Thursday morning headlines

Airbus snubs LAX: The airport shelled out $9 million in order to accommodate the new A380 jetliner on what was supposed to be its maiden voyage to the U.S. Well, forget about it. Airbus has instead decided to touch down in NY next month, followed by Chicago the next day. The 555-passenger A380 won't make it into LAX until June. The airport had been counting on the test flight as a marketing and promotional tool. Airbus said it decided to take the A380 to JFK and O'Hare at the request of Lufthansa Airlines, whose crews have helped during the test flights. LAT

Virgin investors: L.A.'s Black Canyon Capital LLC and NY's Cyrus Capital Partners LP. are putting another $30 million into upstart airline Virgin America. This is the would-be U.S. carrier conceived by British billionaire Richard Branson that's run afoul of federal regulators. The new money is supposed to mollify earlier concerns about financial guarantees and whether the operation is being run by American hands. Under a law dating to the 1920s, foreigners are barred from controlling U.S.-based airlines. Virgin America is based in Burlingame. SF Business Times

Banks unload bad loans: Merrill Lynch & Co., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., HSBC Holdings PLC and others are worried about more Americans getting behind in their mortgage payments, so they're trying to dump the high-risk, high-return loans that they bought from subprime mortgage originators over the last couple of years. From the WSJ:

In 2005 and 2006, banks such as HSBC and brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch went on a buying spree, snapping up subprime loans from typically small mortgage banks that had lent money to homebuyers. At the same time, many lenders were loosening their credit standards and making riskier loans. HSBC kept many of the loans, while Wall Street firms chopped the loans into pools sold to investors as mortgage-backed securities. In recent months, as home-price appreciation fell and borrowers faced rising interest rates, more people defaulted on their mortgages. That prompted Merrill Lynch and others to exercise their contractual right to demand the sellers buy back the loans. Under mortgage contracts, mortgage originators must often repurchase loans that default very early in their term or that come with underwriting mistakes, such as flawed property appraisals.

Guess going downscale: The L.A.-based clothing company will be opening its first G by Guess store in April at the North County Mall in Escondido. Another 24 stores are set to open by the end of July. The stores are described as trendy but not cutting edge and will cater to the low- and middle-income crowd. Meanwhile, the company reported a 77 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit, the 14th straight quarter of profit growth. Guess stock is up more than 11 percent this morning. LAT

MySpace suit dimissed: This was the one involving the family of a Texas girl who sued the Bev Hills-based social networking Web site for not having enough safeguards to protect underage users. The girl had lied about her age and was sexually assaulted by a man she met on MySpace. But U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks ruled that MySpace should not be held responsible. "If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace," he wrote. The lawsuit is one of several facing MySpace. SF Chronicle

Ranking Web viewership: More than 100 million Americans watched Web video at least once a month in 2006, but figuring out what they're watching has been difficult. That leaves providers not knowing what works and what doesn't. "We're sort of in the Middle Ages," Alan Wurtzel, president of research at NBC Universal told Variety. "Online video measurement is very primitive and very inaccurate."

Several factors make measuring online video consumption much more challenging. Videos are delivered in a variety of digital formats, some of which are streamed live onto a viewer's computer, while others are downloaded to be watched later (or not). Some sites, like YouTube, chalk up a view every time a video begins playing, while others think it is important to evaluate how much of a video a user has actually watched. And the same vid may be distributed on many different sites. "We want to see how a piece of content from David Letterman performs in all those different places," said Steve Snyder, chief operating officer of CBS Interactive. "That includes mobile phones, where we deliver 'Dave TV.' "

Farmland disappearing: We all know that L.A. County has lost pretty much all its farmland, but did you know that in just two years, 18,800 acres the San Joaquin Valley have given way to subdivisions, shopping malls or other developments? Fresno County, the nation's No.1 agriculture county in production value, lost the most. Press-Enterprise