Thursday morning headlines

Labor Day rush: The Auto Club is looking at 3.1 million Socalians taking trips during the long weekend, 80 percent of them sticking to the roadways. That's pretty much the same as last year. The top destinations will be San Diego, Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Northern California, and Baja Mexico (cruises). Be prepared for long delays if you're driving to Nocal; a single lane of Interstate 5 just north of Castaic remains closed for ongoing work to stabilize a slope next to the freeway. (Daily News)

KTLA property for sale: This is the former Warner Bros. studio on Sunset Boulevard that's now occupied by Channel 5, along with Tribune entertainment and Tribune Studios. No price has been set, but the early betting is that Tribune could get at least $175 million, which sounds like a lot but won't do much for the company’s $8.4 billion debt load. Even after a sale, KTLA would stay on as a tenant. From the LAT:

The studio, situated just west of the Hollywood Freeway, was the site of Warner Bros.' first studio. It is where talking pictures were born when Al Jolson recorded his first words in "The Jazz Singer" in 1927. In later years, Warner used the site to produce musicals and dramas. Paramount Pictures Corp. purchased the studio in 1954 as an annex to its studios a few blocks to the south at Van Ness and Melrose avenues. In 1956, KTLA, then owned by Paramount, moved onto the lot, according to KTLA. Cowboy star Gene Autry bought KTLA and the studio from Paramount in 1964. It was sold to Tribune Broadcasting in 1986.

The Hsu chronicles: Norman Hsu seemed like just another businessman wanting to donate a bunch of money to Hillary Clinton's campaign. But this week he's been all over the papers because he happens to be a fugitive. It goes back 15 years when he failed to show up in a San Mateo courtroom to be sentenced for his role in a scheme to defraud investors. (He pleaded no contest to one count of grand theft and was facing up to three years in prison.) So the Clinton people are in high-scramble alert, announcing that Hsu's $23,000 contribution would be donated to charity. From the NYT:

The travails of Mr. Hsu have proved an embarrassment for the Clinton campaign, which has strived to project an image of rectitude in its fund-raising and to dispel any lingering shadows of past episodes of tainted contributions. Already, Mrs. Clinton’s opponents were busy trying to rekindle remembrances of the 1996 Democratic fund-raising scandals, in which Asian moneymen were accused of funneling suspect donations into Democratic coffers as President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were running for re-election. Some Clinton donors said yesterday that they did not expect the Hsu matter to hurt Mrs. Clinton unless a pattern of problematic fund-raising or compromised donors emerged, which would raise questions about the campaign’s vetting of donors. Mr. Hsu’s legal problems were first reported yesterday by The Los Angeles Times; The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday about his bundling of questionable contributions.

Hollywood couple sues: Oscar-winning director William Friedkin and his wife, former Paramount Studios boss Sherry Lansing, are accusing ADT Home Security of fraudulent misrepresentation and gross negligence in the way it handled a break-in at their Bel-Air home. The suit alleges that Friedkin was promised 24-hour patrols with a response time in minutes. But the suit alleges that while a forced entry triggered the ADT alarm, a patrolman dispatched by the company didn't arrive for an hour and 45 minutes (must have been on break). From the LAT:

When the patrolman arrived at the house, "he did not notice any signs of a break-in," the lawsuit says. The ADT patrolman spent less than 20 minutes at the house, the suit alleges. But when the couple's housekeeper arrived at 8:15 a.m. the next day, she heard the alarm blaring and saw a stepladder beneath the second-floor balcony, broken glass from the balcony's French doors and overturned furniture. "Panicked, the housekeeper contacted the Los Angeles Police Department. This was the first the police or any other authorities heard of any foul play at the Friedkin and Lansing residence the previous night," the suit says. ADT Home Security did not immediately return calls seeking a comment for this article.

More bad spinach: A Monterey grower found salmonella in a sample taken from a packing plant, so 68,000 pounds of fresh bagged spinach are being recalled. No reports so far of anyone getting sick. The recall comes a year after spinach was found to have been contaminated with E. coli bacteria. The current recall involves a batch of spinach that was distributed late last week to retail and food-service customers, such as restaurants or institutional kitchens. (San Jose Mercury News)

Villaraigosa opposes fee: He’s not supporting a state bill to impose a container fee at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach because the money wouldn’t be spent on the replacement of two large bridges that serve the ports (Gerald Desmond and Commodore Schuyler F. Heim). The bill, by state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, already faces lots of opposition from retail, shipping and other business groups. The fee would raise close to $400 million a year for projects to reduce air pollution and improve the movement of containerized cargo from those facilities. (LAT)

Those airport lounges: The terminals are noisy and jammed - why not head over to the airline lounge, where you fork over $50 for the privilege of having a drink at the bar or do some work before the flight? The WSJ checked into the lounges and found that the quality often varied with the airports. Most had serious cleanliness issues, including an American Airlines Admirals Club lounge at LAX. "Several seat cushions had huge gashes, and the bar area was sullied by crumbs and orange peels,” the Journal reports.