Inside Syria’s Most Fearsome Prison Tens of thousands of Syrians were thrown into Sednaya during the Assad regime. The New York Times created a 3-D model of the prison.; The New York Times, August 29, 2025

Christina Goldbaum, Charlie Smart, Helmuth Rosales, Anjali Singhvi and Reham Mourshed, The New York Times; Inside Syria’s Most Fearsome Prison: Tens of thousands of Syrians were thrown into Sednaya during the Assad regime. The New York Times created a 3-D model of the prison. 

[Kip Currier: This story about Syria's brutal Sednaya prison is a difficult one to read and view. It's shocking to see how monstrously the people -- activists, artists, politicians, writers, citizens of all kinds -- warehoused to languish and die in this savage place were mistreated, tortured, and murdered.

But it's also an important one to digest and contemplate and not look away from. To think about all of the human beings who were impacted by this horrific prison. And to reflect on the human beings -- the leaders with power and privilege -- who sanctioned the existence of such a barbaric place and system for so long.

The sermon of an Episcopal priest I was fortunate to hear yesterday encouraged the parishioners to pray for individuals who are in prisons, as well as for humane treatment of the imprisoned by those who are charged with looking after them during their incarceration. We were reminded by the priest that some people are also imprisoned unjustly. Just as the 1st century Apostle Paul was imprisoned by the Roman Empire, merely for speaking and evangelizing.

Specifically, too, we were asked to pray for detainees in an ICE facility in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania.

We mustn't become indifferent to the injustices and suffering that people in this world experience. Or to the dignity, respect, due process, and rule of law to which every person is entitled, no matter their economic circumstances or legal status.]

[Excerpt]

"NO PLACE IN SYRIA was more feared than Sednaya prison during the Assad family’s decades-long, iron-fisted rule.

Situated on a barren hilltop on the outskirts of Damascus, the capital, Sednaya was at the heart of the Assads’ extensive system of torture prisons and arbitrary arrests used to crush all dissent.

By the end of the nearly 14-year civil war that culminated in December with the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, it had become a haunting symbol of the dictator’s ruthlessness.

Over the years, the regime’s security apparatus swallowed up hundreds of thousands of activists, journalists, students and dissidents from all over Syria — many never to be heard from again.

Most prisoners did not expect to make it out of Sednaya alive. They watched as men detained with them withered away or simply lost the will to live. Tens of thousands of others were executed, according to rights groups."

Nashville church helps unhoused people after downtown library fire; NewsChannel5, September 6, 2025

Kim Rafferty, NewsChannel5; Nashville church helps unhoused people after downtown library fire

"When the Nashville Public Library's downtown branch closed after a fire, McKendree United Methodist Church stepped up to fill a critical gap for people experiencing homelessness who had lost their daily refuge.

"Alright we'll get ya all bagged up here," said Francie Markham, who volunteers at the church every Thursday morning helping people experiencing homelessness...

After losing their cool refuge with computers and resources, Smith said many people just wanted to avoid the long stretch of summer heat.

"So what we were able to do on our Tuesdays and Thursday meal is to allow them to come in much earlier rather than at the 11:30 times so they would be out of the element," Smith said.

"With the changing of the season we need it open as soon as we can," Smith said.

In the meantime, Smith and Markham keep doing what's written on the walls — serving kindness.

Despite initial reports the library would open soon after the fire, library officials say the library requires a third party inspection before it can open. The two nearest library branches, North Branch and Hadley Park, are both more than a 30-minute walk from the library downtown. 

Have you witnessed acts of community kindness during challenging times? Share your story with Kim Rafferty and help us highlight the helpers making a difference in Middle Tennessee. Email kim.rafferty@NewsChannel5.com to continue the conversation.

In this article, we used artificial intelligence to help us convert a video news report originally written by Kim Rafferty. When using this tool, both Kim and the NewsChannel 5 editorial team verified all the facts in the article to make sure it is fair and accurate before we published it. We care about your trust in us and where you get your news, and using this tool allows us to convert our news coverage into different formats so we can quickly reach you where you like to consume information. It also lets our journalists spend more time looking into your story ideas, listening to you and digging into the stories that matter."

All About the Action:Are lawyers more at risk for gambling addiction?; ABA Journal, August 1, 2025

DAVID WEISENFELD, ABA Journal ; All About the Action: Are lawyers more at risk for gambling addiction?

"“Something about gambling draws in certain types of lawyers,” Levant says. But the same things that make them successful in the courtroom can turn against them with gambling and make them vulnerable to wins and losses, he notes."

Judges Warn ICE Is Turning Courts Into Deportation Traps; Law360, September 5, 2025

Marco Poggio, Law360; Judges Warn ICE Is Turning Courts Into Deportation Traps

""I want to thank everybody for coming here today and taking these hearings seriously," Judge Loprest said. "Have a very good rest of the day. Have a good rest of the summer, a good rest of the year."

But moments later, the goodwill Judge Loprest carefully built collapsed into farce: As the immigrants stepped into the hallway, ICE agents grabbed them, placed them in handcuffs and led them away through a side stairway, letting go only the women with children.

Arrests of noncitizens attending immigration court hearings have wreaked havoc among immigrant communities and alarmed attorneys and judges about what they see as violations of due process.

The Trump administration has been internally pushing for a minimum of 3,000 arrests of noncitizens per day. In an effort to meet that goal, ICE agents have been apprehending people in all areas inside and outside immigration court buildings across the country: hallways, lobbies, parking lots and elevators.

Former and current immigration judges who spoke with Law360 are warning that the Trump administration is using courts as a dragnet, arresting people indiscriminately and expelling them with little to no due process in a bid to fulfill President Donald Trump's goal of mass deportations.

"In order to create the vast numbers of arrests that the White House is demanding, they are arresting people who, minutes before their arrest, have legal status, and they're breaking the law left and right to do it," said Judge Dana Leigh Marks, who retired in 2021."

The USTA’s censorship of Trump dissent at the US Open is cowardly, hypocritical and un-American; The Guardian, September 7, 2025

Bryan Armen Graham , The Guardian ; The USTA’s censorship of Trump dissent at the US Open is cowardly, hypocritical and un-American

"When the dust finally settles in the days after Sunday’s eagerly awaited US Open men’s final, the United States Tennis Association will issue its annual victory-lap press release. It will tout another record-setting Open: more than a million fans through the gates, unprecedented social-media engagement, double-digit growth in food and beverage sales, and hundreds of celebrities packed into suites from Rolex to Ralph Lauren. It will beam about growing the game, championing diversity and turning Flushing Meadows into a pop-culture destination.

But for all the milestones the USTA is preparing to celebrate, this year’s tournament will be remembered for a different kind of first: the governing body’s lamentable decision to ask broadcasters not to show dissent against Donald Trump. In making that pre-emptive concession, the USTA has committed an unforced error that can’t be undone: sacrificing authenticity and credibility in order to shield a politician – any politician, regardless of party, ideology or affiliation – from the sound of public disapproval.

According to internal emails obtained by outlets including PA and Bounces, the USTA instructed its television partners to “refrain from showcasing any disruptions or reactions” when Trump appears on screen during Sunday’s final. A separate note reminded staff he would be seated in Rolex’s suite as a client guest. The 11-word statement to the Guardian on Saturday night from a USTA spokesperson – “We regularly ask our broadcasters to refrain from showcasing off-court disruptions” – is so weak it could buckle under the weight of its own hypocrisy. (Rolex did not respond to a request for comment.)"

Trump’s Attendance At U.S. Open Men’s Final On Sunday Takes Center Court As Organizers Demand Broadcasters Not Air Boos & Protests; Deadline, September 6, 2025

Dominic Patten, Deadline; Trump’s Attendance At U.S. Open Men’s Final On Sunday Takes Center Court As Organizers Demand Broadcasters Not Air Boos & Protests

"Reaction to Donald Trump‘s attendance at the U.S. Open Men’s Final on Sunday just stepped into Center Court. 

A memo sent to the likes of ESPN and Sky Sports this afternoon from the United States Tennis Association asks “all broadcasters to refrain from showcasing any disruptions or reactions in response to the President’s attendance in any capacity.” 

Whether censorship, a very heavy handed request for civility amidst political division, both or an unintentional shooting of their own foort [sic], the USTA entreaty Saturday has had the immediate effect now of putting an added spotlight on Trump’s appearance at the prestigious match."

Big Questions About AI and the Church Video; August 25, 2025

Big Questions About AI and the Church Video

Kip Currier: This Big Questions About AI and the Church video (1:12:14) was created by the members of my cohort and me (Cohort 7). Our cohort emanated from the groundbreaking August 2024 ecumenical AI & The Church Summit in Seattle that we all attended.

Perhaps raising more questions than providing answers, the video's aim is to encourage reflection and discussion of the many-faceted issues and concerns at the nexus of AI, faith communities, and our broader societies.

Many thanks to our cohort member Rev. Dr. Andy P. Morgan for spearheading, synthesizing, and uploading this video to YouTube. 

Anthropic settles with authors in first-of-its-kind AI copyright infringement lawsuit; NPR, September 5, 2025

Chloe Veltman , NPR; Anthropic settles with authors in first-of-its-kind AI copyright infringement lawsuit

"In one of the largest copyright settlements involving generative artificial intelligence, Anthropic AI, a leading company in the generative AI space, has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by a group of authors.

If the court approves the settlement, Anthropic will compensate authors around $3,000 for each of the estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement.

The settlement, which U.S. Senior District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco will consider approving next week, is in a case that involved the first substantive decision on how fair use applies to generative AI systems. It also suggests an inflection point in the ongoing legal fights between the creative industries and the AI companies accused of illegally using artistic works to train the large language models that underpin their widely-used AI systems.

The fair use doctrine enables copyrighted works to be used by third parties without the copyright holder's consent in some circumstances, such as when illustrating a point in a news article. AI companies trying to make the case for the use of copyrighted works to train their generative AI models commonly invoke fair use. But authors and other creative industry plaintiffs have been pushing back.

"This landmark settlement will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history," the settlement motion states, arguing that it will "provide meaningful compensation" to authors and "set a precedent of AI companies paying for their use of pirated websites."

"This settlement marks the beginning of a necessary evolution toward a legitimate, market-based licensing scheme for training data," said Cecilia Ziniti, a tech industry lawyer and former Ninth Circuit clerk who is not involved in this specific case but has been following it closely. "It's not the end of AI, but the start of a more mature, sustainable ecosystem where creators are compensated, much like how the music industry adapted to digital distribution.""

‘Homie’: DHS Ridicules Dad They Plan to Deport to Tiny African Nation; The Daily Beast, September 6, 2025

 Jack Revell , The Daily Beast ; ‘Homie’: DHS Ridicules Dad They Plan to Deport to Tiny African Nation

[Kip Currier: This is unacceptable aberrant and abhorrent behavior for U.S. government leaders and agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to demean and torment human beings in this way. But as has so often been said of the Trump administration, the cruelty is the point: these actions are part of a broader stratagem. This behavior is an authoritarian tactic to dehumanize specific individuals and groups of people. The objectives of this systematic, intentional dehumanization are to (1) normalize cruelty, (2) undermine the rule of law, and (3) break down our democratic institutions. Political writer Hannah Arendt explains these strategies in her seminal 1951 work The Origins of Totalitarianism. The book is freely accessible through the Internet Archive via https://archive.org/details/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism .

Remember, too, that DHS Head Kristi Noem is the same person who told us in her 2024 autobiography No Going Back that she shot and killed her own 14-month old wire-haired pointer dog, Cricket, with premeditation and deliberation. This is not a good person, a positive role model, or someone who exercises sound judgment and well-reasoned decision-making. 

And this is clearly not someone who should be influencing policy and leading a government agency.]

[Excerpt]

"Maryland dad Kilmar Abrego Garcia has learned where the Department of Homeland Security has decided to deport him next. 

In an email obtained by Fox News, lawyers for the DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement informed Abrego Garcia’s legal team on Friday that his new intended destination is the tiny African nation of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland. 

Ridiculing Abrego Garcia’s legal claim of fear of persecution or torture—a core asylum principle—in many of the nations the government has considered deporting him to, the DHS wrote on social media that “Homie is afraid of the entire western hemisphere”."

Time; TIME100 AI 2025

 Time; TIME100 AI 2025

Meet the innovators, leaders, and thinkers reshaping our world through groundbreaking advances in artificial intelligence.

‘La tapisserie, c’est moi’: Macron accused of putting politics first in Bayeux tapestry loan; The Guardian, August 30, 2025

Jon Henley, The Guardian; ‘La tapisserie, c’est moi’: Macron accused of putting politics first in Bayeux tapestry loan

[Kip Currier: One can understand, on the one hand, wanting to promote more occasional public access to singular artifacts, like the Bayeux Tapestry. However, the risks in transporting the tapestry from France to the U.K. would seem to far outweigh the benefits of moving this priceless historical and cultural information object. Especially when one reads the assessments of the risks by world class experts.

France 24 reports that a French official asserts that the Bayeux Tapestry is "not too fragile to loan to UK", but offered no verifiable evidence of his claims:

Philippe Belaval, appointed by Macron as his envoy for the loan, said no decision had yet been taken on how to transport the tapestry.

But he said a study dating from early 2025 had made detailed recommendations about handling and transport.

"This study absolutely does not state that this tapestry is untransportable," Belaval said, without revealing the authors of the study or their conclusions."

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250822-bayeux-tapestry-not-too-fragile-to-move-to-uk-french-official-says  

Situations like this, as well as the current U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) crisis in which multiple vaccine experts are resigning and speaking out against RFK Jr's scientifically unsupported vaccine policies, remind me of Tom Nichol's 2017 book The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters.]

[Excerpt]

"“I’m not against the loan of cultural artefacts and I have always liked the UK,” said Didier Rykner, the editorial director of La Tribune de l’Art, an art news website, whose month-old petition against the loan has been signed by nearly 62,000 people.

“But this is a purely political decision. Here is an extraordinary work of art, a wholly unique historical document, an artefact without equivalent anywhere – and which expert opinion agrees, overwhelmingly, cannot travel. It’s not complicated.”...

Some of the most damning arguments against the plan have come from curators and restorers who have worked or are working on the tapestry, five of whom have told Rykner – on condition of anonymity – of their disbelief and concern.

Precisely because the tapestry was considered too fragile to move far, complex plans were already under way to remove it from display and store it during the museum’s rebuilding work, with a full restoration to follow once it was returned.

“We fell off our chairs when we heard,” said one conservator. “It’s the opposite of all we had prepared for.”

Any movement at all of the canvas, in a state of “absolute fragility”, was “fraught with risk, an incredibly delicate operation”, said another."

‘Public health is in trouble,’ says high-ranking CDC leader who resigned in protest; PBS News, August 28, 2025

Amna Nawaz, Aznar Merchant , PBS News; ‘Public health is in trouble,’ says high-ranking CDC leader who resigned in protest

"Amna Nawaz:

• So let's just start with your decision. Why did you feel the need to resign?

• Dr. Debra Houry:

  It was such a tough decision. I love the CDC. The work we do is so important.

  But I had just felt we had reached a tipping point when it came to our science and our data and being able to do the work we needed to do. I was concerned about the future of CDC and my ability to be a leader at the CDC and to do what was needed to be done on the inside. I thought my voice and the voice of my colleagues that also resigned with me would be more powerful on the outside.

• Amna Nawaz:

  What does reaching that tipping point, as you put it, mean to you?

  You saw Dr. Monarez's lawyers reference the unscientific and reckless directives. What does that mean to you?

  • Dr. Debra Houry:

    Yes, so we have an immunization committee meeting coming up in a few weeks. And many of us, myself included, were concerned about some of the recommendations might walk back vaccines in our country.

    To me, that's one of the tipping points. I think another tipping point is just the loss of Dr. Monarez. We hadn't had a CDC director for several months. When she came on board, she brought scientific rigor and some new ideas around public comment and how to really make sure data drove the decisions.

    When she had done some of these changes, she was brought to the secretary's office for discussion. And, at that point, I became concerned that she wouldn't be able to implement changes that were needed at CDC, and without that leadership, it would just leave us vulnerable again. And I thought that was the point to say, enough is enough and to really raise that Bat Signal that public health and CDC is in trouble.

    
    

    • Amna Nawaz:

      You have also said previously that her firing makes it easier for Secretary Kennedy's appointees to change vaccine recommendations. You just mentioned fearing a walk-back in some of those vaccine policies.

      What does that mean specifically? What could we see ahead?

    • Dr. Debra Houry:

      So, if we don't have a CDC director, and if there's not an acting CDC director, then the secretary would sign recommendations like he did for the last ACIP, or vaccine committee, meeting.

      So things like the COVID vaccine or hepatitis B vaccine, they could choose to change ages on it or the populations that have access to it. I'm just concerned about changing vaccine access in our country and that we need to focus more on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, shared decision-making around vaccines, and not talking about misinformation around vaccines.

      
      

      • Amna Nawaz:

        And changes to things like the hepatitis B vaccine, are those conversations you were a part of during your time there? Those are being discussed?

      • Dr. Debra Houry:

        So I know that the work groups have been asked to look at hepatitis B. They're in the middle of pulling a systematic review together right now.

        So I would imagine that means they will be discussed. My concern is, we have pulled evidence reviews together before for the ACIP meetings, that we had one that was pulled down and not discussed. I think it's really important when we do work at CDC for our data, our science and our evidence reviews to be publicly posted, so the public can also review them and understand.

        And, to me, that is transparency and something we were trying to move towards, particularly with the secretary's commitment to radical transparency. That would mean having publicly available data and documents."

‘Sliding into an abyss’: experts warn over rising use of AI for mental health support; The Guardian, August 30, 2025

Rachel Hall , The Guardian; ‘Sliding into an abyss’: experts warn over rising use of AI for mental health support

"Vulnerable people turning to AI chatbots instead of professional therapists for mental health support could be “sliding into a dangerous abyss”, psychotherapists have warned.

Psychotherapists and psychiatrists said they were increasingly seeing negative impacts of AI chatbots being used for mental health, such as fostering emotional dependence, exacerbating anxiety symptoms, self-diagnosis, or amplifying delusional thought patterns, dark thoughts and suicide ideation."

Social Security whistleblower quits after saying Americans’ data was compromised; The Washington Post, August 29, 2025

Maegan Vazquez

 and 

Meryl Kornfield

, The Washington Post; Social Security whistleblower quits after saying Americans’ data was compromised

"A Social Security Administration official responsible for overseeing the agency’s data access resigned from his role on Friday, days after submitting a whistleblower complaint alleging that U.S. DOGE Service staffers uploaded critical personal information for more than 300 million people to the digital cloud."

Research suggests doctors might quickly become dependent on AI; NPR, August 19, 2025

Geoff Brumfiel, NPR; Research suggests doctors might quickly become dependent on AI

 "Artificial intelligence is beginning to help doctors screen patients for several routine diseases. But a new study raises concerns about whether doctors might become too reliant on AI.

The study looking at gastroenterologists in Poland found that they appeared to be about 20% worse at spotting polyps and other abnormalities during colonoscopies on their own, after they'd grown accustomed to using an AI-assisted system.

The findings, published in the journal Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, suggest that even after a short period of using AI, experts may become overly dependent on AI to do certain aspects of their jobs...

But not everyone is convinced that the paper proves doctors are losing critical skills because of AI...

Hulleman believes statistical variations in the patient data might be part of the explanation for why the numbers appear to drop. Factors such as the average age of the patients used in different sections of the study might explain the variation, he says."

DHS references Mexican IndyCar driver to promote ‘Speedway Slammer’ detention center; The Guardian, August 7, 2025

Agencies , The Guardian; DHS references Mexican IndyCar driver to promote ‘Speedway Slammer’ detention center

[Kip Currier: Not only is this statement by a DHS spokesperson factually inaccurate, as there's a cogent argument these actions by DHS may negatively impact trademark rights (and rights of publicity) -- “An AI generated image of a car with ‘ICE’ on the side does not violate anyone’s intellectual property rights" -- it's also morally offensive to either recklessly or intentionally appropriate without permission the racing number of one of the top Mexican drivers for use in a DHS promotion that demeans human beings.]

[Excerpt]

"IndyCar driver Pato O’Ward and series officials were shocked by a social media post from the Department of Homeland Security that touts plans for an immigration detention center in Indiana dubbed “Speedway Slammer.” It includes a car with the same number as that of O’Ward, the only Mexican driver in the series.

“It caught a lot of people off guard. Definitely caught me off guard,” O’Ward said Wednesday. “I was just a little bit shocked at the coincidences of that and, you know, of what it means ... I don’t think it made a lot of people proud, to say the least.”

The post on Tuesday included an AI-generated image of a IndyCar-style vehicle with O’Ward’s No 5 that has “ICE” stamped on it. In the image, the car is in front of a jail...

“We were unaware of plans to incorporate our imagery as part of yesterday’s announcement,” IndyCar said in a statement Wednesday. “Consistent with our approach to public policy and political issues, we are communicating our preference that our IP not be utilized moving forward in relation to this matter.”

A DHS spokesperson said it would not change the social media post. “An AI generated image of a car with ‘ICE’ on the side does not violate anyone’s intellectual property rights. Any suggestion to the contrary is absurd,” the spokesperson said in statement. “DHS will continue promoting the ‘Speedway Slammer’ as a comprehensive and collaborative approach to combatting illegal immigration.”

Anthropic’s settlement with authors may be the ‘first domino to fall’ in AI copyright battles; Fortune, August 27, 2025

 BEATRICE NOLAN, Fortune; Anthropic’s settlement with authors may be the ‘first domino to fall’ in AI copyright battles

"The amount of the settlement was not immediately disclosed, but legal experts not involved in the case said the figure could easily reach into the hundreds of millions. It’s also still unclear how the settlement will be distributed among various copyright holders, which could include large publishing houses as well as individual authors.

The case was the first certified class action against an AI company over the use of copyrighted materials, and the quick settlement, which came just one month after the judge ruled the case could proceed to trial as a class action, is a win for the authors, according to legal experts."