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First cut on Saturday afternoon...plus Sunday updates at the bottom.
- Richard Alarcon resigned from the Assembly in time to allow the special election to fill his vacancy to be held May 15, same day as the local runoffs. He also was appointed "caretaker" of the 7th Council District in L.A. by Council President Eric Garcetti. DN
- KTLA's Sam Rubin has lost his gig doing the Hollywood report for Chicago's WGN Channel 9, another Tribune station. Sun-Times
- The Airbus A380, the world's largest airliner, makes its first-ever landing at LAX Monday morning at 9:30. It's slated for Runway 24R on the north side of the field, then will taxi to the Imperial Terminal on the south side for some pomp and circumstance. Extensive crowd preparations: Breeze, Times
- Local freelance journalist Chip Jacobs has sold Wheeling the Deal: The Outrageous Legend of Gordon Zahler, Hollywood's Flashiest Quadriplegic to Behler Publications. Zahler is Jacobs' uncle.
- Most of the local journalism groups are holding a joint mixer March 29 at the Redwood downtown to re-inaugurate the bar's direct phone line to the Times newsroom. Included are the Greater L.A. Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, California Chicano News Media Association, Asian American Journalists Association - Los Angeles Chapter, Black Journalists Association of Southern California and the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Gay & Lesbian Journalists Association.
- Orange County Register travel editor Gary Warner has joined the blogosphere with Travels with Gary.
- CNN and the Times will hold joint presidential candidate debates in late January, one for the Democrats and one for the Republicans.
- All the defections from the OC Weekly to a new Long Beach alt-weekly that we've been telling you about turn up in the Times' California section Sunday. The District is backed by anonymous Orange County Republicans and will include "Commie Girl" columnist Rebecca Schoenkopf.
- Columnist Steve Lopez jumps on those graphic torture billboards for the film Captivity.
- Ida Honorof, the consumer crusader on KPFK radio in the 1960s and 70s and later a fixture at government meetings in L.A., died in Eureka at age 93.