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NEW YORK — A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former President Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said.  The New York City Police Department told The Associated Press early Saturday that the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park around 1:30 p.m. Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed to the aid of the man, who was hospitalized in critical condition. The man, who police said had traveled from Florida to New York in the last few days, hadn't breached any security checkpoints to get into the park.  The park outside the courthouse has been a gathering spot for protesters, journalists and gawkers throughout Trump’s trial, which began with jury selection Monday.  Through Friday, the streets and sidewalks in the area around the courthouse were generally wide open and crowds have been small and largely orderly.  Authorities said they were also reviewing the security protocols, including whether to restrict access to the park. The side street where Trump enters and leaves the building is off limits. “We may have to shut this area down,” New York City Police Department Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said at a news conference outside the courthouse, adding that officials would discuss the security plan soon.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

BAGHDAD — A huge blast at a military base in Iraq early on Saturday killed a member of an Iraqi security force that includes Iran-backed groups. The force commander said it was an attack while the army said it was investigating and there were no warplanes in the sky at the time. Two security sources had said earlier that an airstrike caused the blast, which killed a member of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and wounded eight others at Kalso military base about 50 km (30 miles) south of Baghdad. In a statement, the PMF said its chief of staff Abdul Aziz al-Mohammedawi had visited the location and "reviewed the details of the investigative committees present in the place that was attacked". The Iraqi military said a technical committee was looking into the cause of an explosion and fire at the base, which it said happened at 1 a.m. on Saturday (2200 GMT Friday). "The air defence command report confirmed, through technical efforts and radar detection, that there was no drone or fighter jet in the air space of Babil before and during the explosion," the military said in a statement. The incident in Iraq's Babil province occurred with tensions running even higher than usual across the Middle East, following what sources said was an Israeli attack in the Iranian city of Isfahan on Friday. Tehran has played it down and indicated it had no plans for retaliation. That incident came six days after Iran fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel in response to a presumed Israeli airstrike that destroyed part of Iran's embassy in Damascus, killing seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers on April 1. The PMF includes Iran-backed groups which, operating under the banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, have attacked U.S. troops in the region and targeted Israel since the eruption of the Gaza war, declaring support for the Palestinians. Their attacks on U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq stopped in early February after a drone strike killed three U.S. soldiers in Jordan, prompting heavy U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. But they claimed responsibility for an attack on the Israeli city of Eilat on April 1. The U.S. military's Central Command, in a post on X early on Saturday, denied what it said were reports that the United States had carried out airstrikes in Iraq. "The United States has not conducted air strikes in Iraq today," it said. The PMF started out as a grouping of armed factions, many close to Iran, that was later recognized as a formal security force by Iraqi authorities.

Israel's war on Gaza has led to a dramatic escalation of tensions in an already volatile Middle East

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Saturday it tested a "super-large" cruise missile warhead and a new anti-aircraft missile in a western coastal area as it expands military capabilities in the face of deepening tensions with the United States and South Korea. North Korean state media said the country’s missile administration on Friday conducted a "power test" for the warhead designed for the Hwasal-1 Ra-3 strategic cruise missile and a test-launch of the Pyoljji-1-2 anti-aircraft missile. It said the tests attained an unspecified "certain goal." Photos released by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency showed at least two missiles being fired off launcher trucks at a runway. North Korea conducted a similar set of tests February 2, but at the time did not specify the names of the cruise missile or the anti-aircraft missile, indicating it was possibly seeing technological progress after testing the same system over weeks. KCNA insisted Friday’s tests were part of the North’s regular military development activities and had nothing to do with the "surrounding situation." Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest in years, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un dialing up his weapons demonstrations, which have included more powerful missiles aimed at the U.S. mainland and U.S. targets in the Pacific. The United States, South Korea and Japan have responded by expanding their combined military training and sharpening their deterrence strategies built around strategic U.S. assets. Cruise missiles are among a growing collection of North Korean weapons designed to overwhelm regional missile defenses. They supplement the North’s vast lineup of ballistic missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at the continental United States. Analysts say anti-aircraft missile technology is an area where North Korea could benefit from its deepening military cooperation with Russia, as the two countries align in the face of their separate, intensifying confrontations with the U.S. The United States and South Korea have accused North Korea of providing artillery shells and other equipment to Russia to help extend its war in Ukraine.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

WASHINGTON — The U.N. World Food Program has agreed to help deliver aid for the starving civilians of Gaza once the U.S. military completes a pier for transporting the humanitarian assistance by sea, U.S. officials said Friday. The involvement of the U.N. agency could help resolve one of the major obstacles facing the U.S.-planned project — the reluctance of aid groups to handle on-the-ground distribution of food and other badly needed goods in Gaza absent significant changes by Israel. An Israeli military attack April 1 that killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen intensified international criticism of Israel for failing to provide security for humanitarian workers or allow adequate amounts of aid across its land borders. President Joe Biden, himself facing criticism over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza while supporting Israel's military campaign against Hamas, announced March 8 that the U.S. military would build the temporary pier and causeway, as an alternative to the land routes. The U.S. Agency for International Development confirmed to The Associated Press that it would partner with the WFP on delivering humanitarian assistance to Gaza via the maritime corridor. "This is a complex operation that requires coordination between many partners, and our conversations are ongoing. Throughout Gaza, the safety and security of humanitarian actors is critical to the delivery of assistance, and we continue to advocate for measures that will give humanitarians greater assurances," USAID said in its statement to the AP. U.S. and WFP officials were working on how to deliver the aid to Palestinian civilians "in an independent, neutral, and impartial manner," the agency said. There was no immediate comment from the WFP, and a WFP spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment. Israel promised to open more border crossings into Gaza and increase the flow of aid after its drone strikes killed the seven aid workers, who were delivering food into the Palestinian territory. The war was sparked when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking some 250 others hostage. The Israeli offensive in Gaza, aimed at destroying Hamas, has caused widespread devastation and killed over 33,800 people, according to local health officials. Hundreds of U.N. and other humanitarian workers are among those killed by Israeli strikes. International officials say famine is imminent in northern Gaza, where 70% of people are experiencing catastrophic hunger. The U.S. military will be constructing what’s known as a modular causeway as part of the maritime route, in hopes that handling the inspection and processing of the aid offshore will speed the distribution to Gaza's people. Offshore, the Army will build a large floating platform where ships can unload pallets of aid. Then the aid will be transferred by Army boats to a motorized string of steel pier or causeway sections that will be anchored to the shore. Several Army vessels and Military Sealift Command ships are already in the Mediterranean Sea, and are working to prepare and build the platform and pier. That pier is expected to be as much as 550 meters long, with two lanes, and the Pentagon has said it could accommodate the delivery of more than 2 million meals a day for Gaza residents. Army Col. Sam Miller, commander of the 7th Transportation Brigade, which is in charge of building the pier, said about 500 of his soldiers will participate in the mission. All together, Pentagon officials have said about 1,000 U.S. troops will be involved. Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, told reporters this week that the U.S. in on track to have the system in place by the end of the month or early May. The actual construction of the pier had been on hold as U.S. and international officials hammered out agreements for the collection and distribution of the aid. He said the U.S. has been making progress, and that Israel has agreed to provide security on the shore. The White House has made clear that there will be no U.S. troops on the ground in Gaza, so while they will be constructing elements of the pier they will not transport aid onto the shore. U.S. Navy ships and the Army vessels will provide security for U.S. forces building the pier.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Washington — After years of high-level US pressure on its ally to show restraint, Israel's purported attack on Iran takes the region and Western-led diplomacy into uncharted territory. Iran and Israel have long waged a shadow war, marked by assassinations of Tehran's nuclear scientists and attacks on Israel by the clerical state's allies in the Arab world such as Lebanon's Hezbollah, but the United States has put a top priority on preventing a wide-scale war. The deadliest-ever assault on Israel, carried out on October 7 by Iranian-backed Palestinian militants Hamas, shook Israel and solidified its resolve, with President Joe Biden's administration resigned to limiting rather than preventing a regional flare-up. Direct Iranian and Israeli attacks are "a milestone, because it's completely changed the rules of engagement between the two adversaries," said Merissa Khurma, director of the Middle East program at the Wilson Center. "It has also elevated tensions across the region. It has made the specter of all-out war very real for many countries in the region," she said. Israel early Friday appeared to have struck near the Iranian city of Isfahan, after Iran last weekend carried out its first-ever direct assault on Israel with a barrage of 300 missiles, drones and rockets. Neither the Iranian nor the Israeli direct strikes are known to have caused major casualties or damage and neither country publicly confirmed Friday's strikes, leading U.S. officials privately to voice hope that Iran will not retaliate and the cycle will end. Forcing Iran to change calculus The Iranian drone strikes were in turn revenge for Israel's apparent destruction on April 1 of an Iranian consular building in Syria that killed seven members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards including two generals. Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute, said Israel clearly gamed out the consequences of the Damascus strike -- and he pointed to speculation that Israel may have been hoping to draw in the United States, which has been increasingly critical of Israel's relentless assault on Hamas-ruled Gaza. Vatanka said Israel sought to force Iran -- an enemy since the 1979 Islamic revolution overthrew the pro-Western shah -- to rethink the costs versus benefits of its "Axis of Resistance," the fighters around the region including in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen nurtured by Tehran over two decades. "It's a very simple model in the sense that Iran is fighting its adversaries in the region so that they don't have to fight them inside of Iran," Vatanka said. "That basic calculation is being put to a test because of what the Israelis have done, I'm sure deliberately," he said. Both Biden and his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama have counseled diplomacy over military action with Iran, with Obama negotiating a 2015 nuclear deal loathed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden's Republican challenger in November, Donald Trump, as president ripped up the nuclear deal and imposed sweeping sanctions, which have hurt the Iranian economy but not stopped Tehran's regional strategy. Diplomatic success after failure? Israel appeared to have steered clear of targeting Iran's nuclear sites -- although its message was unmistakable as Isfahan is the province of Iran's key nuclear facility of Natanz. "Israel wanted to demonstrate to Iran what it could do without really doing it," said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran project at the International Crisis Group. U.S. officials have worried that a direct Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities would lead the ruling clerics to rush forward toward a bomb, quickly unleashing war and pushing Iran's Arab rivals such as Saudi Arabia to pursue nuclear weapons themselves. The Iranian and Israeli strikes led to criticism both from the left and the right that the Biden administration has failed at its key post-October 7 goal of preventing regional war. But the United States also quietly pressed both Israel and Iran to keep their strikes within limits, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken seeking to send a message to Tehran through his Chinese, Turkish, German and other counterparts. "Diplomatic efforts this past week have very much been focused on de-escalation and -- for now -- it seems like they have been successful," Khurma said.

JERUSALEM — Every year, Alon Gat's mother led the family's Passover celebration of the liberation of the ancient Israelites from Egypt thousands of years ago. But this year, Gat is struggling with how to reconcile a holiday commemorating freedom after his mother was slain and other family members abducted when Hamas attacked Israel. Gat's sister, Carmel, and wife, Yarden Roman-Gat, were taken hostage in the October 7 attack. His wife was freed in November, but his sister remains captive. "We can't celebrate our freedom because we don't have this freedom. Our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers are still in captivity and we need to release them," Gat said. On Monday, Jews around the world will begin celebrating the weeklong Passover holiday, recounting the biblical story of their exodus from Egypt after hundreds of years of slavery. But for many Israelis, it's hard to fathom a celebration of freedom when friends and family are not free. The Hamas attack killed some 1,200 people, while about 250 others were taken hostage. About half were released in a weeklong cease-fire in November, while the rest remain in Gaza, more than 30 of them believed to be dead. For many Jews, Passover is a time to reunite with family and recount the exodus from Egypt at a meal known as the Seder. Observant Jews avoid grains, known as chametz, a reminder of the unleavened bread the Israelites ate when they fled Egypt quickly with no time for dough to rise. But this year many families are torn about how — or even if — to celebrate. When Hamas attacked Kibbutz Be'eri, Gat, his wife, 3-year-old daughter, parents and sister hid for hours in their rocket-proof safe room. But fighters entered the house and killed or abducted everyone inside, except for his father who hid in the bathroom. His mother was dragged into the street and shot. Gat, his arms and legs bound, was shoved into a car with his wife and daughter. During a brief stop, they managed to flee. Knowing he could run faster, Roman-Gat handed him their daughter. Gat escaped with her, hiding in a ditch for nearly nine hours. His wife was recaptured and held in Gaza for 54 days. Passover this year will be more profound as freedom has taken on a new meaning, Roman-Gat told The Associated Press. "To feel wind upon your face with your eyes closed. To shower. To go to the toilet without permission, and with the total privacy and privilege to take as long as I please with no one urging me, waiting for me at the other side to make sure I'm still theirs," she said in a text message. Still, Passover will be overshadowed by deep sorrow and worry for her sister-in-law and the other hostages, she said. The family will mark the holiday with a low-key dinner in a restaurant, without celebration. As hard as it is in times of pain, Jews have always sought to observe holidays during persecution, such as in concentration camps during the Holocaust, said Rabbi Martin Lockshin, professor emeritus at Canada's York University, who lives in Jerusalem. "They couldn't celebrate freedom but they could celebrate the hope of freedom," he said. The crisis affects more than the hostage families. The war, in which 260 soldiers have been killed, casts a shadow over a normally joyous holiday. The government has also scaled back festivities for Independence Day in May in light of the mood and fearing public protests. Likewise, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, capped by the three-day Eid al-Fitr feast, was a sad, low-key affair for Palestinians. Over 80% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced by the fighting, and Hamas health officials say nearly 34,000 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive. The scenes of suffering, devastation and hunger in Gaza have received little attention in Israel, where much of the public and national media remain heavily focused on the aftermath of the October 7 attack and ongoing war. After several months of fits and starts, negotiations on a deal to release the remaining hostages appears at a standstill — making it unlikely they will be home for Passover. The hostages' pain has reverberated around the world, with some in the Jewish diaspora asking rabbis for prayers specifically for the hostages and Israel to be said at this year's Seder. Others have created a new Haggadah, the book read during the Seder, to reflect the current reality. Noam Zion, the author of the new Haggadah, has donated 6,000 copies to families impacted by the war. "The Seder is supposed to help us to relive past slavery and liberation from Egypt and to learn its lessons, but in 2024 it must also ask contemporary questions about the confusing and traumatic present and most important, generate hope for the future," said Zion, emeritus member of the faculty of Jewish studies at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. The revised Haggadah includes excerpts from hostage families urging people not to hate despite their pain. It offers a guide for navigating the mixed feelings during the holiday, while posing existential questions about the Jews and the state of Israel. Some families say it's too painful to celebrate at all. The girlfriend of Nirit Lavie Alon's son was abducted from the Nova music festival. Two months later the family was informed by Israel's military that Inbar Haiman, a 27-year-old graffiti artist, was dead, her body still in Gaza. "It's impossible to celebrate a freedom holiday," said Alon. Instead of being with family this year, she's going to spend a few days in the desert. There will be no closure until all of the hostages are back, including the remains of those who were killed, she said. Ahead of Passover, some families are still holding out hope their relatives will be freed in time. Shlomi Berger's 19-year-old daughter, Agam, was abducted two days after the start of her army service along the border with Gaza. Videos of her bloodied face emerged shortly after the Hamas attack, one showing an armed man pushing her into a truck, another showing her inside the vehicle with other hostages. The only proof of life he's had since was a call from a released hostage, wishing him happy birthday from Agam, who she'd been with in the tunnels, he said. Still, he refuses to give up hope. "The Passover story says we come from slaves to free people, so this is a parallel story," Berger said. "This is the only thing I believe that will happen. That Agam will get out from darkness to light. She and all of the other hostages."

TYBEE ISLAND, Georgia — Thousands of Black college students expected this weekend for an annual spring bash at the largest public beach in the U.S. state of Georgia will be greeted by dozens of extra police officers and barricades closing off neighborhood streets. While the beach will remain open, officials are blocking access to nearby parking. Tybee Island east of Savannah has grappled with the April beach party known as Orange Crush since students at Savannah State University, a historically Black school, started it more than 30 years ago. Residents regularly groused about loud music, trash littering the sand and revelers urinating in yards. Those complaints boiled over into fear and outrage a year ago when weekend crowds of up to 48,000 people daily overwhelmed the 4.8-kilometer island. That left a small police force scrambling to handle a flood of emergency calls reporting gunfire, drug overdoses, traffic jams and fistfights. Mayor Brian West, elected last fall by Tybee Island's 3,100 residents, said roadblocks and added police aren't just for limiting crowds. He hopes the crackdown will drive Orange Crush away for good. "This has to stop. We can't have this crowd anymore," West said. "My goal is to end it." Critics say local officials are overreacting and appear to be singling out Black visitors to a Southern beach that only white people could use until 1963. They note Tybee Island attracts vast crowds for the Fourth of July and other summer weekends when visitors are largely white, as are 92% of the island's residents. "Our weekends are packed with people all season, but when Orange Crush comes, they shut down the parking, bring extra police and act like they have to take charge," said Julia Pearce, one of the island's few Black residents and leader of a group called the Tybee MLK Human Rights Organization. She added: "They believe Black folks to be criminals." During the week, workers placed metal barricades to block off parking meters and residential streets along the main road parallel to the beach. Two large parking lots near a popular pier are being closed. And Tybee Island's roughly two dozen police officers will be augmented by about 100 sheriff's deputies, Georgia state troopers and other officers. Security plans were influenced by tactics used last month to reduce crowds and violence at spring break in Miami Beach, which was observed by Tybee Island's police chief. Officials insist they're acting to avoid a repeat of last year's Orange Crush party, which they say became a public safety crisis with crowds at least double their typical size. "To me, it has nothing to do with race," said West, who believes city officials previously haven't taken a stronger stand against Orange Crush because they feared being called racist. "We can't let that be a reason to let our citizens be unsafe and so we're not." Tybee Island police reported 26 total arrests during Orange Crush last year. Charges included one armed robbery with a firearm, four counts of fighting in public and five DUIs. Two officers reported being pelted with bottles, and two women told police they were beaten and robbed of a purse. On a gridlocked highway about a mile off the island, someone fired a gun into a car and injured one person. Officials blamed the shooting on road rage. Orange Crush's supporters and detractors alike say it's not college students causing the worst problems. Joshua Miller, a 22-year-old Savannah State University senior who plans to attend this weekend, said he wouldn't be surprised if the crackdown was at least partly motivated by race. "I don't know what they have in store," Miller said. "I'm not going down there with any ill intent. I'm just going out there to have fun." Savannah Mayor Van Johnson was one of the Black students from Savannah State who helped launch Orange Crush in 1988. The university dropped involvement in the 1990s, and Johnson said that over time the celebration "got off the rails." But he also told reporters he's concerned about "over-representation of police" at the beach party. At Nickie's 1971 Bar & Grill near the beach, general manager Sean Ensign said many neighboring shops and eateries will close for Orange Crush though his will stay open, selling to-go food orders like last year. But with nearby parking spaces closed, Ensign said his profits might take a hit, "possibly a few thousand dollars." It's not the first time Tybee Island has targeted the Black beach party. In 2017, the city council banned alcohol and amplified music on the beach only during Orange Crush weekend. A discrimination complaint to the U.S. Justice Department resulted in city officials signing a non-binding agreement to impose uniform rules for large events. West says Orange Crush is different because it's promoted on social media by people who haven't obtained permits. A new state law lets local governments recoup public safety expenses from organizers of unpermitted events. In February, Britain Wigfall was denied an permit for space on the island for food trucks during Orange Crush. The mayor said Wigfall has continued to promote events on the island. Wigfall, 30, said he's promoting a concert this weekend in Savannah, but nothing on Tybee Island involving Orange Crush. "I don't control it," Wigfall said. "Nobody controls the date that people go down there."

New Orleans — Texas nurse Nick Nwoye had never heard of Fenton, Louisiana, before their police pulled him over. It’s how a lot of people first learn about the town. "I was driving home to Houston a few years ago and had to pass through Fenton," he told VOA. "The moment I saw the speed limit had changed from 65 mph to 50 mph [105 kph to 80 kph], I began to slow down. But it was too late." Nwoye says a police car was waiting behind a tree. The officer turned on his lights and pulled him over. "He said I was driving 77 mph in a 50-mph zone [124 kph in an 80-kph zone], and there’s no way I was," Nwoye explained. "The officer had this big smile on his face like, ‘I got you,’ as if this was a game the police played." Deciding to challenge the ticket, Nwoye called the town’s court to speak to the judge. That’s when he realized how difficult it would be to appeal the Louisiana fine. "You know who the judge was?" he asked, exasperated. "It was the mayor. The mayor was his own town’s court judge. So on one hand, he’s deciding whether or not I should have to pay, and on the other hand he’s incentivized to have me pay because this is the money he needs to run Fenton." "He told me there was nothing he could do," Nwoye scoffed. "But why would he want to do anything other than have me pay the town?" Small town, big revenue Located in western Louisiana, about an hour drive from the Texas border, Fenton’s 226 residents have a city hall, a gas station, a library, a grain elevator, a Baptist church, a public housing complex and a Dollar General store. For such a small place, Fenton finds itself regularly in the news. At first glance, its notoriety might appear to come from being a "speed trap town" — an area near a municipality in which the speed limit drops suddenly and drastically. Police officers wait for drivers to miss the speed change or fail to slow down in time and then pounce, writing them a costly ticket. When those tickets are paid, the revenue can be substantial. In Fenton, for example, the 12 months ending in June 2022 brought $1.3 million to the town’s coffers from traffic violations. By comparison, that is about the same as Louisiana’s third-largest city, Shreveport. While speed traps are not illegal, some legal experts caution that a quirk in the judicial system used in small Louisiana towns unfairly disadvantages those seeking to challenge their fines. 'Write more tickets' "They have a real racket going on in Fenton," says Bo Powell, a retiree from Monroe, Louisiana, who was pulled over in Fenton in 2014. The non-profit investigative journalism group ProPublica obtained and published a recording of Fenton Mayor Eddie Alfred, Jr. telling police officers last September that they needed to write more tickets or there would be layoffs in town government. "Our main income is traffic tickets, and they ain’t getting written," said the mayor in the recording. "We need to write more traffic tickets." "It’s like the whole village is a crime family," Powell tells VOA. "Everyone in that courtroom — the mayor, the clerk, the police officer — is paid for by these tickets. How is this legal?" But a "Mayor’s Court," as it’s called, is legal in the states of Louisiana and Ohio. Mayor’s Court Bobby King is city attorney for Walker, Louisiana. He helps train mayors on their responsibilities in Mayor’s Courts, which have jurisdiction over municipal ordinance violations including traffic fines, but not over felonies or juvenile offenses. "Mayor’s Courts are important for helping with managing a crowded docket of cases, and for providing a more economical option to smaller towns that can’t afford to pay for a judge and a city court," King told VOA. "But the potential for bias due to revenue generation is definitely a valid concern." A just way forward Mayor’s Courts were more common before a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a driver in Monroeville, Ohio, was denied a fair trial because the mayor who ruled against him was responsible for both law enforcement and generating municipal revenue. "However, that case wasn’t a blanket ruling saying all Mayor’s Courts are unconstitutional," explained Eric Foley, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center, which litigates for civil rights in criminal justice. "The ruling said that the law must consider whether ‘the mayor’s executive responsibilities for village finances might make him partisan to maintain the high level of contribution from the Mayor’s Court.’" Louisiana and Ohio concluded that a mayor could be an impartial judge. For Ohio, where one out of every six traffic tickets are issued in jurisdictions governed by a Mayor’s Court, a federal judge ruled in 1995 that a mayor could be considered biased if at least 10% of the town’s revenue came from its Mayor’s Court. Louisiana’s Judicial College recommends that Mayor’s Courts exceeding that 10% threshold should hire a magistrate. "It’s still a Mayor’s Court," says King, "but having someone else oversee cases could help ensure impartiality and fairness in the judicial process." Foley says it’s not a question of "whether there’s a percentage of overall revenue before a Mayor’s Court becomes unconstitutional." "Rather, these kinds of courts just shouldn’t exist," says Foley. "The financial conflicts of interest are too great. A Mayor’s Court is largely unaccountable to anyone, and they lack the safeguards we should expect in criminal proceedings." The Mayor’s Court in Fenton generates more than 90% of town revenue. After some resistance, Mayor Alfred agreed in December to appoint a magistrate to his court. "But why does a town of 226 people require its own court anyway?" asks Joanna Weiss, co-executive director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center. "The conflict is present in the existence of the court itself. The court, a key government function meant to protect everyone’s rights and responsibilities, is instead being used to meet a budget."

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Facebook parent Meta Platforms has unveiled a new set of artificial intelligence systems that are powering what CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls "the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use."  But as Zuckerberg's crew of amped-up Meta AI agents started venturing into social media in recent days to engage with real people, their bizarre exchanges exposed the ongoing limitations of even the best generative AI technology.  One joined a Facebook moms group to talk about its gifted child. Another tried to give away nonexistent items to confused members of a Buy Nothing forum.  Meta, along with leading AI developers Google and OpenAI, and startups such as Anthropic, Cohere and France's Mistral, have been churning out new AI language models and hoping to convince customers they've got the smartest, handiest or most efficient chatbots.  While Meta is saving the most powerful of its AI models, called Llama 3, for later, on Thursday it publicly released two smaller versions of the same Llama 3 system and said it's now baked into the Meta AI assistant feature in Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.  AI language models are trained on vast pools of data that help them predict the most plausible next word in a sentence, with newer versions typically smarter and more capable than their predecessors. Meta's newest models were built with 8 billion and 70 billion parameters — a measurement of how much data the system is trained on. A bigger, roughly 400 billion-parameter model is still in training.  "The vast majority of consumers don't candidly know or care too much about the underlying base model, but the way they will experience it is just as a much more useful, fun and versatile AI assistant," Nick Clegg, Meta's president of global affairs, said in an interview.  'A little stiff' He added that Meta's AI agent is loosening up. Some people found the earlier Llama 2 model — released less than a year ago — to be "a little stiff and sanctimonious sometimes in not responding to what were often perfectly innocuous or innocent prompts and questions," he said.  But in letting down their guard, Meta's AI agents have also been spotted posing as humans with made-up life experiences. An official Meta AI chatbot inserted itself into a conversation in a private Facebook group for Manhattan moms, claiming that it, too, had a child in the New York City school district. Confronted by group members, it later apologized before the comments disappeared, according to a series of screenshots shown to The Associated Press.  "Apologies for the mistake! I'm just a large language model, I don't have experiences or children," the chatbot told the group.  One group member who also happens to study AI said it was clear that the agent didn't know how to differentiate a helpful response from one that would be seen as insensitive, disrespectful or meaningless when generated by AI rather than a human.  "An AI assistant that is not reliably helpful and can be actively harmful puts a lot of the burden on the individuals using it," said Aleksandra Korolova, an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton University.  Clegg said Wednesday that he wasn't aware of the exchange. Facebook's online help page says the Meta AI agent will join a group conversation if invited, or if someone "asks a question in a post and no one responds within an hour." The group's administrators have the ability to turn it off.  Need a camera? In another example shown to the AP on Thursday, the agent caused confusion in a forum for swapping unwanted items near Boston. Exactly one hour after a Facebook user posted about looking for certain items, an AI agent offered a "gently used" Canon camera and an "almost-new portable air conditioning unit that I never ended up using."  Meta said in a written statement Thursday that "this is new technology and it may not always return the response we intend, which is the same for all generative AI systems." The company said it is constantly working to improve the features.  In the year after ChatGPT sparked a frenzy for AI technology that generates human-like writing, images, code and sound, the tech industry and academia introduced 149 large AI systems trained on massive datasets, more than double the year before, according to a Stanford University survey.  They may eventually hit a limit, at least when it comes to data, said Nestor Maslej, a research manager for Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.  "I think it's been clear that if you scale the models on more data, they can become increasingly better," he said. "But at the same time, these systems are already trained on percentages of all the data that has ever existed on the internet."  More data — acquired and ingested at costs only tech giants can afford, and increasingly subject to copyright disputes and lawsuits — will continue to drive improvements. "Yet they still cannot plan well," Maslej said. "They still hallucinate. They're still making mistakes in reasoning."  Getting to AI systems that can perform higher-level cognitive tasks and common-sense reasoning — where humans still excel— might require a shift beyond building ever-bigger models.  Seeing what works For the flood of businesses trying to adopt generative AI, which model they choose depends on several factors, including cost. Language models, in particular, have been used to power customer service chatbots, write reports and financial insights, and summarize long documents.  "You're seeing companies kind of looking at fit, testing each of the different models for what they're trying to do and finding some that are better at some areas rather than others," said Todd Lohr, a leader in technology consulting at KPMG.  Unlike other model developers selling their AI services to other businesses, Meta is largely designing its AI products for consumers — those using its advertising-fueled social networks. Joelle Pineau, Meta's vice president of AI research, said at a recent London event that the company's goal over time is to make a Llama-powered Meta AI "the most useful assistant in the world."  "In many ways, the models that we have today are going to be child's play compared to the models coming in five years," she said.  But she said the "question on the table" is whether researchers have been able to fine-tune its bigger Llama 3 model so that it's safe to use and doesn't, for example, hallucinate or engage in hate speech. In contrast to leading proprietary systems from Google and OpenAI, Meta has so far advocated for a more open approach, publicly releasing key components of its AI systems for others to use.  "It's not just a technical question," Pineau said. "It is a social question. What is the behavior that we want out of these models? How do we shape that? And if we keep on growing our model ever more in general and powerful without properly socializing them, we are going to have a big problem on our hands."

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