By ANDREW DALTON, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A doctor who pleaded guilty to selling ketamine to Matthew Perry in the weeks before the “Friends” star’s overdose death is set to be the first of five people sentenced in the case on Wednesday.

Perry’s family and possibly others affected by his death will have a chance to make a statement in federal court in Los Angeles before the sentencing of Dr. Salvador Plasencia.

Prosecutors are asking U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett to sentence Plasencia, 44, to three years in prison after a plea agreement where the doctor admitted to illegally selling Perry large amounts of ketamine. He was not accused of selling the actor the dose that investigators say killed him on Oct. 28, 2023.

Perry had been taking the surgical anesthetic ketamine legally as a treatment for depression. But when his regular doctor wouldn’t provide it in the amounts he wanted, he turned to Plasencia, who admitted to illegally selling to Perry despite knowing he was a struggling addict. He texted another doctor that Perry was a “moron” who could be exploited for money, according to court filings.

“Rather than do what was best for Mr. Perry — someone who had struggled with addiction for most of his life — defendant sought to exploit Perry’s medical vulnerability for profit,” the prosecution’s sentencing memo said.

Plasencia’s lawyers tried to give a sympathetic portrait of him in their memo, as a man who rose out of poverty to become a doctor beloved by his patients, some of whom provided testimonials about him for the court.

FILE – Dr. Salvador Plasencia leaves federal court with his attorneys July 23, 2025 in Los Angeles, after pleading guilty to giving ketamine to Matthew Perry, leading up to the actor’s 2023 overdose death. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

The attorneys called his selling to Perry “reckless” and “the biggest mistake of his life.”

“Remorse cannot begin to capture the pain, regret and shame that Mr. Plasencia feels for the tragedy that unfolded and that he failed to prevent,” the memo said.

But, the lawyers wrote, “a sentence of imprisonment is neither necessary nor warranted. He has already lost his medical license, his clinic, and his career. He has also been viciously attacked in the media and threatened by strangers to the point where his family has moved out of state for their safety.”

Plasencia’s lawyers said he has moved to Arizona with his wife and 2-year-old son, for whom he is a loving caretaker.

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“I want him to be proud of his father,” Plasencia said in a video he and his lawyers made for the judge. “I made mistakes, but I want him to know that I tried to make better choices after my mistakes.”

Plasencia pleaded guilty in July to four counts of distribution of ketamine. Prosecutors agreed to drop five different counts. The agreement came with no sentencing guarantees, and legally Garnett can give him up to 40 years.

Perry’s mother Suzanne Perry and his stepfather, “Dateline” journalist Keith Morrison, have attended previous hearings. They could be among those given a chance to speak before Plasencia is sentenced.

The other four defendants who reached deals to plead guilty will be sentenced at their own hearings in the coming months.

Perry struggled with addiction for years, dating back to his time on “Friends,” when he became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing. He starred alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC’s megahit.

By ROD McGUIRK, Associated Press

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Social media platforms must report monthly how many children’s accounts they close once Australia begins enforcing its 16-year age limit next week, a minister said Wednesday.

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Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X and YouTube would face fines of up to $33 million from Dec. 10 if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove accounts of Australian children younger than 16. Livestreaming service Twitch was added to the list of age-restricted platforms less than two weeks ago.

The Australian eSafety Commissioner will send the 10 platforms notices on Dec. 11 demanding information about the numbers of accounts removed. Monthly notices would follow for six months.

“The government recognizes that age assurance may require several days or weeks to complete fairly and accurately,” Communications Minister Anika Wells told the National Press Club of Australia.

“However, if eSafety identifies systemic breaches of the law, the platforms will face fines,” she added. The eSafety regulator said a court would apply the penalty up to the maximum if the platform had repeated violations.

Google said Wednesday that anyone in Australia under 16 would be signed out of its platform YouTube from Dec. 10 and lose features accessible only to account holders such as playlists.

Google would determine YouTube account holders’ ages based on personal data contained in associated Google accounts and other signals.

“We have consistently said this rushed legislation misunderstands our platform, the way young Australians use it and, most importantly, it does not fulfill its promise to make kids safer online,” a Google statement said.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, said suspected young children will be removed from those platforms from Thursday.

Account holders 16 and older who were mistakenly removed could contact Yoti Age Verification and verify their age by providing government-issued IDs or a video selfie, Meta said.

The Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project is hoping the High Court will issue an injunction preventing the law from taking effect next week.

A court hearing date had not been set by Wednesday.

“Over the coming months, we will fight to defend this law in the High Court because parents … right across Australia asked for government to step up,” Wells said.

Last month, the Malaysian government said it would ban social media accounts for children younger than 16 from 2026.

Wells said the European Commission, France, Denmark, Greece, Romania and New Zealand were also interesting in setting a minimum age for social media.

By ASTRID SUAREZ, Associated Press

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia said Monday it sent 26 members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect Lev Tahor to the United States after determining that the rights of some of the children in the group were at risk.

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Authorities detained the group of 17 children and nine adults on Nov. 22 following a raid on their hotel in Yarumal, a city in northwestern Colombia.

Immigration officials said that while all of the children in the group were accompanied by at least one parent, there were five children with American and Guatemalan passports for whom Interpol yellow notices had been issued. The notices are global alerts issued for people who have been reported as missing or those considered victims of parental or criminal abduction.

Colombia’s national immigration agency said the group spent the past week in one of the agency’s buildings in Medellin, where the children were provided with support from Colombia’s National Institute for Family Welfare.

The group was then flown to New York, according to the agency. They were received there by U.S. officials, who will check if there are any pending investigations against the adults while the children will be in the care of Child Protective Services.

Lev Tahor has run into legal problems in several countries, with its members accused of kidnapping children and forcing them into marriages with adults.

Last year, police in Guatemala raided a Lev Tahor compound in the Central American country, following reports of sexual abuse, taking at least 160 minors and 40 women into protective custody.

In 2022, Mexican authorities arrested a leader of the sect near the Guatemalan border and removed a number of women and children from their compound. In 2021, two leaders of the group were convicted of kidnapping and child sexual exploitation crimes in New York.

The sect was founded in the 1980s and is known to have members in Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Guatemala and Israel.

Gloria Eperanza Arriero, the director of Colombia’s national immigration agency, said last week that officials decided to question Lev Tahor members after getting a tip from locals about their presence in the town of Yarumal. Arriero said the sect’s members had arrived in Colombia in October and were searching for a rural property where they could set up a compound.

“The positive thing in all of this is that we got to the children before they had a compound,” Arriero said. “Because in that case, we would have required a search warrant.”

By JONATHAN J. COOPER, Associated Press

A progressive group is targeting two Senate Democrats and an independent senator who voted to confirm some of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, promising to spend more than $1 million in hopes of pushing congressional Democrats to take a stronger stand against the Republican president.

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In a weeklong advertising campaign that began on Wednesday, Demand Justice is targeting only senators who aren’t up for reelection next year: Democrats John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, along with independent Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats.

But the group’s president, Josh Orton, said the blitz is only an opening salvo. He threatened an escalation targeting more imminently vulnerable lawmakers and those with presidential ambitions unless they “find their moral compass, and stand up to Trump.”

“We want to change Senate Democratic behavior so that they begin acting in a more moral way and in a more politically expedient way,” Orton said.

The push comes after eight members of the Senate Democratic caucus — including Fetterman, Hassan and King — joined with Republicans to end a government shutdown, a move that angered large swaths of the party’s base. The party is wrestling over the best strategy to fight what many Democrats see as Trump’s authoritarian ambitions while plotting to bounce back from major losses in 2024.

This combination photo of eight senators who are facing criticism from the Democratic party for their deal to end the government shutdown shows Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., top row from left, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and bottom row from left, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. (AP Photo)

In confirmation hearings, Trump’s second-term judicial nominees have avoided acknowledging that he lost the 2020 campaign or that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was a violent insurrection. Democrats shouldn’t give bipartisan cover to judges who are not “able to answer these simple questions of fact,” Orton said.

The Democratic base is clamoring for its representatives to aggressively challenge Trump, who has pushed the boundaries of presidential power to new heights since returning to the White House in January. Democratic leaders, meanwhile, are grappling with the limits of their power in Washington, where Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House.

Fetterman is a frequent target of the left over his staunch support for Israel in the Gaza war and his willingness to buck the majority of his party. He defended his voting record last month, telling CBS News he’s voted overwhelmingly with the rest of the Democrats.

“If Democrats have a problem with somebody that votes 91% of the same times as you are — more than nine out of 10 times — then maybe our party has a bigger problem,” Fetterman said.

Hassan said she voted to reopen the government, despite the backlash on the left, because many of her constituents were suffering and it was unlikely Republicans would agree to a better deal. She said she supported some of Trump’s executive branch nominees “who are qualified or acting in good faith.”

King was the lone member of the Democratic Caucus to vote to confirm a federal judge in Missouri who, as a lawyer, had worked on cases challenging abortion rights. He later said the vote was “a mistake.”