Reuters World News Highlights at 1800 GMT, Dec 10

LONDON/NEW YORK - China vowed renewed measures to revitalize its economy on Wednesday after exports tumbled and domestic demand shrank, with bleak figures from Europe showing how badly its major trading partners were faring.

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ATHENS - Protesters threw fire bombs at police outside parliament on Wednesday during a general strike which paralysed Greece and piled pressure on a conservative government reeling from the worst riots in decades.

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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 - Romania's president picked liberal economist Theodor Stolojan on Wednesday to head a probable coalition between centrist and leftist parties with a history of bitter rivalry.

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

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MENA - More than two million Muslims performing the haj pilgrimage entered the final stage of the rituals on Wednesday, visiting the Grand Mosque in Mecca and stoning walls representing the devil one more time.