An Agence France-Presse photographer was recovering Monday after he was shot in the face with a rubber bullet by law enforcement during their standoff with protesters in downtown Los Angeles.The photographer was covering demonstrations on Saturday — part of the many rallies across the country against US President Donald Trump.He was struck twice by rubber bullets fired by authorities when they abruptly moved in to disperse protesters, and had to be treated in hospital for his injuries.”I was covering the protest … approximately 90 feet away from the police when I received the impact of a rubber bullet in my face and another one in my right arm,” he recalled.The photographer, who asked to remain anonymous, said he was clearly identified as a journalist. “I was working with two cameras, a helmet with AFP stickers on it and also, I had a big patch on my chest that said ‘Press,'” he added.Los Angeles Police Department did not acknowledge firing at the photographer but said it had sought to clear protesters after declaring an unlawful assembly. “Following the dispersal order, less-lethal munitions were used to clear the area of those who refused to comply and leave the area,” it told AFP in a statement. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which also policed the protest, said it was reviewing footage of the incident but added it was “not clear whether our personnel were involved.””The LASD does not condone any actions that intentionally target members of the press,” it said.Saturday’s rally was the largest of the protests that began in Los Angeles on June 6 and have continued daily ever since.They first erupted in anger at raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has been ordered by the Trump administration to target undocumented migrants across the sprawling, heavily Latino city.The demonstrations have been mostly peaceful and confined to a small section of downtown Los Angeles. But at times they have spiraled into violence that Trump has pounced on to send 4,000 National Guard and 700 Marines into the city — a move loudly protested by local officials.Other journalists have also been injured during the protests.The Guardian newspaper reported that a British photographer had to undergo emergency surgery after he was shot in the leg by a non-lethal round on June 7.Meanwhile, an Australian reporter was hit in the leg by a rubber bullet while she was reporting on live television on June 8, an incident slammed by the country’s prime minister as “horrific.”And the New York Post said its photographer was shot in the head with a rubber bullet, also during the June 8 clashes.

The main doctor charged in connection with the drug overdose of “Friends” star Matthew Perry is expected to enter a guilty plea in the coming weeks, the US Justice Department said Monday. Salvador Plasencia “has agreed to plead guilty to four counts of distribution of ketamine, which carries a statutory maximum sentence of 40 years in federal prison,” the department said in a statement.The second doctor in the case, Mark Chavez, pleaded guilty last October to conspiring to distribute ketamine in the weeks before the actor was found dead in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home in 2023.Perry’s lengthy struggles with substance addiction were well-documented, but his death at age 54 sent shockwaves through the global legions of “Friends” fans.A criminal investigation was launched soon after an autopsy discovered he had high levels of ketamine — an anesthetic — in his system.Plasencia allegedly bought ketamine off Chavez and sold it to the American-Canadian actor at hugely inflated prices.”I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Plasencia wrote in one text message presented by prosecutors.He went to Perry’s home to administer ketamine by injection, according to a plea deal published Monday by the Justice Department.In total, Plasencia distributed 20 vials of ketamine over a roughly two-week period in autumn 2023, the document said.Perry had been taking ketamine as part of supervised therapy for depression.But prosecutors say that before his death he became addicted to the substance, which also has psychedelic properties and is a popular party drug. – Dark struggle -Five people have been charged over Perry’s death. Jasveen Sangha, the alleged “Ketamine Queen” who supplied drugs to high-end clients and celebrities, is charged with selling Perry the dose that killed him. She has pleaded not guilty. Perry’s live-in personal assistant and another man pleaded guilty last August to charges of conspiracy to distribute ketamine.Comedic television series “Friends,” which followed the lives of six New Yorkers navigating adulthood, dating and careers, drew a massive global following and made megastars of previously unknown actors.Perry’s role as the sarcastic man-child Chandler brought him fabulous wealth, but hid a dark struggle with addiction to painkillers and alcohol.In 2018, he suffered a drug-related burst colon and underwent multiple surgeries.In his 2022 memoir “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” Perry described going through detox dozens of times.”I have mostly been sober since 2001,” he wrote, “save for about sixty or seventy little mishaps.”

Harmful content including hate speech has surged across Meta’s platforms since the company ended third-party fact-checking in the United States and eased moderation policies, a survey showed Monday.The survey of around 7,000 active users on Instagram, Facebook and Threads comes after the Palo Alto company ditched US fact-checkers in January and turned over the task of debunking falsehoods to ordinary users under a model known as “Community Notes,” popularized by X.The decision was widely seen as an attempt to appease President Donald Trump’s new administration, whose conservative support base has long complained that fact-checking on tech platforms was a way to curtail free speech and censor right-wing content.Meta also rolled back restrictions around topics such as gender and sexual identity. The tech giant’s updated community guidelines said its platforms would permit users to accuse people of “mental illness” or “abnormality” based on their gender or sexual orientation.”These policy shifts signified a dramatic reversal of content moderation standards the company had built over nearly a decade,” said the survey published by digital and human rights groups including UltraViolet, GLAAD, and All Out.”Among our survey population of approximately 7,000 active users, we found stark evidence of increased harmful content, decreased freedom of expression, and increased self-censorship.”One in six respondents in the survey reported being the victim of some form of gender-based or sexual violence on Meta platforms, while 66 percent said they had witnessed harmful content such as hateful or violent material.Ninety-two percent of surveyed users said they were concerned about increasing harmful content and felt “less protected from being exposed to or targeted by” such material on Meta’s platforms.Seventy-seven percent of respondents described feeling “less safe” expressing themselves freely.The company declined to comment on the survey.In its most recent quarterly report, published in May, Meta insisted that the changes in January had left a minimal impact.”Following the changes announced in January we’ve cut enforcement mistakes in the US in half, while during that same time period the low prevalence of violating content on the platform remained largely unchanged for most problem areas,” the report said.But the groups behind the survey insisted that the report did not reflect users’ experiences of targeted hate and harassment.”Social media is not just a place we ‘go’ anymore. It’s a place we live, work, and play. That’s why it’s more crucial than ever to ensure that all people can safely access these spaces and freely express themselves without fear of retribution,” Jenna Sherman, campaign director at UltraViolet, told AFP.”But after helping to set a standard for content moderation online for nearly a decade, (chief executive) Mark Zuckerberg decided to move his company backwards, abandoning vulnerable users in the process. “Facebook and Instagram already had an equity problem. Now, it’s out of control,” Sherman added.The groups implored Meta to hire an independent third party to “formally analyze changes in harmful content facilitated by the policy changes” made in January, and for the tech giant to swiftly reinstate the content moderation standards that were in place earlier.The International Fact-Checking Network has previously warned of devastating consequences if Meta broadens its policy shift related to fact-checkers beyond US borders to the company’s programs covering more than 100 countries.AFP currently works in 26 languages with Meta’s fact-checking program, including in Asia, Latin America, and the European Union.