Asian communities faced language barriers during fires | Los Angeles Times
A new UCLA study published this week found Asian communities affected by the recent fires in Los Angeles County had difficulty accessing information about emergency evacuations and recovery efforts because of language barriers … Chhandara Pech, researcher and deputy director at UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, [said] the study’s findings underscore why government officials need to be more precise on the information they are distributing to neighborhoods.
The risks for heart disease | KCAL-TV
“What’s been really interesting is since the 1950s, we’ve seen a decrease in the overall incidents of heart disease. Now, this is partly due to advances in medical therapy and treatment and interventions, However, despite the valiant efforts, we are starting to see an actual increase in the rise of heart disease,” said UCLA’s Dr. Megha Agarwal.
NIH cuts put medical research at risk | Los Angeles Times
“All my research will be shut down if this goes through. There is no other way to say it. It will be done,” said Beate Ritz, a professor and vice chair of the epidemiology department at UCLA who has received at least $1 million a year for more than a decade from the NIH to research environmental pollution, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. “It’s not my salary. I get paid by the state to teach. But it is the cost of much of everything else.” (UCLA’s Gina Poe and Vivek Shetty were also quoted.)
Gen Z finds Trump and Musk inspiring, says UCLA study | KCRW-FM
What do young people think of the American Dream? Not much, says a new UCLA study, but many of them want to disrupt the status quo like Trump. (UCLA’s Yalda Uhls was interviewed.)
Trump unleashes chaos at key U.S. science agency | Bloomberg News
“Weather does not respect political boundaries,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who watched the happenings at NOAA from the outside. “It is not possible to predict the weather in the United States without cooperation from other parts of the world.”
Executive order mistakes dissent for bigotry | Los Angeles Times
(Commentary co-written by UCLA’s David Myers) Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s punitive and narrow focus on campus protesters misidentifies real threats faced by Jews in American society. And in the process, the government will stigmatize a large group of people for exercising their right to protest. This, in turn, will cause serious damage to the functioning of the American university, turning it from an engine of knowledge into a web of informants intent on stifling dissent.
Fearing ICE, laborers might not report hazards at work | Los Angeles Times
At a training in L.A. for workers doing cleanup after the wildfires, a discussion about wearing respirators quickly veered to “what if ICE shows up?” said Kevin Riley, director of the UCLA Labor Occupational Safety & Health program. “It is so in the forefront of these workers’ minds.”
L.A.’s migrant workers are under stress | Los Angeles Times’ “De Los”
Rebuilding will take several years, and Latinos will be the backbone of the recovery effort while also being the most vulnerable, said Silvia González, director of research for UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute. Latinos make up 34% of the workforce in the Palisades fire zone that encompasses Pacific Palisades, Topanga and Malibu. Yet they are only 7% of the population there, she said.
Farmers may pay the price for supporting Trump | Los Angeles Times
If Trump deports undocumented farmworkers, says UCLA economics professor Jerry Nickelsburg, farmers will “have to pay more — and maybe a lot more — to get their crops picked. And that will lead to higher food prices.”
Incarceration, deportation and the fight for ‘A New Path’ | Chicago Tribune
For people without U.S. citizenship, Trump’s immigration policies can add paranoia to every aspect of life, said Maria-Elena Young, a faculty associate at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and an assistant professor at UC Merced. “The way our immigration laws work in this country is that they function essentially to criminalize (noncitizen) peoples’ day-to-day activities,” Young said.
Could balloon-like water tanks help fight L.A.’s fires? | Los Angeles Times
“Los Angeles needs more water storage capacity, particularly in elevated areas, for fire protection,” said Sanjay Mohanty, an associate professor of engineering at UCLA. “Investing in these systems can be beneficial.”
Black Altadenans seek hope in the wake of fires | National Public Radio
According to a new study from the University of California, Los Angeles, almost half of Black-owned homes were destroyed or heavily damaged in the Eaton Fire, the deadliest and most destructive of the Los Angeles wildfires.
A sore spot in L.A.’s housing crisis: empty homes | Wall Street Journal
Compared with most of the rest of the U.S., Los Angeles County doesn’t have a lot of empty homes. It has a lower vacancy rate than “the vast majority of counties and metros across the U.S.,” said Shane Phillips, a housing researcher at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Record $1.39bn expected in bets for Super Bowl LIX | The Guardian
For Dr Tim Fong, a clinical professor of psychology and co-director of the [UCLA] Gambling Studies Program who studies gambling addiction, events including the Super Bowl can exacerbate potential addiction for those who are only in the early stages of problems. (Fong was quoted.)
U.K. reportedly demands access to encrypted Apple accounts | USA Today
“It’s hard to know what the specific impact might be,” John Villasenor, co-faculty director of the University of California, Los Angeles’ Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, told USA TODAY. “But more broadly, this underscores for everyone in the U.S. ‒ not just iPhone users ‒ that the convenience of cloud storage comes at a potentially very significant cost in loss of control over who might get access to that data.”
Ex-lawmaker allegedly violated campaign finance law | CalMatters
The IRS restriction on 501(c)(3) nonprofit applies to monetary and non-monetary contributions alike, said Ellen Aprill, a scholar at the UCLA School of Law who specializes in nonprofit tax law. But if a 501(c)(3) nonprofit suspected of breaking the law could prove that it has made similar non-monetary contributions to others on a non-partisan basis, Aprill said it might not violate the federal law.
Gen Z can’t separate fact from AI fiction | U.S. News & World Report
(Commentary by UCLA student Amy Wong) I’m 18 years old, and from the age of 6, I’ve been very online — watching Minecraft YouTube videos for hours, scouring Reddit pages and chatting about politics on social media with people across the country. You name it; I’ve done it. Despite this illustrious digital career, over the last few months, I’ve been duped by online misinformation more times than I’d like — from false claims about politics designed to outrage to fake images of Taylor Swift generated by artificial intelligence.
