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.

Smoke damage lingers indoors long after fire | Santa Monica Daily Press

Residents returning to homes after wildfires may face prolonged exposure to cancer-causing chemicals that linger indoors even after outdoor air clears, according to a new UCLA study of the devastating January 2025 Los Angeles County blazes. (UCLA’s Yifang Zhu, Yuan Yao and Michael Jerrett were quoted. Also: Westside Current.)

UCLA’s Cori Close teams up to help wildfire victims | KCBS-TV

UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close talks about the impact she and her team have had in the community by teaming up with Wescom Financial to come alongside and assist wildfire victims in the year since the disaster rocked Los Angeles.

Are politicians doing enough to rebuild from the blazes? | CalMatters

(Commentary by UCLA’s Jim Newton) As Los Angeles marks the one-year anniversary of fires that destroyed large chunks of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, it’s an opportune moment to ask about the state of the recovery and to consider the political implications of that work. In short, is Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass doing enough to rebuild from the blazes?  

One year after fires, Washington fails to act on aid request | Spectrum News 1

Although disaster relief in the past has been historically bipartisan and done with a level of urgency, Megan Mullin, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said it’s the “explicit and straightforward politicization of this response is what’s so unusual.” “If those federal funds don’t come through, that will absolutely slow the recovery,” said Mullin, who pointed out that if the city and state has to compensate for the lack of federal funds, it could result in budget cuts elsewhere.  

One year into recovery, fire survivors mark somber milestone | NPR

Disaster recovery experts like Julia Stein say it doesn’t have to be this way. Stein leads a team at UCLA studying reforms for LA County’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action and Fire Safe Recovery. The commission’s latest report called for the creation of a single government authority in charge of rebuilding, to be accountable when things go wrong, but Stein says it would also ensure recovery is fair and even.

NorCal still has the nation’s lowest ICE arrest rate | San Francisco Chronicle

One notable exception is the San Diego area of responsibility, which is composed of San Diego and Imperial counties. The area went from having one of the country’s lowest rates in 2024 to having one of the highest in 2025. Paul Ong, a professor at UCLA’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge who has studied ICE arrest rates, said that’s likely due to those counties’ proximity to the border, as well as their high foreign-born Hispanic populations.  

Venezuela’s economy plunged into uncertainty | Al Jazeera

Ultimately, oil revenues will be key to the revival of Venezuela’s economy, said Benjamin Radd, a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations. But getting the Latin American country’s oil market ready will take massive investment in infrastructure, “so we are years away before we see any of that in Venezuela,” Radd told Al Jazeera.

The Supreme Court made a mess out of gun laws | Los Angeles Times

(Commentary by UCLA’s Adam Winkler) In a surprising victory for gun advocates last week, a federal court struck down California’s longstanding ban on the open carrying of firearms. The decision appears to be a seismic shift for the Golden State, yet the practical effect on gun carrying in cities such as Los Angeles may be far less dramatic. The true danger of the court’s ruling lies in its rigid legal reasoning — which, if taken seriously, would cut out the heart of the American gun safety regime.  

HHS overhauls childhood vaccine schedule | Healthline

Experts say the new CDC regulations may discourage parents from getting their children vaccinated, or at least make it more difficult. Dr. Paul Krogstad, a pediatric infectious disease expert at UCLA Health in Los Angeles, said that parents may now have to make separate appointments to ensure “shared decision making” on certain immunizations.  

Here’s where the most common planets actually come from | Independent

Scientists have finally worked out where the most common kinds of planets come from … “I’m reminded of the famous ‘Lucy’ fossil, one of our hominid ancestors that lived 3 million years ago and was one of the ‘missing links’ between apes and humans,” said UCLA professor of physics and astronomy Erik Petigura, who worked on the research. “V1298 Tau is a critical link between the star- and planet-forming nebulae we see all over the sky, and the mature planetary systems that we have now discovered by the thousands.” (Also: Phys.org.)

‘The Pitt’ challenges the ‘only one’ maxim about diversity in casting | LAist

The most recent Hollywood Diversity Report from UCLA that focuses on streaming shows from 2024 found that among the most watched streaming comedies and dramas that year, 79.6 percent of lead actors were white. And while BIPOC actors “fared much better as co-leads than they did as leads,” they were still underrepresented as co-leads, filling only 29.7 percent of the roles in that year’s top streaming comedies and dramas.