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Tupac Shakur Murder Trial Underway 30 Years After Rapper’s Death 

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This week, the trial for the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur began its initial proceedings in Las Vegas. 30-years-ago, one of the most high-profile unsolved killings in the US occurred, and now jury selection has begun for the trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the one-time leader of the South Side Compton Crips gang in California. 

Prosecutors are aiming to show that 63-year-old Davis ordered the killing and provided the gun for the murder of Shakur. 75 potential jurors were called to the courthouse on Monday to be questioned about their ability to be fair and impartial in such a high-profile trial. 

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Davis is facing a potential life sentence without parole if he is convicted. 

On September 7th 1996, Shakur was shot and killed at the height of his career, he was 25-years-old. At the time, Shakur was sitting in the passenger seat of a black BMW with Marion “Suge” Knight in Vegas after watching a boxing match and going to a club to perform. 

Although Davis is not alleged to have fired the gun himself, he is the only person to be charged in the killing and is accused of murder with a deadly weapon. The trial is expected to last around a month with judge Carli Kierny. 

Reports indicate that prosecutors believe that Davis is the only person still alive out of the group that attacked Shakur and Knight. They will be presenting evidence material specifically from Davis’s book Compton Street Legend, which was published in 2019 and described the shooting in detail. 

When Shakur was murdered, there was a massive ongoing debate regarding who did it and why. It also highlighted the intensity of the hip-hop rivalry between the east coast and the west coast. 

Within this coastal rivalry was Los Angeles-based Death Row Records, founded by Marion “Suge” Knight, and east coast label Bad Boy Records, created by Sean Combs and featuring Christopher Wallace, more commonly known as “the Notorious BIG,” who was murdered less than a year after Shakur: March 1997. 

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Prosecutors stated that Death Row Records was protected by Mob Piru, a Los Angeles gang that was affiliated with the larger Bloods alliance. Knight was also affiliated with the group, and Bad Boy Records also hired rival group South Side Compton Crips, which was led by Davis. 

The prosecution also emphasized, according to reports, that after the boxing match, Knight and Shakur both attacked Davis’s nephew in retribution for an alleged assault on a Death Row employee, prompting Davis to want revenge. 

So why exactly has it taken three decades for this case to finally go to trial? The simple answer is a lack of evidence. However, once Davis published his memoir, the cold case was reheated due to the fact that he wrote about how he handed a pistol from where he was in the front seat of his car to those in the back seat of the vehicle as they pulled alongside Shakur’s vehicle. 

What was revealed in Davis’s memoir also coincided with remarks he made to reporters in the past, however, the publishing led to his arrest in September 2023. 

Davis has pleaded not guilty, backtracking on all his previous statements, on the basis of no evidence against him. He also claimed that his co-actor “inflated a tale.” 

In May of this year, Shakur’s stepbrother, Maurice Shakur, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in civil court. 

“There remain individuals who were involved in Tupac’s murder who, for 30 years, have not been held accountable for their crimes,” his complaint says.

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Mark Zuckerberg Defends Meta In Landmark Trial Regarding Social Media Addiction 

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently testified during a landmark trial in Los Angeles Superior Court regarding social media addiction and safety, particularly in teenagers and kids.

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NHS Hospitals Will Test AI Tools To Diagnose And Treat Prostate Cancer 

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A new tool that uses artificial intelligence is being tested in NHS hospitals. The tool is meant to help diagnose men with prostate cancer and guide decisions regarding their specific treatment course. 

Prostate Cancer UK provided £1,900,000 ($2,474,550.50) to the Vanguard Path study which is being led by University of Oxford researchers. The study, according to reports, is expected to last for three years and will test a new AI tool called the ArteraAI Prostate Biopsy Assay. 

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The researchers are planning to take biopsies from over 4,000 men. The tool is meant to analyze digitized biopsy images to format a personalized risk score for each patient to determine if they have a high-risk for prostate cancer. This score will also determine who can benefit from the drug aburaterone. 

The tool has already been utilized in clinical trials, one of which took place in the US that suggests it can also be used for less aggressive forms of prostate cancer to predict which men are most likely to benefit from having hormone therapy and radiotherapy. 

Even further, the tool can likely help identify which patients don’t need immediate treatment and can instead be closely monitored. 

“If and when this gets implemented, you could use one tool irrespective of where you are on the aggressiveness scale, to make a very clinically and life-enhancingly important decision for each of those men,” said director of research at Prostate Cancer UK, Dr. Matthew Hobbs. 

Dr. Hobbs also mentioned that the tool is already being widely used in the US.  

In the new study within NHS hospitals, prostate biopsy samples from men already diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer will be used. These samples also come from men with suitable follow-up data, so researchers can further analyse the success of the tool when applied further to patients in the UK. 

North Bristol NHS trust, Oxford University hospitals NHS foundation trust, and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde will be testing the tool. 

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“Biopsies will be analyzed, the treatment choices will be made, and the man will start treatment. But at the same time, the NHS clinicians will be given a readout from this tool and asked: ‘If you had this, would you have recommended the same treatment or not?’” said Hobbs.

“A good outcome from this is that this tool is implemented in the NHS. However, for that to happen, it has to be shown to be scientifically valid, cost-effective, and make a difference to treatment decisions,” he said. 

Professor Gerhardt Attard, from the University College London who was not part of the trial but involved in the study around abiraterone, said this research is important based on the existent results. 

“When you take that to the real NHS world, there are a number of challenges and differences that would inevitably arise and that’s what this study will address,” he said.

Ashley Dalton, the minister for public health and prevention, said:

“This groundbreaking research could be a huge step forward, demonstrating the power of technology to potentially transform lives and improve cancer outcomes.”

“This is exactly why we’re investing in a digital NHS. By harnessing AI and moving beyond outdated systems, we can transform cancer care – diagnosing earlier, treating more effectively, and improving patient experience.”

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Children In Australia To Potentially Be Blocked From Social Media As A Part Of New Pilot Trial 

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In May, Australia’s federal government announced a $6.5 million pilot trial regarding “age assurance technology” as a means of preventing children from accessing harmful and adult content online. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese initially announced that the pilot would work to “identify available age assurance products to protect children from online harm, and test the efficacy, including in relation to privacy and security.”

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“The outcomes will inform the existing work of Australia’s eSafety Commissioner under the Online Safety Act – including through the development of industry codes or standards – to reduce children’s exposure to age-inappropriate material,” he stated. 

Now, the Australian government has expanded the trial program to look into potentially blocking children from accessing social media altogether. They’re currently in discussions with Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram. 

Multiple campaigns have started with the launch of this trial which worked to push the government to look into banning children under the age of 16 from social media. The government is now looking into how this could potentially be possible and what it would truly look like if it occurred, according to reports.

Communications department acting secretary for online safety, Bridget Gannon, stated that the government will be “consulting with experts, with children, with parents, to understand their concerns and their interests on this issue, and really pulling it together with some policy advice to the government on possible ways forward.”

“We want to understand how different technologies work at those younger ages for that social media work,” she said as reported by the Guardian. 

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Gannon also stated that the department has been speaking with multiple social media platforms like Meta, however, none of those companies are legally required to take part in the trial. In fact, Meta has already hinted that they are reluctant to take on the requirement of verifying the age of all of their users across their platforms. 

Instead, Meta believes that age verification should be the responsibility of app stores like Apple and Google. 

While individuals involved in the trial and within the committee have made the argument that these companies should feel obligated to comply with the trial, regardless of legal responsibility.

Gannon said it would be in these companies best interest to be involved in the trial as it will be informing them on how new codes will be developed and enforced as well. 

She also stated that the department will be working with technology experts to accurately assess how effective various technologies will work and what their impact may be. They will also work to analyze how easy it would be to regulate and distribute that technology over private networks.

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Moderna And Merck Say New Experimental Vaccine Is Improving Survival Rates In Patients With Severe Skin Cancer 

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Biopharmaceutical company Merck and mRNA vaccine developer Moderna are currently creating a new vaccine to help improve the quality of life and survival rates in individuals dealing with the most deadly form of skin cancer. The vaccine is showing positive results when combined with the therapy treatment known as Keytruda. 

Moderna and Merck will be presenting the current data they’ve collected over the past three years at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago. The newer data showed that around 75% of patients with deadly skin care who took the combination regimen were alive without any signs or symptoms of their cancer returning at the 2.5 year mark. 

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55.6% of patients had the same results when they just received the Keytruda therapy alone. 

“That benefit was observed across different subgroups of patients, regardless of whether they had tumors with a large number of mutations or whether they had enough of a protein — called PD-L1 — that helps keep the body’s immune responses in check,” wrote Annika Constantino for CNBC. 

“The data reflects the potential for the shot to help treat a broad range of melanoma patients,” Dr. Kyle Holen, Moderna’s head of development, therapeutics and oncology, said.

Patients who took the vaccine with Keytruda showed an overall survival rate that hit 96% after 2.5 years, those who just took Keytruda had a rate of 90.2%. 

“Patients with severe forms of the cancer, known as melanoma, who received the combination were 49% less likely to die or have their cancer return than those who took Keytruda alone after roughly three years. The combination also slashed the risk of melanoma spreading to other parts of the body, or death, by 62%,” Constantino wrote. 

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Fatigue, injection site pain, and chills were the most common side effects associated with the vaccine, and the majority of those side effects were mild, according to the data. 

The vaccine uses the same mRNA technology that Moderna utilized for their Covid-19 vaccine. The vaccine is custom-built utilizing the patient’s tumors after surgical removal. The shot is like many other vaccines in that it works to train the immune system to identify and attack specific mutations within cancer cells. 

“Moderna is excited about working to reduce the time between the initial analysis of a tumor and when a patient gets injected with the shot,” CEO Stephane Bancel said in an interview with CNBC.   

“Moderna also plans to file for accelerated approval with the FDA. The process allows for expedited approvals of drugs for serious conditions that fill an unmet medical need,” Bancel said. 

“Melanoma is responsible for the large majority of skin cancer deaths, and the rate of melanoma has increased rapidly over the past few decades” according to the American Cancer Society.

The organization states “about 100,000 people will be diagnosed with melanoma in the U.S. this year and nearly 8,000 people are expected to die from the disease.”

trial

Rapper Young Thug’s Trial Will Introduce Lyrics As A Form Of Evidence

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A judge has stated that lyrics will be admissible as evidence in the trial of US rapper Young Thug, who’s currently being charged with racketeering and running what prosecutors call “a criminal street gang known as YSL (Young Slim Life or Young Stoner Life).

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Elon Musk And Twitter To Face Off In Court For The First Time This Week

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Lawyers for both Elon Musk and Twitter had their first chance to face off in court on Tuesday regarding whether or not the billionaire Tesla CEO should be forced to follow through with his $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform.

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Johnny Depp And Amber Heard Defamation Trial Continues: Social Media Blurs The Lines Between Fact And Fiction

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Celebrity exes Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are currently engrossed in a multimillion dollar defamation trial. Depp has sued Heard for $50 million on defamation charges after Heard implied Depp abused her during their marriage, leading to him losing work and social standing. Heard has also counter-sued for $100 million.

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3 Police Officers Involved In Death Of George Floyd To Stand Trial This Week 

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Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao are the three former police officers who helped Derek Chauvin restrain George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.

Chauvin was recently convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, now, the three men are set to stand trial in a federal courtroom Monday for violating Floyd’s civil rights. 

The three former officers are charged with deprivation of rights under color of law for allegedly failing to give Floyd medical aid, according to the indictment. Thao and Keung are also being charged with failing to intervene when Chauvin was using unreasonable force as he kneeled on Floyd’s neck and back for over 9 minutes, leading to his death. 

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Keung, Lane, and Thao have all pleaded not guilty to the federal charges. Chauvin admitted guilt back in December as part of a plea deal. A jury of five men and seven women have been chosen for the trial this week. 

20 months ago George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was handcuffed and pressed to the pavement lying on his stomach while former officer Chauvin applied pressure to the back of his neck and back with his knee. Floyd continuously pleaded with officers that he couldn’t breathe, calling out for his mother and gasping consistently for 9 minutes. 

The officers called for medical services but did not provide any actual aid to Floyd, who eventually fell unconscious and stopped breathing. He remained in that state while being taken to the hospital, where he later would pass away. 

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The video of Floyd’s tragic passing went viral, sparking one of the largest social justice movements around the world. Ben Crump, the Floyd family’s attorney, recently made a statement regarding the difficulty the family is facing, constantly reliving this tragic moment. 

“This trial will be another painful experience for the Floyd family, who must once more relive his grueling death in excruciating detail. On behalf of the legal team and the family, we trust and expect that an impartial jury representative of the community will be seated to do this important work.”

This federal case is separate from the state charges for Floyd’s death, which Keung, Lane, and Thao are set to endure trial for in June. The state charges include aiding and abetting, with all three officers pleading not guilty. 

All four officers were fired due to the bystander video release of Floyd’s death, and were arrested and charged days later. Chauvin pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charged for violating Floyd’s rights during the arrest. 

Chauvin is currently facing a sentence of between 20 and 25 years in prison to be served during his current 22.5 year sentence on the state murder charges. 

Britney Spears Now Able To Hire Her Own Lawyer In Case To End Conservatorship

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Britney Spears received an amazing victory in her battle to end the conservatorship that she’s been in for 13 years now. The pop star is now able to hire her own lawyer to help end the conservatorship which Spears herself has called “abusive.” 

The conservatorship currently gives Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, full control of her business, estate, finances, social outings, and personal affairs. He is currently the sole individual in charge of her $60 million estate. 

“You’re allowing my dad to ruin my life. I have to get rid of my dad and charge him with conservatorship abuse.” 

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Spears spoke in front of the court via phone call in an emotional testimony filled with understandable rage and sadness. She claimed to have always been “extremely scared of [her] dad.” 

“I’m fed up with the multiple psychological evaluations and want the conservatorship brought to an end without another one. I’m not a perfect person, but my team’s goal is to make me feel like I’m crazy.” 

This marks the second time Spears has been able to address the courts herself since the conservatorship began. Last month she made headlines after calling the legal arrangement abusive and stupid in a passionate 20-minute testimonial. 

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny approved of former federal Mathew Rosengart to be Spears’s lawyer. Rosengart spoke to the media after this major announcement, claiming that he would be filing a petition to end the conservatorship and remove Jamie Spears as the conservator “as soon as possible.” 

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“We will be filing a petition as soon as possible to move Mr Spears, subject to our formal retention. As I said in open court, a very fair question is: Why is Mr Spears not voluntarily stepping down? He does not belong in this conservatorship any more. And we believe he should voluntarily step down immediately,” Rosengart claimed. 

This has been a major win for Spear’s fans all around the world who have been advocating for her freedom from the conservatorship for years now. 

“This is not just about Britney alone. This is about every other person who is trapped in one of these, what I would call a prison,” said 34-year-old Patrick Thomas, head of the recently formed Free Britney America group, whose group is pushing for a congressional hearing and federal oversight of conservatorships.

As Thomas mentioned, Britney’s current situation has opened up a much larger conversation about abusive conservatorships in general, and the unfair control they give certain individuals.