World in brief: Cuba reducing economic role

HAVANA – Raul Castro said Sunday that his government will scale back controls on small businesses, lay off unnecessary workers and allow more self-employment – significant steps in a country where the state dominates nearly every facet of the economy.

Cuba’s president, however, quashed notions of a sweeping overhaul to the country’s communist economic system in response to the financial crisis it faces.

“With experience accumulated in more than 55 years of revolutionary struggle, it doesn’t seem like we’re doing too badly, nor that desperation or frustration have been our companions along the way,” the president said.

Cuban officials plan to reduce state control of small businesses, authorize more Cubans to become self-employed and build a new tax structure that will compel state employees to contribute more. About 95 percent of all Cubans currently work for the government, and Castro has suggested that as many as one in five state employees are redundant.

U.S., South Korea discuss sanctions

SEOUL, South Korea – A senior U.S. envoy in charge of implementing sanctions met today with South Korean officials to discuss new financial penalties on North Korea.

The trip by Robert Einhorn, the State Department’s special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control, comes two weeks after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the U.S. would impose new financial sanctions on North Korea.

Clinton said the new penalties would target the sale and purchase of arms and related goods used to fund the communist regime’s nuclear activities.

Security forces kill protesters

SRINAGAR, India – Four people were gunned down Sunday by security forces who opened fire on thousands of protesters, and another four civilians were killed in a blast at a police station, bringing the toll from weeks of clashes in increasingly violent Indian Kashmir to 31.

The explosion happened after the police station was set on fire by residents angry at two deaths in Khrew, a town near Srinagar where hundreds had been protesting Indian rule, a top police officer said.

At least four people were killed and dozens of civilians were injured in the blast.

Hundreds of fires erupt in Russia

VORONEZH, Russia – Hundreds of new fires broke out Sunday in Russian forests and fields that have been dried to a crisp by drought and record heat, but firefighters claimed success in bringing some of the fires raging around cities under control.

The firefighters got much-needed help from residents desperate to save their homes, who shoveled sand onto the flames and carted water in large plastic bottles.

The wildfires that began threatening much of western Russia last week have killed 28 people and destroyed or damaged 77 towns or villages, the Emergencies Ministry said. Thousands of people have been evacuated from the path of the fires, but no deaths have been recorded since late Wednesday.

Troops and volunteers have joined tens of thousands of firefighters in combating the fires, which blazed just outside Moscow and in several provinces east and south of the capital.