Anti-Trump protesters fire arrows at Colombian police, injuring four

Demonstrators shoot arrows at police officers near the entrance of the US embassy during a protest in Bogota on Oct. 17, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 18 October 2025
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Anti-Trump protesters fire arrows at Colombian police, injuring four

  • Colombian defense ministry shares images depicting a chaotic scene outside the embassy
  • Protest group stages the event outside to denounce the right-wing agenda of US leader

BOGOTA: Four police officers in Colombia’s capital were injured Friday after protesters outside the US embassy fired arrows and explosives during a rally against President Donald Trump’s policies, officials said.
“Delinquents, some of whom were hooded, attacked the embassy with incendiary devices, explosives and arrows,” said Bogota Mayor Carlos Fernando Galan.
“Four police officers were wounded in the face, legs and arms.”
The defense ministry shared images depicting a chaotic scene outside the embassy, with one showing an officer with an arrow lodged in his arm.
The protest group, which called themselves “Congreso de los Pueblos” (People’s Congress), staged the event outside the embassy to denounce the right-wing agenda of Trump, a spokesperson for the group, Jimmy Moreno, said.
“We are demonstrating for our sovereignty, no more interference from the United States, against everything the United States has been involved in the genocide of Palestinians, its interference in Latin America, and the threats it has been making in the Caribbean... against the Venezuelan Bolivar model,” Moreno said.
The group began staging protests Monday in various locations throughout Bogota, but they did not turn violent until Friday.
Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro, who has found himself at odds with Trump at various points this year, said in a post on the social network X that he “ordered maximum caution with the US embassy in Bogota.”
“A more radical group has attacked the police guarding the embassy, with several young people injured with arrows,” he added.
The protest group expressed agreement with Petro in a bulletin but called on the government to build “an anti-imperialist front.”


Zuckerberg says Meta no longer designs apps to maximize screentime

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Zuckerberg says Meta no longer designs apps to maximize screentime

  • Meta Platforms CEO faces questioned at a landmark trial over youth social media addiction
  • It was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users
LOS ANGELES: Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back in court on Wednesday against a lawyer’s suggestion that ​he had misled Congress about the design of its social media platforms, as a landmark trial over youth social media addiction continues.
Zuckerberg was questioned on his statements to Congress in 2024, at a hearing where he said the company did not give its teams the goal of maximizing time spent on its apps.
Mark Lanier, a lawyer for a woman who accuses Meta of harming her mental health when she was a child, showed jurors emails from 2014 and 2015 in which Zuckerberg laid out aims to increase
time spent on the app by double-digit percentage points. Zuckerberg said that while Meta previously had goals related to ‌the amount of ‌time users spent on the app, it has since changed its ​approach.
“If ‌you ⁠are trying ​to ⁠say my testimony was not accurate, I strongly disagree with that,” Zuckerberg said.
The appearance was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users.
While Zuckerberg has previously testified on the subject before Congress, the stakes are higher at the jury trial in Los Angeles, California. Meta may have to pay damages if it loses the case, and the verdict could erode Big Tech’s longstanding legal defense against claims of user harm.
The lawsuit and others like it are part of a ⁠global backlash against social media platforms over children’s mental health.
Australia has prohibited access ‌to social media platforms for users under age 16, and ‌other countries including Spain are considering similar curbs. In the US, ​Florida has prohibited companies from allowing users under age ‌14. Tech industry trade groups are challenging the law in court.
The case involves a California woman ‌who started using Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube as a child. She alleges the companies sought to profit by hooking kids on their services despite knowing social media could harm their mental health. She alleges the apps fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts and is seeking to hold the companies liable.
Meta and Google have denied the allegations, and ‌pointed to their work to add features that keep users safe. Meta has often pointed to a National Academies of Sciences finding that research does not ⁠show social media changes ⁠kids’ mental health.
The lawsuit serves as a test case for similar claims in a larger group of cases against Meta, Alphabet’s Google, Snap and TikTok. Families, school districts and states have filed thousands of lawsuits in the US accusing the companies of fueling a youth mental health crisis. Over the years, investigative reporting has unearthed internal Meta documents showing the company was aware of potential harm.
Meta researchers found that teens who report that Instagram regularly made them feel bad about their bodies saw significantly more “eating disorder adjacent content” than those who did not, Reuters reported in October.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, testified last week that he was unaware of a recent Meta study showing no link between parental supervision and teens’ attentiveness to their own social media use. Teens with difficult life circumstances more often said they used Instagram habitually ​or unintentionally, according to the document shown at ​trial.
Meta’s lawyer told jurors at the trial that the woman’s health records show her issues stem from a troubled childhood, and that social media was a creative outlet for her.