Latest news with #WTVF
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
Sheriff says riot in Tennessee prison contained
A riot in a prison northeast of Nashville was contained, the sheriff says, and all prisoners returned to their cells after officers sprayed gas into the prison yard. The Trousdale County Sheriff's Department says it got word just after 10 p.m. Sunday of the trouble at the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center. "A multi-agency response followed a short time after the initial call," the department said. "The incident was contained inside the facility fences. The prison staff reported all prisoners were returned back to their cells." CBS Nashville affiliate WTVF-TV was told by CoreCivic, which runs the facility, that the incident began when several inmates refused to go back to their cells. WTVF said three guards were held hostage but all got out safely and with no major injuries. At one point, there were roughly 100 officers on the scene from several agencies. WTVF quotes Trousdale County Sheriff Ray Russell as saying, "There's no threat at all. The prisoners never got to the main fence where they could escape. They were in a yard and contained," adding that officers "shot gas into the yard and forced them back into the cell block." Kristi Noem says "we are not going to let a repeat of 2020 happen" amid L.A. crackdown Magic in the dark: The fantastical worlds of Lightwire Theater One mom's goal to buy American-made products can teach us all something
Daily Mail
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
TV meteorologist shaken after sultry video of 'herself' makes rounds on the internet in chilling new craze
A beloved former Nashville meteorologist is speaking out after discovering lifelike deepfake pornographic videos of herself online - a chilling violation that left her shaken and humiliated. 'I cry myself to sleep most nights... mostly because I don't want my kids to see me,' Bree Smith, 43, said in an emotional interview with CBS News. The mother and former NewsChannel 5 weather anchor found her face digitally pasted onto another woman's body in explicit content, with AI-generated audio perfectly mimicking her voice. The disturbing videos are part of a fast-growing trend of digital impersonation fueled by artificial intelligence. The content, shared through fake social media accounts, has been used in sextortion schemes targeting Smith's fans. Smith's nightmare began with a simple email. 'I got an email from someone saying "Bree, I think you should know that there is an impersonator," she recalled. What she discovered next was worse than she imagined - dozens of convincing fake accounts using her image and AI-altered voice to scam unsuspecting followers. In one AI-generated video, Smith appears to speak directly to the viewer in what looks like a newsroom, saying, 'Yes dear, it is me, it is really me.' The video is completely fake - but eerily real in sound, tone and expression. Watching it back, Smith said: 'I mean you're basically taking someone's identity and you're weaponizing them.' 'These imposters are trying to take my story, and my story is mine,' she said. 'This is my life. I'm 43 years old and I have worked hard and I have loved well, and I'm not going to just roll over and take this.' In one case, she said a viewer received a few fake videos in which it appeared Smith 'promised many sexual acts and asked the viewer to send them money to book a two-night stay at the Conrad Hotel.' By doing so, those social media users 'violated me and they preyed on Tennesseans,' Smith said. When she then reached out to WTVF, where she formerly worked, she claims she was 'told that nothing could be done - it was not illegal and I had no recourse.' 'I felt humiliated and scared,' Smith recounted. 'I didn't know what to do or how to fight it and I didn't know how to protect the viewers and the people that trusted me online from being subject to this kind of extortion.' WTVF station manager Richard Eller has since told the Tennessean the station 'wholeheartedly' shares her frustrations as he explained how staff tried to stop the imposters. 'We did everything in our power to help her, seeking expert advice to make sure we were doing all we could,' he said. 'We exhausted our options with the social media platforms to try to get them to take action, reported the situation to Metro Police and launched an investigation through our corporate security team. Nothing worked.' The whole situation wound up being 'very degrading' for Smith, who said it caused her to face a 'very dark depression. 'Having my face, my reputation and my identity distorted into something so vile and vulnerable traumatized me and my family,' Smith told lawmakers. 'This has devastated my life's work,' she added, saying she became a meteorologist 'because I believed that I could help people. 'I believed that when severe weather was happening, I could save people's lives,' Smith explained. 'So to then have my face, my reputation, the trust this community put in me now being weaponized, to hurt the very people I spent my career trying to protect? I mean it essentially, it stole what I worked so hard to create and put me in an impossible place where now I was the threat to the people I spent my career protecting.' Since leaving her role at the news station, Smith has taken it upon herself to fight back. She's begun tracking the impersonators, compiling a spreadsheet of the fraudulent accounts using her image. 'This is a Google Sheet, only a week old, and in a week there are 24 [different accounts]. And I don't catch all of them,' she explained. Her experience reflects a broader, deeply alarming trend. According to the FBI, more than 50,000 Americans were targeted by sextortion schemes in the past year, with the most common victims being teenage boys. But experts say adults, especially public figures, are increasingly in the crosshairs. 'These offenders, their whole game is to make money,' Hayley Elizondo, who investigates sextortion crimes at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said. 'I'm not surprised that we are seeing adults also become the target of financial sextortion. Frankly, they're going to reach out to those who can pay them.' For Smith, the trauma is still raw - but so is her resolve. She's now working with lawmakers and advocacy groups to protect others from suffering the same fate. 'I'm not going to be silent,' she said. Last month, the Tennessee legislature has passed the Preventing Deepfake Images Act following emotional testimony from the Nashville-based meteorologist. The bill, HB 1299/SB 1346, passed in the Senate on April 15 and passed in the House on Monday, April 21. The legislation now creates civil and criminal actions for individuals who are the subject of an intimate digital depiction that is disclosed without the person's consent. Smith testified at the Tennessee House Criminal Justice Subcommittee and shared her experience of finding her face edited onto other people's semi-nude bodies. 'We don't get to choose the traumatic things that happen in our lives, but we do get to choose what we do with it,' Smith said.
Business Mayor
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Mayor
Casie Mason Joins WFIE in Evansville as AM Anchor
Casie Mason is joining WFIE in Evansville, Indiana as a morning anchor. The NBC affiliate said Mason has gained national recognition as host of the syndicated country music news series, Nashville Insider, along with her role as a host and entertainment reporter for WTVF in Nashville, Tennessee. Mason began her broadcasting career at WEHT in Evansville as a reporter and anchor. She takes over for Jamee French, who moves to evenings. READ SOURCE
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Casie Mason Joins WFIE in Evansville as AM Anchor
Casie Mason is joining WFIE in Evansville, Indiana as a morning anchor. The NBC affiliate said Mason has gained national recognition as host of the syndicated country music news series, Nashville Insider, along with her role as a host and entertainment reporter for WTVF in Nashville, Tennessee. Mason began her broadcasting career at WEHT in Evansville as a reporter and anchor. She takes over for Jamee French, who moves to evenings.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Tennessee far-right pastor fears 'gay beam' airport scanner will make him queer
A Christian nationalist pastor in Tennessee revealed that he refuses to pass through "gay beam" airport scanners because he fears they will make him gay. Pastor Andrew Isker, who appears not to realize his bear status within the LGBTQ+ community, made the claim on a recent episode of the Contra Mundum podcast he cohosts with fellow Christian nationalist C. Jay Engel. A clip of the podcast was posted to social media by investigative journalist Phil Williams. 'Where was the Constitution when the Patriot Act was passed?" Isker says in the podcast. 'Right? Give me a break. Like, I had to be molested at the airport to go to Florida, right, just to get on an airplane, just because I'm not going to go through the 'gay beam' machine. I didn't let C. Jay do it. I wouldn't let him do it. I said, 'You're getting patted down, too, buddy. I don't want them turning you gay.' But Isker was not finished. 'It appears having a guy touch you all over the place, is on its face, seems worse, but you don't really know what's going, what those things are doing to you," Isker continues after he was momentarily rendered speechless by his own words. 'Or where the imaging goes or what they're, what they're doing in the back room,' Engels adds. 'Yeah, they can just take a picture of me naked?' Isker concludes. 'Like, no.' 'A virtual adrenochrome system back there?' Engels asks, referring to a right-wing conspiracy theory that claims leftist celebrities and politicians torture children to produce a chemical compound that is subsequently taken from the murdered children to prolong their own lives. 'Yeah, maybe,' Isker agrees. Isker, the author of The Boniface Option: A Strategy For Christian Counteroffensive in a Post-Christian Nation, is part of an effort to create a Christian nationalist community in eastern Tennessee. The proposed community and the views they hold were too much for the Appalachian area. Citizens strongly expressed their opposition to the plans at a town hall meeting last November, local CBS affiliate WTVF reports. 'They're a wolf in sheep's clothing,' an unidentified woman called out during the meeting. 'This town is not for them,' Barry Naff, a local business owner, agreed.
