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.

Civilians leave Gaza into Egypt | KNBC-TV

“There’s no question that Egypt is capable, and the United States is providing Egypt with the aid that it needs to do so, as are international aid communities. The issue becomes Egypt’s political will — to take refugees in beyond the ones it’s taken in so far,” said UCLA’s Benjamin Radd (approx. 1:15 mark).

Palestinian Americans sue state department on behalf of relatives stuck in Gaza | The Guardian

Kal Raustiala, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the obligations of the U.S. government to its citizens abroad are legally murky. “There really is no legal obligation to protect or repatriate American citizens. Under international law, countries always have the right, but not necessarily the duty to protect,” said Raustiala. But, he said, they have political and moral incentives to do so. “That is a key reason we have embassies and consular officials posted around the world.”

U.S., China must lead global peacemaking efforts | South China Morning Post

(Commentary by UCLA’s Christopher Tang) The Apec summit, set to be held in San Francisco in mid-November, will see 21 global leaders from the Asia-Pacific and North and South America discuss ways to become more interconnected, innovative and inclusive — the economic forum’s three overarching policy priorities. But, in enabling conversations on the sidelines between these leaders, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum also offers its members the potential to find new ways to bolster peace processes and stabilize conflict-affected areas.

A haunted tale of survival, horrors of humanity and hope | USA Today

“The Reformatory,” Tananarive Due’s newest novel that’s out now, follows 12-year-old Robert Stephens Jr., a Black boy in Jim Crow South who has been sent to the Gracetown School for Boys, a segregated reformatory facility (hardly a school) where so many boys have been sentenced — some never making it back out … Due, a professor of Black horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA and winner of NAACP Image and American Book Awards, weaves wisdom and layers love through the horrific tragedies in her novel.

How Day of the Dead became mainstream | Axios

Since the 1970s, young Latinos eager to learn more about their cultural roots and a growing Mexican and Central American population have fueled the Day of the Dead’s popularity across the U.S., according to Martha Ramirez-Oropeza, a professor at UCLA’s Chicana/o and Central American studies department.

Teens want less sex in their TV and movies | NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’

TV shows and movies for and about lovestruck teenagers have long been a mainstay of the entertainment business. According to a new UCLA study, though, Gen Z is way more interested in seeing screen stories about platonic relationships than those featuring sex and romance. (UCLA’s Yalda Uhls was interviewed.)

Surge of actors launching their own businesses | Los Angeles Times

“In some ways, it maybe is a little surprising that it didn’t happen sooner,” Olav Sorenson, chair of entrepreneurial studies at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, said about performers starting their own businesses. “There’s obviously a lot of power in celebrity endorsements. Why not endorse your own products?”

Giant puppet visits L.A. school to spotlight young refugees | KABC-TV

Amal was designed and built by the Handspring Puppet Company. She joined students at Robert F. Kennedy [UCLA] Community Schools in Los Angeles. “We’ve been working with these students for the last six to eight weeks doing creative writing, visual art, poetry, flower making, all around the themes of Amal and these themes of immigration, finding home and what you carry in your head, in your heart,” said Theresa Willis Peters with the UCLA Center for the Art of Performance. (Also: Southern California News Group and KCBS-TV.)

Trick-or-treating brings ‘normalcy’ to patients | Santa Monica Daily Press

Halloween is a time to dress up as favorite characters, decorate houses in spooky garb and dish out as much candy as children can handle. For the young patients at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center, the holiday means a chance to take part in the festivities just like everyone outside the hospital grounds. (UCLA’s Laila Ramji and Jennifer Dobkin were quoted.)

What causes fainting? Scientists finally have an answer | Nature

But exactly what causes these brief losses of consciousness — which researchers call syncope — has been a mystery. Now, researchers have discovered a neural pathway that controls the process, involving a group of sensory neurons that connect the heart to the brainstem … “The study of these pathways could inspire new treatment approaches for cardiac causes of syncope,” says Kalyanam Shivkumar, a cardiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Senate response to counterfeit pills in Mexico | Los Angeles Times

Addiction experts, including UCLA researcher Chelsea Shover, welcomed the possibility of more data on the number of overdoses, even while raising questions about how well those figures have been tracked. “Having this data would be a major step to understand the scope of this problem,” said Shover, who co-authored a paper this year documenting the problem based on testing from four cities in northern Mexico.

Gold mining spreads mercury to tropical birds, study says | Reuters

Tropical birds, from kingfishers to wrens to warblers, are showing signs of mercury contamination as artisanal and small-scale gold mining operations reach deeper into jungles, new research finds … “It’s a wake-up call for bird conservation internationally across the tropics,” said lead author Chris Sayers, a conservation biologist at the University of California Los Angeles.

What we learned from a near-Earth, undetected asteroid | Popular Science

“I think the PI method is impractical even though it does not violate the laws of physics,” says University of California, Los Angeles astronomer Ned Wright, who was not involved in the new work. “When a building is demolished by implosion using explosive charges, a weeks-long testing and planning phase is needed in order to place the charges in the right locations and set up the proper timing. The PI method seeks to do this measuring, planning, and placing the explosives all within a period of 1 minute or so just before the spacecraft hits the asteroid.”

Desert winds fuel SoCal blaze late into fire season | The Hill

“This year, what we have in fact, in many parts of California, is an unusually moist year,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said at a Monday webinar.” And in the summer, a lot of places in California saw some out-of-season precipitation — Southern California saw its wettest summer on record in most places,” he continued.  

Evacuation orders reduced in Riverside County fire | Los Angeles Times

In August, I spoke with Glen MacDonald, a geology professor at UCLA and a co-investigator of the Department of the Interior’s Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, who explained that California’s fire season is steadily creeping into fall and winter in a way it has not historically. How these last few months of 2023 turn out depends on how soon this new water year gets watery. “If you look at some of your really big fires, they’re late in the fall and they can burn right into the next year,” MacDonald told me. “We’ve got plenty of time to dry these fuels further if we don’t get precipitation in the fall.”