shell out more on housing, medical care and other costs than they take in from Social Security, pensions and other sources, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. An additional 14.3% of that age group spend more than 75% of their incomes on regular expenses, leaving little cushion for unexpected financial setbacks, the study showed.

In a push to simplify mortgage modifications, federal regulators announced a streamlined process that doesn't require borrowers to prove a hardship. "This new option gives delinquent borrowers another path to avoid foreclosure," Edward J. DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said in a statement announcing the modifications Wednesday. The new modifications, however, would not include reducing the loan balance, a move promoted by housing advocates and others but resisted by DeMarco, who says it would end up costing taxpayers money and would encourage defaults.

WASHINGTON - A defiant President Obama dismissed as a "sideshow" the controversy over his administration's handling of last year's armed assault in Benghazi, Libya, accusing critics of trying to make political hay from the deaths of four Americans. "We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus," Obama told reporters Monday. Obama's angry remarks were his first since House hearings last week about the September 2012 attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, and his first public reaction to fresh evidence indicating the White House weighed political calculations as it released information in the days that followed.

SOLANA BEACH, Calif. - As befits its name, issues of sand and surf loom large in this seaside community north of San Diego. For more than three decades, controversy has surrounded the proliferation of privately built sea walls meant to protect bluff-top homeowners along the city's approximately 1.7 miles of oceanfront. Property owners say the walls are the only way to keep the pounding waves from inexorably undercutting the tall bluffs and imperiling their pricey homes. Environmentalists view the sea walls - built on public and private property - as abominations that shrink the beach and place private interests above the right of the public to enjoy the coast.