World Briefs

NEPAL A bus packed with passengers riding inside and on its roof veers off a mountain road in northwest Nepal, killing 30 people and injuring 35 others.

INDIA An Indian court sentences an Uber driver to life in prison for raping a passenger in his vehicle in New Delhi last year.

INDONESIA An Indonesian court sentences two British television journalists to two and a half months in jail for violating immigration regulations by working with tourist visas. Neil Bonner and Rebecca Prosser were detained in May in Batam, a city just south of Singapore, while making a documentary about piracy in the Malacca Strait.
UK Banking group Standard Chartered is slashing 15,000 jobs worldwide and plans to raise USD5.1 billion from shareholders through a rights issue as part of a major restructuring to shore up its financial position. The Asia-focused bank also announced plans yesterday to shift operations away from institutional and corporate banking toward private banking and wealth management.

UK Christie’s is set to sell personal possessions of the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, including papers, mementos, clothes — and her iconic handbags. The auctioneer said yesterday that 150 lots will go under the hammer Dec. 15 in London, with a further 200 sold by online auction between Dec. 3 and Dec 16.

IRAQ Ahmad Chalabi, a prominent Iraqi politician who helped convince the Bush administration to launch the 2003 invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein by providing false evidence of weapons of mass destruction, has died of a heart attack, Iraqi state TV reported yesterday. He was 71.

CANADA-USA After waiting seven years for a decision, the company behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas has asked the U.S. State Department to suspend its review of the project. The move comes as the Obama administration increasingly appears likely to reject the pipeline permit application before leaving office in January 2017.

USA Shares in automaker Volkswagen are sliding after U.S. environmental officials said the company equipped more models than previously thought with software that let the cars cheat on diesel emissions tests. The scandal over emissions cheating widened when the EPA said that Volkswagen installed software on thousands of Audi, Porsche and VW cars with six-cylinder diesel engines that allowed them to emit fewer pollutants during tests than in real-world driving. Volkswagen denied the charge, but faces the prospect of more fines and lost sales.