There's only an afternoon update today because I wasn't at the morning news budget meeting and so I didn't blog this morning. I was at other meetings ... mostly on technology advancements were talking about for the paper. But here's the plan for tomorrow's Page One:

The Ventura County Community College District board is scheduled to announce its program and staffing cuts at a meeting in Oxnard tonight. There's expected to be a large crowd and education reporter John Scheibe (jscheibe@VenturaCountyStar.com) will be there to cover it.

Also on Page One tomorrow will be a story from business writer Jim McClain (jmcclain@VenturaCountyStar.com) on gasoline prices. It's not good news. Price of a gallon of gas has gone up 28 cents since the first of the year. And industry experts say it could go up another 24 cents ... in the next three weeks. That would push it above last year's peak average of $2.40 a gallon on Oct. 18.

Michael Collins (collinsm@shns.com), the Star's Washington reporter, is reporting on efforts by coastal communities across the country to battle the Bush administration over attempts to slash federal funds used to replenish sandy beaches. Cuts could impact a long-awaited study looking at the cause of erosion along beaches in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

Voters in Los Angeles are going to the polls today to elect a new mayor. No clear winner is expected, which would send the top two candidates to a runoff. Even with the expected small turnout, Los Angeles may not have final results by presstime tonight, so check out the website.

Page One will also include a story on a massive pro-Syrian rally in Beirut today, with nearly 500,000 protestors chanting anti-American slogans. Another story will be the death of one of Chechnya's rebel leaders. And the final story will be the latest scientific tests on King Tut, which showed a badly broken left thigh could have been the cause of death of the boy pharaoh.