Good morning. It’s Friday, and these are the five USC, Los Angeles, and California stories you need to know for today.

1.

Disturbing details emerged in the case of a recent USC Ph.D. graduate accused of serial rape. Prosecutors said Sizhe Weng, 30, told detectives that he drugged women — including a USC classmate — using crushed pills, anesthetic-soaked towels, and injections, then photographed and assaulted them.

Richard Winton and Hailey Wang / Los Angeles Times

2.

A team of USC researchers developed an AI tool that can detect cancer from blood samples — that is, in the fraction of the time it takes a human, spot a single rare tumor cell among millions in a given sample. The results could be lifesaving: Researchers hope the tool can catch hard-to-detect cancers before they advance to late stages.

Noor Hassan / Daily Trojan

3.

USC released new details about the plan to reopen its regional alumni associations. Chapters in the Bay Area, Chicago, Denver, Portland, New York, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. will open in the spring of 2026, though they’ll later expand to other cities. The Alumni Association says it’s looking for co-chairs and volunteers.

Stella Muzin / Daily Trojan

4.

An internal report at Harvard found that more than 60% of undergraduates receive A’s — the embodiment of long-running anxieties about grade inflation at universities across the country. Students’ reactions to the report have gone viral. “It just felt soul-crushing,” one freshman said after reading it. “The whole entire day, I was crying.”

Wyeth Renwick and Nirja J. Trivedi / The Harvard Crimson

5.

Fun fact: At UC Santa Barbara, the country’s #1 party school, students go so hard that the school calls reinforcements from the local sheriff’s department to enforce an annual multi-week Halloween noise ordinance. “Mayor declares martial law,” the school’s satire newspaper wrote.

Michelle Cisneros and Jack Dindia / Daily Nexus