Briefly

COTE D'IVOIRE

Merkel receives UNESCO peace prize

Germany's former chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday received a prestigious United Nations award for opening her country to refugees during her time in office. Merkel was hailed for welcoming more than 1.2 million refugees and asylum-seekers to Germany in 2015 and 2016, as she was awarded the Felix Houphouet-Boigny UNESCO Peace Prize in Cote d'Ivoire's capital Yamoussoukro. Merkel's decision came at the peak of a crisis fueled by the war in Syria. About 2,000 people were invited to the ceremony, which was established in 1989 and has previously handed awards to Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin.

IRAN

Foreign interference in Afghanistan warned

A top Iranian security official warned on Wednesday against letting "transregional interference" in Afghanistan cause insecurity in the country and in the entire region. Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, made the remark in an address to the fifth round of the regional security dialogue in the Russian capital Moscow, the official news agency IRNA reported. Shamkhani said insecurity has always been a threat to Afghan people's lives, and that foreign interference can turn it into a common threat to the entire region.

UNITED KINGDOM

Strikes postponed after new offer

British firefighters postponed strike action to vote on an improved pay offer, the Fire Brigades Union said on Thursday, giving some relief to the government after a wave of walkouts across multiple sectors caused widespread disruption. The union said the new pay offer for firefighters was for a 7 percent rise backdated to July last year and for another 5 percent increase from July 1 this year. The union will now ballot its members on the new offer. Pay disputes have been raging in Britain since last summer, causing hundreds of thousands of workers to strike after inflation hit more than 10 percent, its highest level in four decades.

UNITED STATES

Disney to cut jobs in cost-saving plan

US entertainment giant Walt Disney Company has announced 7,000 job layoffs from its global workforce. The cuts represent about 3.2 percent of Disney's 220,000 employees worldwide. The company is targeting $5.5 billion in cost savings, including $3 billion in content savings, Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger said on Wednesday in his first earnings call since returning to the company. Iger noted that the reorganization would result in a more cost-effective, coordinated and streamlined approach to the company's operations. The Mouse House is the latest on the list of major US companies that have announced mass job cuts in recent months.

Agencies - Xinhua