LAist reported on a new UCLA study that estimates nearly 6,000 unhoused people live within a mile of 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games venues, more than three times an earlier estimate from Los Angeles County. UCLA’s Randall Kuhn and colleagues calculated the figure using the county’s homeless count and potential Olympics security perimeters. Jessie Chien, a research data analyst with UCLA’s California Center for Population Research who assembled the estimates, said the findings highlight how many people could potentially be affected. (Also: KNBC-TV.) Read more about UCLA in today’s New York Times, Variety and others.

See our UCLA in the News daily archive. 

More highlights from UCLA in the News: September 3, 2026

Gen Z, Alpha crave complex spiritual characters, plotlines that challenge faith | Variety

A surprising new Future of Faith study from The Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA suggests that both Gen Z and Gen Alpha crave realistic and complex depictions of religion and spirituality in their entertainment that go beyond stereotypes. The group surveyed over 2,000 people aged 14–24, and a majority cited a sensitivity to how their beliefs were portrayed on-screen. (UCLA’s Yalda Uhls was quoted.)

Immigrant rights group sues DHS over voter rolls | Specrum News 1

UCLA Voting Rights Projects Senior Data Scientist Michael Rios said at Wednesday’s news conference that efforts to compare databases, such as the federal government is seeking to do with state voter files, are problematic. “Names can be misspelled, they can be shortened, they change after marriage, they can be entered differently between databases … There could be issues of capitalization, punctuation and spacing,” Rios said.

How freaked out should you be about Trump’s plot to disrupt mail voting? | Vox

“This is not a clearcut case to me of defiance,” Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, said.

Medicare for All is back on the political front burner | Los Angeles Times

The piece was based on a recent study from UCLA that found that waiting times for surgery for nonmetastatic breast, colon, lung, pancreatic, gastric and esophageal cancer have lengthened across the board over the last 10 years or so. The study, however, didn’t attribute the lengthening delays to flaws in the single-payer system, but rather to the increasing complexity of cancer care and changes in hospital practices.

Tax exemption that aids minority students could disappear | New York Times

“If a new administration is ever in position, I would think they would revoke these regs, but in the meantime, a lot of damage can be done because people are running scared,” said Ellen Aprill, an expert in nonprofit taxes at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Singular focus on A-G misses high schools’ broader definition of readiness | EdSource

(Commentary co-written by UCLA’s Marisa Saunders) At the UCLA Community School in the Los Angeles Unified School District, educators are showing how even traditional college-level coursework can connect rigorous academic inquiry to real-world issues and civic action. Through AP research, students investigate issues including immigration, mental health, technology, education and representation, then build on that research through civic action — developing policy briefs, public presentations, social media campaigns and school-based projects.

Ebola raging in Central Africa – but there is a vaccine | KCRW 89.9-FM’s “Press Play”

“This particular species of Ebola, the Bundibugyo, because it’s a different species than what we normally see – we normally see the Ebola Zaire species of Ebola – it got way ahead of us before we even knew what was happening. And that’s because the diagnostic tests that identify Ebola, that are used in the field widely, are tests that are really specific to the species of the virus,” said UCLA’s Anne Rimoin (approx. 16:00 mark).

Artificial sweetener xylitol linked to higher risk of cardiovascular events | Healthline

Dana Hunnes, a senior dietitian at UCLA Health, said that small amounts of sugar may be preferable to artificial sweeteners. Hunnes wasn’t involved in the study. “The more I learn about potential health detriments of artificial sweeteners, the more I’m convinced that sometimes a little bit of real sugar is not the devil that we are made to believe by the PR reps at protein companies,” she told Healthline.