Venezuelan banks calling off strike

CARACAS, Venezuela -- In the latest sign that the drive to force out President Hugo Chavez is unraveling, Venezuela's banks agreed Wednesday to abandon a 59-day-old opposition strike.

The banks agreed to return to normal operating hours Monday. Thousands of people had waited in long lines while banks opened just three hours a day.

Management at shopping malls, restaurants, franchises and schools also planned to resume work Monday.

According to business leaders, the strike forced at least 25,000 companies to go out of business in December.

"The cost of this strike is going to be higher than its benefits," said Vladimir Rojas, spokesman for Fedeindustria, the manufacturers association. "The decision to strike was made with passion -- not cold, calculated business sense."

The government also nibbled away at the strike's core: a walkout that hobbled the oil industry, the world's No. 5 exporter. Output surpassed 1-million barrels a day this week, a third of normal.

Sharon faces challenge building new coalition

JERUSALEM -- After a re-election triumph so resounding that it startled even his own supporters, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced the complex task Wednesday of forming a stable government that rewards the victory of hard-line parties but does not slam the door on eventually reaching a cease-fire agreement the Palestinians.

According to nearly final results from Tuesday's election, Sharon's Likud Party won 37 seats in Parliament, while politicians and parties associated with Israel's battered peace movement were trounced. The centrist Labor Party had its worst showing ever, capturing just 19 seats.

Advisers to Sharon said he probably will take several weeks to build a coalition. Under Israeli law, after Israel's president asks Sharon to form a government, he has 42 days to assemble a majority in the 120-member Knesset.

Sharon has said he wants to form a broad government including larger, more centrist parties, such as Labor and the secularist Shinui Party. Labor leaders have vowed not to join a Likud government, but some analysts suggested the party might split.

North Korea's leader snubs envoy from South

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea snubbed a South Korean special envoy, dashing hopes in South Korea that the visit would lead to a breakthrough in the crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

The South Korean, Lim Dong Won, a top security adviser to President Kim Dae Jung, was treated to a five-hour banquet during his two-day visit to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, but was not granted even a minute with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who was said to be busy touring the countryside.

Lim had hoped to deliver to Kim Jong Il a letter from South Korea's president outlining a solution. He said Kim sent word through an intermediary that the proposals would be reviewed.

Iranian cleric freed after 5 years of house arrest

QOM, Iran -- Iran's senior dissident cleric has been freed after spending five years under house arrest for criticizing the nation's supreme leader, the Associated Press reported today. Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, 81, had been in line to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 revolution, as supreme leader. But the pair fell out months before Khomeini died of cancer in 1989 and Montazeri was passed over.

He was confined to his home after saying the man who succeeded Khomeini, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was not competent to issue religious rulings.

Iran's Special Clergy Court said the house arrest was lifted because of Montazeri's age and ill health.

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