World News Highlights at 0630 GMT, Dec 11

BEIJING/WASHINGTON - Chinese consumer inflation slowed sharply as vanishing demand globally put heavy pressure on prices, while U.S. automakers took a big step towards securing a bailout only to face another formidable obstacle.

- - - -

CHICAGO - President-elect Barack Obama called on the Democratic 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.

- - - -

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.

- - - -

UNITED NATIONS - A committee of the U.N. Security Council has added four leaders of a Pakistani militant group to a list of people and groups facing sanctions for ties to al Qaeda or the Taliban, including a freeze on assets and travel ban, the U.N. said on Wednesday.

- - - -

BEIJING - Talks pressing North Korea to abandon its nuclear arms ambitions limped into a fourth day on Thursday, with dim hope of progress in a disarmament deal that would be a prize for the outgoing Bush administration.

- - - -

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.

- - - -

TAIPEI - The much-trumpeted deals linking rivals Taiwan and China through direct daily flights and cargo routes are unlikely to boost cross-strait trade significantly, and they could dent the image of the island's president.

- - - -

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.

- - - -

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.

- - - -

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.