Monday morning headlines

Stocks head south: The Dow is down around 100 points in early trading. Profit taking and new concerns about economy are considered factors.

Home prices inch up: The May median price in L.A. was $305,000, up from $303,000 the month before, though it's still 30 percent lower than a year earlier, according to the Business Journal (didn't notice a link).

Vehicle fraud heats up: More folks are torching their vehicles. Nationwide, suspicious vehicle fires or arson increased 27 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier. Also, suspicious personal injury slip-and-fall claims increased 60 percent and staged car accident cases were up 34 percent. (LAT)

Zell loses out?: The Tribune bankruptcy reorganization could end up transferring control to a group of large banks and investors that holds $8.6 billion in senior debt. The plan is still taking shape and a resolution might take months. From the Chicago Tribune:

The general contours of a new capital structure are coming into focus, and the plan centers on a debt-for-equity swap that probably would give the senior lenders a large majority ownership stake in the reorganized company. A source with knowledge of the situation said the plan would wipe out a $90 million warrant Zell negotiated as part of his $8.2 billion deal to take the company private in 2007.

Fox Interactive abandons Playa Vista: Forget about the plan to move into half a million square feet of office space. Instead, the News Corp. unit is expected to lay off many of the folks who were to occupy the Playa Vista space (Fox Interactive operates MySpace, among other sites). Curbed LA had the original tip last week. From the LAT:

Fox will save millions of dollars if it can sublet its Playa Vista offices, said real estate broker Neil Resnick of Grubb & Ellis. "The sooner they dispose of the real estate, the better off they are financially." Unfortunately for Fox, rents have been falling and vacancy has been rising on the Westside for the last 12 months, Resnick said. By dumping its offices back onto the market, Fox would increase the amount of office space available for sublease on the Westside by 16%, to 2.5 million square feet.

Renovate and tear down: I might have missed this from earlier stories, but downtown's Wilshire Grand, which is set for the wrecking ball to make way for a $1 billion development, is going ahead with its renovation plans (though owners are cutting back on their original plans). From the NYT:

It may take up to two years to win approval for the project from government agencies, according to [James A. Thomas, whose company, the Thomas Properties Group, was hired by Korean Air to oversee the redevelopment], and for that reason, the company decided not to halt the renovations that were under way. But it did decide to speed things up. Instead of renovating floor by floor, as originally planned, it is tackling three floors at a time, said [Marc Loge, the hotel's director of public relations]. That will allow the hotel to complete the renovation this fall, about a year ahead of schedule. Low occupancy during the economic downturn has made it easier to renovate large swaths of the building at once, Mr. Loge added.

Paperless concert tickets: Ticketmaster will be trying it out for the upcoming Miley Cyrus concert tour (tickets go on sale today). The technology makes tickets impossible to scalp because they can be redeemed only at the concert, using the credit card with which they were bought. From the WSJ:

Most states have legalized scalping in recent years, and professional scalpers say they are just charging what the market will bear. They predict the new paperless tickets will cause problems ranging from bottlenecks at concert sites -- the system requires, for example, that all members of the same party enter at the same time -- to personal-safety risks for Ms. Cyrus's fans and their parents.

Investment firm looking at Israeli company: Shamrock Holdings, which is controlled by Roy Disney and Stanley Gold, is in talks to acquire or invest in MIRS Communications, an Israeli-based cellular network operator that is owned by Motorola. The Israeli newspaper Globes reports that Motorola wants $300 million. (This corrects an earlier version that said Shamrock was part of Disney.)