While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Nov 27

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the United States was in the "final throes" in its attempt to reach a trade deal with China, but that at the same time Washington stands with protesters in Hong Kong, where it wants to see democracy.

At an Oval Office event to sign an executive order to address violence against Native American women, Trump was asked by a reporter if he had a message for the people of Hong Kong after their recent local election, in which pro-democracy parties scored a resounding victory.

"We're with them," Trump said. "I have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Xi. We're in the final throes of a very important deal, I guess you could say one of the most important deals in trade ever. It's going very well but at the same time we want to see it go well in Hong Kong.

"And I think it will. I think that President Xi can make that happen. I know him and I know he'd like to make it happen."

Police in Germany were on Tuesday hunting robbers who snatched priceless 18th century jewellery from a state museum in Dresden in what local media have called the biggest art heist of all time.

The authorities across eastern Germany have been put on alert after thieves made off with treasures from the Green Vault at Dresden's Royal Palace in an astonishing smash-and-grab raid early on Monday morning.

Police have called for witnesses to step forward and released images of the stolen items, which were taken from a collection of jewellery of 18th-century Saxony ruler Augustus the Strong.

As deadly bushfires ravage swathes of Australia, the tale of Lewis the koala offered a glimmer of good news.

A grandmother of seven named Toni Doherty had spotted the confused critter dashing into the inferno last week, then in a dramatic moment that was captured on camera charged after him. She emerged from the smoldering forest carrying the singed koala, swaddled in the shirt off her back. He wailed as she doused him with water.

But the rescue story didn't get the happy ending many had longed to see. The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital said Tuesday that its staff had made the decision to euthanize the wounded animal after surveying the extent of his injuries.

Britain's chief rabbi said opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was unfit to be prime minister because he had failed to stem anti-Semitism "sanctioned from the top" and now gripping his party.

His comments stirred up campaigning ahead of a Dec 12 election in which the United Kingdom faces a stark choice between Prime Minister Boris Johnson, promising to complete Britain's departure from the EU, and Corbyn, proposing a radical socialist vision for the world's fifth-largest economy.

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, in an article in The Times newspaper, questioned how complicit in prejudice an opposition leader would have to be to be considered unfit for office.

Fires that destroyed Indonesian rainforests pumped out more carbon dioxide than the blazes in the Amazon this year, according to the European Union's atmosphere observation programme.

The fires, which covered parts of South-east Asia with thick clouds of ash and smoke, may have released the equivalent of 709 million tonnes of carbon dioxide through Nov 15, or about the same as the annual emissions of Canada.

That's 22% more than the estimated 579 megatons ejected from burning Amazon forest, according to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, a programme run on behalf of the European Commission.