UCPD arrests man on UCLA campus after alleged anti-Muslim threat to Iranian student
A man was arrested on Jan. 16 after allegedly making threatening comments to an Iranian student earlier that day. According to the Daily Bruin, the UC Police Department (UCPD) will present the incident alongside the suspect’s prior arrests to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
The Iranian student, Ashley Sarooie, told the Daily Bruin that the man approached her on the UC Los Angeles campus and asked if she was Iranian. Sarooie said the incident left her feeling nervous and distraught.
“He was like, ‘Do you know what my country is going to do to your country?’” Sarooie, who asked to be referred to by her middle and last name, said. “He was like, ‘We’re going to clear all the Muslims.’ … He referred to ‘the Muslims’ as a group of people. He used a derogatory term for it.”
UCPD and the Los Angeles Police Department previously arrested the suspect on six separate occasions.
“I would hope that UCLA figures out a way to make everyone come together more as a community, to put a stop to things like this and educate everyone on peace,” Sarooie said.
UC Berkeley professor carries Olympic torch alongside service dog
Matteo M. Garbelotto-Benzon, a UC Berkeley adjunct professor, took part in the Olympic torch relay on Jan. 28. Garbelotto-Benzon was accompanied by his service dog, S’Abba, possibly marking the first time that a person with a mobility disability carries the torch alongside their service animal.
Garbelotto-Benzon, who was raised in Italy, was chosen as one of roughly 10,ooo people who will carry the Olympic torch from Olympia, Greece to Milan, Italy, according to a University of California press release.
“I am so proud that S’Abba may be the first service dog to help a person with a mobility disability walk with the torch for the Olympics,” Garbelotto-Benzon said in the release.
Skiing has helped Garbelotto-Benzon conduct forestry-related research for decades. After a ski accident and pulmonary embolism in 2018, Garbelotto-Benzon adopted S’Abba to help him walk and ski again.
“My whole life has been about growing up [around] the forest and the mountains, and I’m so grateful that I have been successful in doing what I love and able to transfer my passion to California,” Garbelotto-Benzon said.
UCSC researchers find text in physical world can disrupt AI-powered vehicles
A team led by two UC Santa Cruz professors have been researching “environmental indirect prompt injection attacks,” or the effects of misleading text on an artificial intelligence’s (AI) perception system.
According to a UC press release, professors of computer science and engineering, Alvaro Cardenas and Cihang Xie, presented the first academic work on this topic late last year. Their study asserts that misleading text written in the physical world can affect how an AI model makes decisions.
Autonomous technology, such as self-driving cars or package delivery robots, often utilizes visual-language models. Meaning, AI systems can use written feedback, such as traffic signs, to navigate the world. However, these systems can be hijacked through distinct text inputs to “ignore safety rules, reveal sensitive information, or take unintended actions,” according to the release.
The study also outlined ways to counteract disruptions. Later this year, the project will be presented at the 2026 Conference on Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning, hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
A version of this article appeared on p. 2 of the Jan. 29, 2026 edition of the Daily Nexus.
