Nearly 30 years after the fatal shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur, Duane “Keffe D” Davis is standing trial for one of America’s most notorious unsolved murders. At the core of the case is a self-published memoir by Davis himself, in which he claimed to be “one of the only living eyewitnesses” to the rapper’s killing. 

It means, rather unusually, “he’s the defendant but he’s also the all-star witness,” said CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson.

What is in the book?
“Compton Street Legend”, published in 2019, opens in Las Vegas on the night of 7 September 1996, with a step-by-step account of a plan to confront Shakur and Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight in retaliation for an earlier fight. Davis describes how he secured a gun, jumped into a Cadillac with three others and drove around before spotting the pair at a junction. “No words exchanged, the time for talking had passed, the shit was about to go down!” he wrote. Shakur was hit multiple times in the shooting that followed, and died from his wounds six days later.

At first, the book “drew little attention outside online circles devoted to hip-hop lore and true crime”, said Julia Jacobs in The New York Times. But a detective with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department quietly began to build a case around it, and, in 2023, excerpts from it convinced a grand jury to indict Davis on one count of murder – which Davis denies.

How will it be used at trial?
The prosecution’s case is “largely built on the defendant’s own words” – from his book, as well as podcast and documentary interviews and statements made to police, said CNN’s Eric Levenson. Davis is accused of orchestrating the killing, without actually being the one who pulled the trigger. The passages in the book, prosecutors argue, are a confession that he made public in the mistaken belief he had immunity. Davis has pleaded not guilty, and claims that his prior statements about the night in question were false and merely an attempt to sell books.

All this means the jury will face an “unusual dynamic”, said Levenson: prosecutors will “argue the accused murderer is credible and trustworthy, while defence attorneys will deride their client as a liar and fraud”.

Amanda Knox’s controversial one-woman show, “Cartwheel”, has sold out at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. It was named after claims by Italian prosecutors that she had turned cartwheels in a police station shortly after the 2007 death of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia. She was convicted of the 21-year-old’s murder and spent years behind bars in Italy before her acquittal.

While it may be a surprise that Knox is trying stand-up at all, it’s “arguably even riskier” to premiere such material in Britain, given the “mixed reputation” she has in Kercher’s country of birth, said The New York Times. The 39-year-old’s foray into comedy has “also raised questions about who has the right to tell a story on stage”.

‘Damned whatever she did’
More than 42,000 people have signed a petition calling for the show to be cancelled, and Kercher’s sister Stephanie recently told the BBC she was afraid the show risked “normalising violence against women by making light of such a harrowing event”.

But “no one walking out of the theatre could possibly reach that conclusion”, said Tristram Fane Saunders in The Telegraph. If anything, it is “too tasteful”; a “good-faith attempt by a novice performer to use the medium of stand-up comedy to tell her own story inoffensively, to the best of her moderate abilities”.

“Knox would be damned whatever she did,” said Brian Logan in The Guardian. Some argue that it is a “disgrace that she’s telling” her story at all – and “profiting from it” – but classifying “Cartwheel” as comedy may have been her biggest “misstep”. That “risks looking insensitive, and inaccurately describes the show”. 

‘No topic off bounds’
Humour has “always helped people to process terrible events”, said Fane Sanders in The Telegraph. And nowhere is this more true than at the world’s most prestigious performing arts festival. Richard Gadd’s 2019 Edinburgh show about being stalked was turned into the worldwide Netflix phenomenon “Baby Reindeer”, while comedian Edd Hedges’ 2017 Festival debut, “Wonderland”, based on the story of a man who stabbed his mother and her friend 97 times, sparked a hit podcast series.

This year, Australian comedian Frankie McNair has won rave reviews for a set filled with jokes about her own experience of being sexually abused as a child. “Uproariously funny”, it is a reminder that “there’s no topic inherently off bounds for comedy”, said Fane Sanders. “Knox ought to watch McNair, and take notes.”

Workers at Libya’s largest oil refinery watch flames and thick smoke rise from a storage tank. The Zawiya oil depot was targeted in a drone attack earlier this week by an as yet undeclared actor. The country’s National Oil Corporation said the fire was quickly brought under control.

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Need a break from nerve-shredding thrillers and true crime? There’s plenty of excellent, feel-good TV to watch instead. We recommend these escapist shows – best enjoyed curled up on the sofa with a tub of ice cream.

The Five-Star Weekend
This “sun-soaked” drama stars Jennifer Garner as a food blogger struggling to cope after a “devastating loss”, said Good Housekeeping. She invites old friends from “different stages of her life” to visit her Nantucket home – but what starts out as a “soul-searching weekend” soon unfurls into something else, as “secrets emerge and friendships are pushed to their limit”. 

Gilmore Girls
This is “everything one could ever want or need in a comfort show”, said Marie Claire. “Gilmore Girls” (pictured above) ran for seven seasons from 2000 to 2007, and follows single mother Lorelai and her precocious daughter Rory as they go about their lives in the sleepy fictional town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut – where it’s “seemingly always autumn and wacky townspeople abound”.

Sterling Point
“If escapism is the brief, then ‘Sterling Point’ fulfils it expertly,” said The Guardian. This coming-of-age drama follows “highly strung” 17-year-old Annie, who discovers she’s inherited a house on a “picturesque Canadian island” and embarks on a “secret trip in search of answers about her late mother’s life”. Warm and funny, the show “manages to transcend the limits of its Young Adult niche” and turns out to be “quite juicy”.

Zia Yusuf is making the party radioactive
Sean O’Grady in The Independent
Every media appearance from Reform UK’s “rebarbative” and “sneery” Zia Yusuf “shaves off another slice” from the party’s “increasingly fragile” ratings, writes Sean O’Grady. Now he’s called former Tory defence secretary and ex-soldier Ben Wallace a “traitor”. Even Nigel Farage said that was “over the top”. It’s “offensive” to think centrist politicians “don’t love their country” – and it’s “toxic” to voters. “Nigel should probably leave Zia at home” if he wants to “hang on to his seat and his career”.

We Don’t Know What’s Going On With Trump’s Health, and We Deserve Answers
Jonathan Reiner in The New York Times
There’s “no formal requirement” for America’s “commander in chief to certify his fitness for duty”, writes US cardiologist Jonathan Reiner. “That’s a mistake.” Despite “reassurances from the White House to the contrary”, Donald Trump doesn’t look well. Several “physical ailments are easy to see”, including bruises, swollen legs and daytime sleepiness, and he’s had “advanced imaging” for “unclear reasons”. It’s appropriate not to disclose every medical detail but, in a democracy, people “must have confidence in the health of their leader”.

Shopping Is Impossible
Rachel Sugar in The Atlantic
Shopping is “sucking up more of my time”, writes Rachel Sugar. Everywhere online “someone is selling something”; there’s this “constant thrum of consumer opportunities”, and we are “haunted by the targeted ads” on our “social-media feeds”. The retail landscape seems overwhelmingly “infinite – so infinite that perfection must exist” somewhere, “if you look long enough” – and, unlike brick-and-mortar shops, the internet “never closes”. There is “a way out”, though: recognise the “perpetual shopping” trap, stop caring and “embrace the good-enough”.