The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will investigate diversity efforts at the Walt Disney Company, the head of the US agency said on Friday.Disney and its subsidiary ABC are being targeted as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs at government agencies and private companies, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a letter to the entertainment giant.US President Donald Trump picked Carr to head the FCC.”I am concerned that ABC and its parent company have been and may still be promoting invidious forms of DEI in a manner that does not comply with FCC regulations,” Carr wrote in the letter, a copy of which he shared on X, formerly Twitter.Disney made a priority of promoting race and gender diversity across its operations in recent years, and “apparently did so in a manner that infected many aspects of your company’s decisions,” Carr wrote in a letter addressed to chief executive Robert Iger.Carr notified Comcast and NBCUniversal in February that they were targets of an investigation into their diversity and equality efforts, thanking Trump at the time for efforts to “root out the scourge of DEI.”Trump’s assault on diversity across the United States government is dismantling decades of racial justice programs.Delivering on a campaign promise, the Republican billionaire made it one of his first acts in office to terminate all federal government DEI programs, which he said led to “illegal and immoral discrimination.”Earlier this month, Civil War historian Kevin M. Levin reported that Arlington National Cemetery had begun to wipe its website of the histories of Black, Hispanic and women war veterans. Descendants of the Native Americans who played a vital role for US forces in World War II said they had been shocked to discover their ancestors’ heroic contributions had been effectively deleted from the public record.The president’s move to end DEI programs has also affected more than just the federal government.Since Trump won last year’s election, several major US corporations — including Google, Meta, Amazon and McDonalds — have either entirely scrapped or dramatically scaled back their DEI programs. The American Civil Liberties Union says Trump’s policies have taken a “‘shock and awe’ approach that upends longstanding, bipartisan federal policy meant to open doors that had been unfairly closed.”US federal anti-discrimination programs were born of the 1960s civil rights struggle, mainly led by Black Americans, to promote equality and justice after hundreds of years of slavery. After the United States abolished slavery in 1865, the country continued to see other institutional forms of racism enforced.Today, Black Americans and other minorities continue to disproportionately face police violence, incarceration, poverty, homelessness and hate crimes, according to official data.

US President Donald Trump said he had an “extremely productive” first call Friday with Canada’s new Prime Minister Mark Carney, after soaring tensions over tariffs and Trump’s wish to annex his northern neighbor.Trump added that the two planned to meet soon after Canada’s April 28 general election in which Carney — who took office two weeks ago — has made standing up to the US president the focus of his campaign.”I just finished speaking with Prime Minister Mark Carney, of Canada. It was an extremely productive call, we agree on many things,” Trump said on his Truth Social network.Trump said they would be “meeting immediately after Canada’s upcoming Election to work on elements of Politics, Business, and all other factors, that will end up being great for both the United States of America and Canada.”Typically, a new Canadian leader makes a phone call with the US president an immediate priority, but this was Trump and Carney’s first contact since the Canadian was sworn in on March 14.Carney’s office said the pair had a “very constructive conversation” and agreed to begin “comprehensive negotiations about a new economic and security relationship immediately following the election.”It added, however, that Carney told Trump his government will impose retaliatory tariffs on American goods from April 2, when sweeping US levies are set to come into place.”We’re not going to back down, we’re going to respond with force,” Carney said at an afternoon press conference.”What is clear is that the relationship between Canada and the United States has changed. And we’re not the one’s who changed,” he added, confirming that Canada needed to look to Europe “to strengthen ties with reliable partners.””Over the coming weeks, months and years, we must fundamentally reimagine our economy.”Trump’s glowing post was still a dramatic change in tone from recent rhetoric between Washington and Ottawa, who are NATO allies and long-standing economic partners.The US president has sparked fury in Canada by repeatedly insisting that it should become the 51st US state and by slapping or threatening tariffs on the country.His post on Friday was notable for its diplomacy, as Trump gave Carney his official title of prime minister and made no reference to his annexation drive.In contrast, Trump would often belittle Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau, with whom he had a long-standing rivalry, as “governor” in a reference to his calls for Canada to join the United States.- ‘Just don’t have the cards’ -Canada’s new prime minister — who is in a tight election race to stay in the job — was chosen by Canada’s centrist Liberal Party to replace Trudeau but has never faced the country’s electorate.Just a day before the call, Carney said he would not participate in substantive trade negotiations with Washington until the president shows Canada “respect,” particularly by ending his repeated annexation threats.US Vice President JD Vance maintained a combative stance on Friday, repeating Trump’s past comment that Canadians “just don’t have the cards” on tariffs.”There is no way that Canada can win a trade war with the United States,” he said during a visit to Greenland.Trump’s planned 25 percent levy on vehicle imports to the United States is to come into force next week and could be devastating for a Canadian auto industry that supports an estimated 500,000 jobs. The 78-year-old Republican is also set to impose reciprocal tariffs on all countries that put levies on US exports, and Canada is to be in the firing line for those too.Trump has warned Canada against working with the European Union to counter upcoming reciprocal tariffs on all imports.If they did so, they would face “large-scale tariffs, far larger than currently planned,” Trump has said.Trump’s threats have impacted Canadian polls, with Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives seen as election favorites before Trudeau dropped out.Since Trump’s threats to Canada, the polls have spectacularly narrowed in favor of Carney’s Liberals, who hold a minority in parliament.

Marwa fled Taliban rule in Afghanistan because she wanted to study, work, wear jeans and go to the park without a male chaperone. Now she is under lock and key in Costa Rica, along with hundreds of other migrants expelled by the United States to third countries in Central America.Costa Rica is one of three Central American countries, along with Panama and Guatemala, that have agreed to receive migrants from other countries and to detain them until they are sent to their home nations or other host countries. A fourth country — El Salvador — took a group of Venezuelans and jailed them in a maximum-security prison after the United States claimed, without providing evidence, that they are gang members.AFP spoke to several migrants from a group of about 200 people, including around 80 children, detained at a facility near Costa Rica’s border with Panama.All said they feared for their lives in their homeland. Marwa, 27, said she was terrified at the thought that she, her husband and two-year-old daughter could be sent back to Afghanistan.Her husband Mohammad Asadi, 31, who ran a construction company back home, was threatened by the Taliban for selling materials to American companies.”I know if I go back I will die there. I will be killed by the Taliban,” Marwa told AFP in English, in an interview conducted through the center’s perimeter fence.Alireza Salimivir, a 35-year-old Iranian Christian, said he and his wife face a similar fate.”Due to our conversion from Islam to Christianity… it’s jail or the death penalty for us,” he said.- Tropical limbo -On his return to office in January, US President Donald Trump launched what he vowed would be the biggest migrant deportation wave in American history and signed an order suspending asylum claims at the southern border.Citing pressure from “our economically powerful brother to the north,” Costa Rica said it had agreed to collaborate in the “repatriation of 200 illegal immigrants to their country.”But only 74 of the migrants have been repatriated so far, with another 10 set to follow, according to the authorities.The rest are in limbo.They refuse to be deported to their homelands, but no other country — including Costa Rica itself, which has a long tradition of offering asylum — has offered to take them in.”We can’t go back, nor can we stay here. We don’t know the culture and don’t speak Spanish,” said Marwa, who said she wanted to be close to relatives “in Canada, the United States or Europe.”- Prison or war -German Smirnov, a 36-year-old Russian former election official, said he fled to the United States with his wife and six-year-old son after flagging up fraud in last year’s presidential election.He said his request for asylum in the United States was “totally ignored, like it had never existed.”If returned to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, he said: “They will give me two options, sit in prison or go to war (in Ukraine).”Marwa and her husband also said they wanted to seek asylum in the United States when they arrived at the US-Mexican border earlier this year after a grueling overland journey through 10 countries, starting in Brazil.But they were never given the chance to file an asylum claim. Instead, they were detained and flown to Costa Rica 18 days later.Asadi said an immigration official verbally abused Marwa for wearing a hijab and singled her out to pick up trash, alone.Smirnov said they treated the migrants, including women and children, “like scum.”- Costa Rica policy change -At the Costa Rican facility, the group said they were well fed and allowed to use their cell phones, but their passports had been seized by the police.”There is a systematic pattern of human rights violations in a country that has always prided itself on defending them,” said former Costa Rican diplomat Mauricio Herrera, who has filed a legal challenge to the migrants’ detention.”This is a very serious setback for Costa Rica,” he told AFP.Michael Garcia Bochenek, children’s rights counsel at Human Rights Watch, warned Costa Rica in a statement against being “complicit in flagrant US abuses.”