The Guardian reported on Southern California’s unusually severe fall heat wave, with temperatures running well above historical averages. UCLA professor V. Kelly Turner said Friday’s heat was nearly 7 degrees hotter than the previous record for Oct. 2, while UCLA atmospheric physicist David Neelin said that although individual events are difficult to attribute directly to climate change, a warmer climate makes heat waves more likely, more intense and longer lasting. Read more about UCLA in today’s New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times’ “De Los” and others.

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More highlights from UCLA in the News: October 5, 2026

Long Beach child hospitalized with rare disease related to West Nile virus | KTLA-TV

Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, told KTLA 5 News that most people who contract West Nile virus are asymptomatic. However, roughly 20% of people experience mild symptoms, and in very rare cases, people can suffer from severe or life-threatening illness.

California leads lawsuit challenging rollback of fuel economy rules | Los Angeles Times

But Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at UCLA who helped set the previous rules as acting administrator of NHTSA under President Biden, described the new standards as “audaciously, aggressively awful.” She had anticipated swift legal challenges based on the interpretation of maximum feasible standards. While Congress previously mandated at least 35 mpg by 2020, “they’re not even professing to reach that by 2030,” she said by phone on Monday.

Will oil companies be forced to pay for climate damage? | Los Angeles Times

UCLA law professor Alejandro Camacho described the “preemption arguments as the latest and perhaps most ambitious effort to weaponize federal law to prevent polluters and fraudsters from paying for the harms they cause.” Neither the Constitution nor the Clean Air Act provides such a shield, he said.

Isn’t Congress more powerful than SCOTUS? | New York Times Magazine

By 2013, it was already “exceedingly rare” for Congress to reject a court decision, Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote that year. Hasen charted the drop. From 1975 to 1990, Congress overrode an average of 12 Supreme Court decisions per term. The number fell to an average of 2.8 per term from 2001 to 2012. Since then, it has fallen nearly to zero, Hasen says — “certainly, nothing I’ve seen shows the numbers have turned around.”  

Should these hotels be sued for using fragrances in their lobbies? | Los Angeles Times

“It’s outside of the [Food and Drug Administration’s] domain and so the regulatory framework becomes much less stringent,” said Alexander Spokoyny, professor and chair of UCLA’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

The surprising, cut-throat race for Los Angeles mayor | The Guardian

Nearly a week after polls closed, it became clear she had narrowly eked out a win, beating Pratt by about 3.5%. The months that followed were largely quiet, noted Zev Yaroslavsky, the director of the Los Angeles initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Thousands more U.S. troops headed to the Middle East | CBS LA

“I think he’s posturing to increase pressure. He’s seeing some success. We’re seeing the flow of oil out of the Strait of Hormuz reach almost pre-war levels, which is showing that Iran is losing its leverage in controlling the strait,” said UCLA’s Benjamin Radd.

100 unanswered questions about ourselves and our universe | New York Times

How many dimensions does it take to describe the formation and evolution of our universe? — Andrea Ghez, astrophysicist, University of California, Los Angeles.  

Horror as a truly a Latino obsession | Los Angeles Times’ “De Los”

According to UCLA’s most recent Hollywood Diversity Report, Latinos made up 29.1% of audiences for theatrical horror releases in 2025 while making up only about 20% of the total U.S. population. Despite these high levels of fanaticism for the genre, Latinos remain historically underrepresented in horror.

Scatological graffiti and other arts | Los Angeles Review of Books

(Book review written by UCLA’s Ronald Mellor) In her new (and 20th) book, “Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old,” Mary Beard, perhaps the leading Anglophone classicist, provides a remarkable and critical overview of the field as well as a memoir of a half century of engagement with the ideas, literature, art, and impact of the Greeks and Romans.

What sleep doctors wish people knew before buying new bed pillows | Yahoo Health

Before buying a new pillow, ask yourself what you’re hoping it will fix. If you’re tired all day, the pillow may not be the culprit. People “often think it might be their pillow,” says Dr. Neal Walia, a sleep medicine physician at UCLA Health. “But in reality, it’s often their sleep environment, like their room being too warm. And sometimes it’s even a sleep disorder, like untreated sleep apnea.”