标签： North America

It has been nearly 30 years since legendary hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur was gunned down in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting, one of the most high-profile unsolved murders in modern American cultural history. But this long-stalled case is finally approaching a courtroom milestone, leaving many asking why justice has taken three decades to begin. On September 7, 1996, Shakur was riding as a passenger in a car driven by Death Row Records founder Suge Knight after attending a boxing match at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. A white Cadillac pulled alongside their vehicle, and an occupant inside opened fire, striking the rapper four times. Shakur succumbed to his injuries six days later, on September 13, 1996, leaving behind a groundbreaking musical legacy and a case that confounded investigators for generations. For nearly 27 years, no formal charges were filed in connection with the killing, leading to countless conspiracy theories, speculative investigations, and public frustration over the lack of accountability. The break in the case came in 2023, when Las Vegas police secured an indictment against Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis, a former South Side Compton Crips gang leader who has long been linked to the shooting in public accounts and investigations. To date, Davis remains the only person ever to face formal criminal charges for Shakur’s killing. Multiple factors have contributed to the decades-long delay in bringing the case to trial. For years, investigators faced a wall of silence from potential witnesses, many of whom were affiliated with street gangs and feared retaliation for cooperating with law enforcement. Additionally, the original investigation was hampered by limited forensic technology available in the 1990s, as well as the chaotic, high-profile nature of the case that led to a flood of false tips and misinformation. Prosecutors have also noted that the passage of time itself created procedural hurdles, as evidence degraded and key witnesses died before they could give formal testimony. In recent years, however, new investigative techniques, renewed public pressure, and a shift in willingness from some potential witnesses to cooperate have allowed prosecutors to move forward with the case. The upcoming trial has reignited widespread interest in Shakur’s legacy and the circumstances of his death, with hip-hop fans, legal analysts, and cultural commentators alike waiting to see if the case will finally bring a close to one of the music industry’s most enduring unsolved mysteries.

Two prominent American women from opposite ends of the political spectrum have reignited a long-simmering national debate about the unique struggles women face when building high-demand careers while planning for or raising a family, shining a bright light on systemic gaps in U.S. workplace policy that disproportionately disadvantage working mothers.

This week, progressive Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced she had begun the process of egg freezing, sharing step-by-step documentation of her daily at-home hormone injections on social media to demystify the procedure for other professional women. Just days earlier, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, a conservative appointee in the Trump administration, revealed she would step down from her high-profile role to prioritize time with her young family, including her newborn infant.

Leavitt framed her decision as a deeply personal choice, explaining that since returning to work after her daughter’s birth, she had come to recognize she could not simultaneously meet the relentless demands of the White House press secretary role and be the fully present parent her two young children deserved. Her announcement and Ocasio-Cortez’s reproductive planning came on the heels of similar shared experiences from other women in public office, including California Democratic Representative Sara Jacobs, who has already completed two rounds of egg freezing to delay childbearing while building her congressional career.

Jacobs opened up about the grueling logistical and physical challenges of the procedure, describing how she would dash up to her Capitol Hill office between legislative sessions to administer hormone shots during her treatment. The 37-year-old lawmaker noted the process, which typically costs upwards of $10,000 and is rarely covered by U.S. health insurance plans, brought significant physical side effects: body aches, extreme hormonal swings that felt like going through puberty and menopause simultaneously. Still, she called the decision empowering, saying it gave her greater agency to choose when to fit children into her demanding career that requires weekly cross-country travel between California and Washington D.C.

When Jacobs first began her egg freezing journey in 2021, she said the topic was almost never discussed among lawmakers in the halls of Congress. Today, just a small fraction of sitting members of Congress are mothers to children under 18, and only a tiny handful have ever given birth while holding office.

The conversations sparked by these high-profile women have pulled back the curtain on a broader systemic issue: the United States remains the only industrialized nation in the world that does not require employers to offer paid parental leave. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms that fewer than one in four U.S. workers have access to employer-sponsored paid family leave, while more than 120 countries across the globe — including every European nation — mandate paid maternity leave for working women.

Shifting demographic trends have only amplified these challenges. A 2025 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the average age of mothers giving birth in the U.S. rose from 28.7 to 29.6 between 2016 and 2023, as more women delay childbearing to build their careers, while a growing share choose not to have children at all.

Interviews with professional women across a range of fields illustrate the uneven playing field for working mothers, even for those with significant privilege. Michele Heisler, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan and medical director for the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights, gave birth to her first child after returning to medical school at age 30, and carried her second child during her third year of training. Heisler said she only been able to advance in her high-profile career because she could afford childcare support like nannies and had a partner who shared domestic work equally. Without that equal division of labor, she noted, child rearing almost always falls disproportionately on women, forcing them to step back from their career ambitions. She relies on a flexible schedule that often requires working late into the night and waking as early as 5 a.m. to complete research, so she can prioritize time with her children during the day.

Seema Patel, an associate professor of law at UC Law San Francisco and a former workers’ rights attorney, echoes that experience. Like Heisler, she completes most of her academic work after her three children, now ages 13, 11, and 7, go to bed, so she does not miss key moments with them while they are young. Even with access to partial maternity leave and a supportive partner, she says the constant balancing act between career advancement and active parenting remains an unresolved challenge. “How can I do that while also being there for my kids and attentive to them? I don’t have an answer,” she said.

Patel, who previously worked for San Francisco’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement — the first local U.S. government to pass a mandate requiring paid parental leave for private sector workers — points out that lower-wage working parents face far greater barriers than women in professional roles like hers. Most low-income workers have no access to paid leave at all, leaving them with impossible choices between keeping their jobs and bonding with a new child.

Jacobs points to a root cause of the systemic issue: most U.S. workplaces, including the federal government, were designed by and for men who traditionally had stay-at-home spouses to manage all domestic and childcare responsibilities. Even the U.S. Congress does not offer its own members paid parental leave, she notes. “It’s going to take a lot of work for us to create a society where the domestic work is really shared equally between women and men,” she said.

For now, egg freezing has given Jacobs a safety net, allowing her to delay childbearing until she can navigate the logistical challenges of raising a child while serving in Congress that requires half her time away from her home state. “I hope to be able to do that one day, but I just haven’t figured the time is right just yet,” she said.

A mass shooting in the early hours of Saturday left five people wounded outside a residential building on the campus of Virginia State University, with one victim in critical condition, university officials have confirmed. Multiple attackers are believed to be involved in the violent incident, which sent shockwaves through the academic community just days before the start of the fall semester.

Local law enforcement officers were first dispatched to the scene at approximately 1:28 a.m. local time, which corresponds to 5:28 a.m. GMT. Responding teams located all five victims with gunshot wounds, and quickly transported them to area medical facilities for urgent treatment. Four of the injured are suffering from non-life-threatening injuries, according to an update from the university, while one remains in critical care.

As of Saturday, no suspects have been publicly taken into custody, and the full circumstances surrounding the attack remain unclear. A spokesperson for the BBC confirmed that the outlet has reached out to local law enforcement to request additional details and comment on the ongoing probe. A temporary campus-wide lockdown implemented immediately after the shooting has now been lifted, but a heavy contingent of law enforcement personnel remains posted across the campus to secure the site as investigators work.

Chesterfield County Police are leading the joint investigation into the incident, with supporting assistance from both surrounding local law enforcement agencies and the Virginia State University campus police department.

Located roughly 20 miles south of Richmond, Virginia’s state capital, Virginia State University counts approximately 5,000 enrolled students. The institution is also one of the nation’s dozens of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), a category of post-secondary schools created during the era of segregation to provide access to higher education for Black Americans, who were barred from attending most majority-white institutions across the country at the time.

The shooting comes at a particularly sensitive time for the campus community. According to the university’s official academic calendar, on-campus housing opened for returning students just one day before the shooting, on Friday. The first day of classes for the new academic term was scheduled to begin on Monday, leaving university administrators to assess next steps in the wake of the violence. The incident is the latest in a long-running string of gun violence incidents on U.S. college campuses, a crisis that has fueled repeated national debates over gun control legislation in the United States.

For many who knew Luigi Mangione growing up, the 28-year-old’s trajectory seemed nothing short of promising. Born into one of Maryland’s most prominent and well-connected families, with business holdings spanning country clubs, nursing homes and local media, Mangione excelled academically from his earliest years. He graduated as valedictorian from Baltimore’s elite all-boys Gilman School before going on to earn both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania, where he launched a student video game development club. After graduating, he built a career as a data engineer at automotive digital retail platform TrueCar, leaving the role in 2023. To friends and classmates, he was a sharp, unassuming person with no obvious enemies – a far cry from the man accused of one of the most high-profile corporate assassinations in recent U.S. history.

On December 4, 2024, Brian Thompson, the 50-something CEO of UnitedHealthcare and father of two, was shot and killed outside a midtown Manhattan hotel where he was attending an industry conference. Five days later, Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where law enforcement recovered a firearm, ammunition, multiple fake identification cards, a large sum of cash, and a handwritten note expressing hostility toward corporate elites that included the line “frankly, these parasites had it coming.” For nearly 20 months following his arrest, Mangione was held without bail at Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center, the same facility currently housing music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Initially, Mangione pleaded not guilty to the murder, denying any involvement in Thompson’s killing. But on August 14, 2026, in a dramatic shift during his federal court proceeding, Mangione changed his plea to guilty, formally admitting to two counts of interstate stalking that resulted in Thompson’s death. “I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan and he died,” he told the court in a calm confession. He went on to explain his motive, tying the killing to years of debilitating chronic pain stemming from a broken back that he said left him disillusioned with the U.S. healthcare system. He told the court he had researched Thompson’s schedule and learned the executive would attend the New York conference before traveling to the city to carry out the attack.

The guilty plea has set off a new legal process, with Mangione’s federal sentencing scheduled for December 2026. He still faces a separate slate of state charges in New York, where a trial is set to begin this September. Those charges include second-degree murder, six counts of criminal weapon possession, and one count of possession of a forged driver’s license. Following his federal guilty plea, Mangione’s legal team has filed motions to dismiss the majority of the state charges, leaving only the forged identification count in play.

Details that have emerged in the lead-up to the plea paint a picture of a man increasingly undone by chronic unmanaged pain. Friends confirm Mangione underwent back surgery after injuring the area while surfing and hiking during a stint living in a Hawaii co-living surfing community, where he left early due to worsening symptoms. In November 2024, his mother filed a missing person report with San Francisco police, noting she had not heard from her son since July that year. That report was later flagged to New York investigators following the shooting. When contacted by police, Mangione’s mother did not confirm her son was the suspect but told authorities “it might be something that she could see him doing.”

Online records tied to Mangione further reveal his preoccupation with chronic back pain and anti-establishment ideology. An X profile believed to be his uses a spinal X-ray showing surgical hardware as its background image. A Reddit account linked to him detailed struggles with persistent pain and brain fog, and a Goodreads account under his name showed he read two books about back pain in 2022, including *Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry*, a critique of the commercial back pain treatment industry. He also left a four-star review for *Industrial Society and Its Future*, better known as the manifesto written by Ted Kaczynski, the domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber who killed three people in a decades-long bombing campaign. In the review, Mangione acknowledged Kaczynski was a violent man but referred to him as a political revolutionary.

The shocking killing has left Mangione’s family and community reeling. Shortly after his arrest, his cousin Nino Mangione, a Republican state legislator in Maryland, released a statement saying the entire family was “shocked and devastated,” adding “We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.” Local defense attorney Thomas Maronick, who knows the Mangione family, told the BBC the crime was completely out of step with what anyone knew of the family or Luigi. “You wouldn’t think someone of privilege or means from a family that’s known for doing so much for the community would do something like this,” he said. Even former roommate RJ Martin, who recalled Mangione never complained about his pain but acknowledged it often stopped him from doing everyday activities, said he never could have imagined his former roommate would harm another person. “There’s no making sense of it,” Martin added.

In a dramatic turn of proceedings in Manhattan federal court Friday, 28-year-old Luigi Mangione formally admitted to the assassination of UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Officer Brian Thompson, entering guilty pleas to federal charges of interstate stalking that resulted in death. The public admission marked a stark reversal from Mangione’s earlier not guilty pleas in both the federal and state court cases stemming from the December 2024 killing that sent shockwaves through the U.S. healthcare and business communities.

Dressed in a standard beige prison uniform and appearing visibly somber throughout the 90-minute hearing, Mangione spoke clearly to the court as he read out a detailed account of his premeditated attack. He confirmed that he planned the killing months in advance, crossing state lines from his home state of Pennsylvania to New York with the explicit intent to end Thompson’s life. The weapon he used, he told the court, was a homemade firearm he produced on a 3D printer, which he modified with an unauthorized silencer and high-capacity magazine ahead of the attack.

Mangione told the court his motive stemmed from years of chronic severe pain he suffered following a broken back injury, claiming his frustrating and damaging experiences with the U.S. healthcare system pushed him to target Thompson. After learning UnitedHealthcare would host its annual investor conference at a midtown Manhattan hotel in early December 2024, Mangione said he posed as an investor in emails to company organizers to obtain details about the event and Thompson’s schedule. He then traveled to New York ahead of the conference to carry out his plan.

On the morning of December 4, 2024, as Thompson walked into the midtown Manhattan hotel for the conference, Mangione shot the 50-year-old executive from behind. Thompson, a father of two, died from his injuries shortly after the attack. “On the morning of 4 December 2024, I shot Mr Thompson in Manhattan and he died,” Mangione repeated in his statement to the court Friday, confirming the core fact of the killing.

Following the plea hearing, Thompson’s family released a statement calling the guilty plea “an important step toward justice for Brian and for our family.” The family noted they will continue pursuing justice in both New York state courts and in Pennsylvania, where Mangione was taken into custody shortly after the shooting. “While nothing will ease the pain of losing him, we are grateful that the federal justice system has held the person responsible for this heinous act accountable,” the statement read. “Now we look to the court to ensure that sentencing reflects the severity of this crime.”

Mangione now faces a maximum sentence of life in federal prison, with his federal sentencing hearing scheduled for December 18. But the guilty plea has immediately ignited a major legal battle over whether Mangione can also face prosecution on eight separate state charges, which include second-degree murder, possession of a forged fake driver’s license, and six counts of illegal criminal weapons possession. His legal team is pushing to have the entire state case dismissed ahead of its scheduled September trial start date.

Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse after Friday’s hearing, Mangione’s lead defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo argued that pursuing state charges after Mangione’s federal guilty plea violates the U.S. Constitution’s double jeopardy protection, which prohibits prosecuting a person twice for the same criminal offense. “New York law does not permit a person to be prosecuted and punished twice for the exact same crime,” Friedman Agnifilo said, adding that Mangione has already taken “full responsibility” for Thompson’s death through his federal guilty plea.

But the Manhattan District Attorney’s office has rejected the defense’s argument and says it remains fully committed to moving forward with the state prosecution. In an official statement released after the hearing, the DA’s office said it welcomed the accountability Mangione’s guilty plea provided for Thompson’s family. “While federal sentencing is pending, we are prepared to litigate the defence motions. The Manhattan DA’s Office remains committed to seeking justice for Mr Thompson and his family,” the statement read. The legal fight over the double jeopardy motion is expected to play out in state courts in the coming weeks, ahead of the scheduled September trial.