While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Nov 3rd edition

Hong Kong police charge British banker with double murder

Hong Kong police have charged a 29-year-old British banker who worked for Bank of America Merrill Lynch with murder after the grisly discovery of two female corpses, including one in a suitcase, in his upmarket apartment, investigators said on Monday.

The women were found dead on the 31st floor of the residential block in the popular expatriate district of Wanchai in the early hours of Saturday morning - when many revellers were out celebrating Halloween.

Police said in a statement early Monday that the man, identified by local press as British expatriate Rurik Jutting, would appear in court later in the day.

The man was arrested after he called police to his flat on Saturday where they found a naked woman with knife wounds to her neck and buttock in the living room.

The corpse of the other woman was discovered decaying inside a suitcase on the balcony.

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Obama makes final campaign push, hoping to avert electoral rout

President Barack Obama made a final push on Sunday to help struggling Democrats before this week's midterm elections, making campaign stops in Connecticut and Pennsylvania to try to avert a "shellacking" at the polls like the one in 2010.

After a 2014 political season spent mostly behind the scenes at high-dollar fundraisers, Obama spent the past several days on the road, making appearances in states where his low popularity ratings are seen as less of an albatross to Democrats running for office than in other close races across the country.

On Sunday, he began in Connecticut, where Democratic Governor Dan Malloy is in a tight race with Republican challenger Tom Foley.

A RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Malloy up 0.7 of a point.

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Time running out to reach 2 degrees Celsius target: UN climate panel

Time is running out to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the UN's climate experts warned Sunday, saying current carbon emissions were a potential path to disaster.

Crowning a landmark review, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said emissions of three key greenhouse gases were at their highest since more than 800,000 years ago, when mammoths and mastodons roamed the earth.

Earth, it warned, is on a likely trajectory for at least 4 C warming over pre-industrial times by 2100 - a recipe for worsening drought, flood, rising seas and species extinctions. Many could face hunger, homelessness and conflict in the scramble for precious resources.

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Wanted: 500,000 pilots for China aviation gold rush

China's national civil aviation authority says the country will need to train about half a million civilian pilots by 2035, up from just a few thousand now, as wannabe flyers chase dreams of landing lucrative jobs at new air service operators.

The aviation boom comes as China allows private planes to fly below 1,000 metres from next year without military approval, seeking to boost its transport infrastructure.

Commercial airlines aren't affected, but more than 200 new firms have applied for general aviation operating licences, while China's high-rollers are also eager for permits to fly their own planes.

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Formula One: Five-in-row Hamilton eyes title after US victory

Lewis Hamilton increased his lead in the world championship to 24 points on Sunday when he swept to his fifth consecutive victory and 10th of the season by winning an intriguing United States Grand Prix.

The 29-year-old Briton, who started second behind his pole sitting Mercedes team-mate and nearest rival Nico Rosberg, took the lead with a bold move after 24 laps on his way to a perfectly-measured triumph ahead of the German by nearly five seconds.

It was the 32nd win of Hamilton's career, a landmark statistic that lfited him one victory clear of Nigel Mansell as the British driver with most career successes in Formula One.

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