World News Highlights at 0230 GMT, Dec 11

WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives approved bailout legislation on Wednesday that would force U.S. automakers to restructure or fail, sending the measure to the Senate where prospects for passage are uncertain.

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CHICAGO - President-elect Barack Obama called on the governor of Illinois to resign on Wednesday after he was charged with trying to sell Obama's U.S. Senate seat and swap favors for money.

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WASHINGTON - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will nominate Steven Chu, a Nobel physics laureate and advocate of alternative energy research, as his energy secretary, a Democratic aide said on Wednesday.

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ATHENS - Riots erupted for a fifth day and strikes paralysed Greece on Wednesday, as unrest ignited by the police shooting of a teenager was fuelled further by resentment of economic hardship and government scandals.

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ABUJA - Nigeria's Supreme Court will on Friday deliver a final judgment on legal challenges to President Umaru Yar'Adua's April 2007 election victory, opposition lawyers said on Wednesday.

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MOGADISHU - Somalia's moderate Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed returned to Mogadishu for the first time in two years on Wednesday and a local rights group said fighting had killed 16,210 civilians since then.

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OSLO - Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari urged U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday to delve into solving the Middle East conflict in his first year in office, calling it a knot that could be untied.

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ISLAMABAD - Pakistan confirmed on Wednesday the arrest of two men named by India as planners of the militant attack on Mumbai, but a senior Indian official described Pakistani actions so far as "eyewash."

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BEIJING - Talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions failed to break an impasse over rules for probing its atomic activities, negotiators said on Wednesday, offering dim prospects of a breakthrough.

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HARARE - The death toll from Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak soared to nearly 800 on Wednesday and a court ordered police to find a missing rights activist, piling more pressure on President Robert Mugabe's government.

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BUCHAREST - Liberal economist Theodor Stolojan won the nomination to head Romania's probable centre-left coalition government on Wednesday, raising hopes for political stability, key to coping with global economic crisis.

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BRUSSELS - Differences narrowed in the European Union over how to tackle the economic slowdown and global warming but a final deal on both issues proved elusive before a summit starting on Thursday.