UCLA in the News lists selected mentions of UCLA in the world’s news media. Some articles may require registration or a subscription. See more UCLA in the News.
Justin Torres’s art of exposure and concealment | The New Yorker
According to the [UCLA] author Justin Torres, “Backstory and exposition are tricks of the adult mind.” That explains why his first novel, “We the Animals,” which is told from the shared perspective of three young brothers in upstate New York, unfolds not as a narrative but as a string of vignettes. The semi-autobiographical novel describes a family with not enough money or status to satisfy its hungers for food, dignity, safety, or belonging. (Torres was interviewed.)
Democracy has overcome big stress tests since 2020 | Associated Press
The upshot is it will be far harder for Trump to try to overturn a loss in 2024 than in 2020. The most likely way he returns to the White House is by winning the election outright. “It’s not to say the risks are gone,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s to say we’ve successfully fought the last war.” (Hasen was also quoted by the New York Times and ABC News (Australia) and interviewed by MSNBC.)
New FDA rule allowing blood donation to be more inclusive | ABC News
This led to the FDA instituting a lifetime ban on gay and bisexual men from donating blood as well as women who have sex with men who have sex with men. “That was really based not on an individual person’s risk, but more so on belonging to a particular group and some of that, at the initial onset, you could say was based on what we were seeing with regard to the impact of HIV on specific communities, namely, gay and bisexual men,” Ayako Miyashita Ochoa, an adjunct professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, told ABC News.
How we build cities can help us overcome traumatic events | Fast Company
(Commentary by UCLA’s Nicholas Lalla) U.S. cities are enduring an increasing number of shocks — from mass shootings to extreme weather events. These tragedies not only take innocent lives, but they tear at community bonds and can inflict trauma that can be hard to overcome. A city that isn’t resilient enough to withstand the aftermath of a disaster, manmade or natural, isn’t one that can serve for long as a viable center of commerce, culture and society.
Israel’s highest court protects its power | The Conversation
“Since the 1990s, Israel’s high court has become very involved in Israeli politics, something it did not do in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s,” [UCLA’s Dov] Waxman said. “It has intervened, overridden and disqualified many government decisions and laws. So the perception, particularly by those on the right, that this is an activist court, that it has been too active, is reasonable.”
Mask mandate reinstated at L.A. County healthcare facilities | KTLA-TV
“We’re starting to see the effects of gathering during the holidays, a variant that is likely to be more contagious, more easily infecting people, low rates of immunization,” explained Dr. Annie Rimoin, professor of epidemiology at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “And the weather’s been cold so people are gathering inside.”
The battle over high-capacity ammunition magazines | Los Angeles Times
“This is a reflection of where the country is,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who focuses on 2nd Amendment law. “It really highlights a political divide.” (Winkler was also interviewed by NPR’s ‘All Things Considered.’)
Far-right group’s videos gain a foothold in classrooms | NBC News
“It’s not just an alternate reality to what the existing curriculum is saying, but an alternative to almost any mainstream source of information,” said John Rogers, director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access. (Rogers was also quoted by The Guardian about California schools.)
Trump might be set up for Supreme Court disappointment | Newsweek
Harry Litman, a University of California, Los Angeles, law professor and former federal prosecutor, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday that if the court of appeals accepts the Midland Asphalt logic, it would be “huge”. He also noted that “a very eminent and largely conservative set of lawyers” joined the American Oversight brief.
What’s undercutting Trump’s vows to deport millions | Associated Press
“It was a terror campaign that was designed to scare people from the country,” said UCLA history professor Kelly Lytle Hernández. “It was really a PR campaign designed to terrorize communities into self-deporting.” Hernandez said the administration would round up a sizable number of people, broadcast it and announce they were traveling to other towns. “There is no way the United States had that force to affect that number of deportations.
‘Snow drought’ grips California and western U.S. | Los Angeles Times
December’s powerful storms delivered super-sized waves and record-setting rainfall in California, but most of it fell in coastal areas, and almost none in the interior part of the state that is home to the Sierra, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA. (Swain was also quoted by the New York Times.)
How to help save the planet? One group says go vegan | USA Today
Peter Kalmus, a data scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and associate project scientist at UCLA, is a proponent of the treaty: “Earth breakdown requires urgent action, and the animal agriculture and fossil fuel industries are the two biggest causes. “Rapidly reducing animal agriculture and shifting humanity to a plant-based diet is one of the best, easiest and fastest things we can do to save the planet,” Kalmus said. “It will also buffer food security in a time of increasing crop failures due to global heating. The world needs a Plant-Based Treaty.”
A year of buying drugs in Mexican pharmacies | Los Angeles Times
Dr. David Goodman-Meza, a UCLA assistant professor who studies drug use, said the results of The Times’ investigation show a much larger problem than was initially apparent. “This is a systematic effort to taint the supply,” he said. “It involves many levels, and the endpoint is the pharmacy. There’s likely other players making and distributing these counterfeit products — we just don’t know who those players are.”
Warnings about IV drips, injections at unregulated med spas | NBC News
Testing later found that Amma had been infected with an aggressive bacterium called Mycobacterium abscessus, which is found in water, soil and dust. The bacterium is also often connected to cosmetic procedures that involve injections if the equipment is not sterilized properly, said Dr. Claire Brown, an infectious disease expert at UCLA.
Resolutions aren’t the key to a happier new year | Los Angeles Times
(Commentary by UCLA’s Cassie Holmes) We tend to look to the new year as a new beginning, as an opportunity for a fresh start. Aspiring for something different, something better, we devise resolutions in hopes of making ourselves healthier, more productive, more successful … but really, the end goal is to be happier: to feel satisfied rather than wanting at this same time next year.
Millennials have found a way to buy houses | Washington Post
The rising costs of homeownership have been especially impactful on Black and Latino home buyers, who have applied for mortgages at declining rates since the start of the pandemic, said Josè Loya, an assistant professor at UCLA who researches housing inequality. Such groups are disproportionately affected by rising home prices because they tend to have lower incomes, he said.
Is Ottawa’s transit system a victim of its own success? | The Canadian Press
Brian Taylor, the director of the institute of transportation studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, remembers attending a lecture about Ottawa’s innovative transit ideas in the 1980s as a student at Berkeley. Now he teaches a similar course at UCLA. “Ottawa and Adelaide, Australia, were sort of the poster children for looking at a more cost-effective way to provide the metro-like service, but with less-expensive buses,” Taylor said.
