this is news live from berlin an apology from australia's prime minister for vacationing in hawaii while parts of his country burn as prime minister you have other responsibilities and i accept that not accept the criticism. thousands of firefighters are struggling to contain catastrophic places across several states will go to sydney for the latest. germany and the e.u. take the u.s. to task for sanctions on a pipeline project to supply western europe with russian gas look at what if any

impact those sanctions may actually have. and leipzig top the german football league heading into the winter great. one. out spurred was enough to guarantee their lead in the mood to sleep we'll have all that action and. i'm so glad you could join me through. australia's prime ministers scott morrison has been forced to apologize for taking a holiday at the height of the devastating bushfire crisis emergency crews are struggling to contain hundreds of blazes around sydney a combination of record temperatures drought and powerful winds is fueling the inferno at least 8 people have been killed since the fires began but there's hope of a winter of a break in the weather. the reality of the fight against the flames told mensing

australia the false of nature overwhelming. ever hear of. just a handful of firefighters here more than 3000 others are on the front lines in new south wales and one of the biggest fire disasters australia has seen to have lost their lives. i'm back in australia to help coordinate the response prime minister scott morrison outraged by leaving for a holiday in hawaii is a crisis peaked he's returned with repentance. obviously return from that has caused some great anxiety in a strike there and. acknowledge that. he had to time ever again and you had the benefit of hindsight and with my different decisions. the past 2 days have been desperate in new south wales

a situation officially catastrophic as one official said as bad as it gets exhaustion is setting in. management and the dry and the relentless niter this season is certainly taking a toll on so too is a geographic spread of the activity just to go challenges transport and an accommodation challenges spreading and moving people right across such a broad geographic area all add to the challenges. maybe. it's the intensity of the. cold wet weather moves in but still hundreds of. on the assessment of the damage caused. journalist roger maynard ease in sydney following the blazes there roger prime minister scott morrison has apologised after returning from vacation is you're likely to be any political

fallout for him in other words are australians buying what he's selling. not really being rather cynical i think at this stage in his absence overseas sunning himself in hawaii while much of australia and certainly didn't go down too well and he's been and certainly pilloried in the press and on the social media as a result of that he is under a lot of pressure to politically to pull out all the stops to try to restore his image this morning he went immediately to the rural fire service headquarters in sydney to major officials and also to discuss strategy with them also there were up fighters from america and canada who arrived in australia over the weekend to try to offer a helping hand during this press conference scott morrison accepted the criticism leveled at him and apologise for any offense corps has done here ted to concede

that climate change might have been a contributory factor in all this he emphasised that it was not possible to make a direct connection between climate change and any particular incident how australia and about $60000000000.00 a year from the export of coal so there's a lot riding on this debate and he is not prepared to give that sort of business away immediately anyway well mercifully temperatures around sydney have dropped hasn't helped firefighters much. yeah it's a lot cooler in sydney if they have about 2324 degrees celsius compared with 4445 degrees yesterday so the news will drop in temperature and that certainly helped firefighters who have been battling blazes in the blue mountains now for most of the weekend is help them to gain some degree of control although a limited amount of trouble because these fires are so immense earlier today we heard of another potential disaster in an area south west of sydney in

a little town called balmoral which has a population of about $400.00 of the prime minister and the state premier of wind to this particular part of the world earlier on today and and the and the work was that although no one's actually been allowed back into the village yet that most of the village has been lost such was that the force of claims overnight and that's why the story is going repeated in so many areas of australia at the moment you know in in the blue mountains and in south west of sydney we've got this sort of christened of flame and circling a lot of the outer regions. and no one can really stop it basically roger briefly as you heard in the piece that we just ran with hundreds of fires burning you says many of the damage has hardly started just how bad do authorities fear the damage actually is. well no one can really say i mean at the moment we know that 800 homes were lost because of the person damage to your knowledge the death toll is no

that's not and in addition to that you know dozens of people have been injured many of them fighters on the job so there's that to sit through as well and then there's the damage to the land that got something like 7000000 to lend or up to 3 mm lens destroyed in the past month or so alone as well aaron end will have to stop it there very much roger maynard in sydney thank you so much. germany has strongly objected to u.s. sanctions against the north stream to gas pipeline from russia to germany the sanctions target companies building the pipeline under the baltic sea washington says the project gives russia too much power over europe and it's offering its own gas as an alternative. the gas pipeline has just 300 kilometers to go

this signature aims to stop it dead in the water the new u.s. law imposes sanctions against companies building the pipeline washington says north stream 2 will make germany too dependent on russian energy none of your business says german vice chancellor scholtz. sanctions constitute serious interference in the internal affairs of germany and europe and of our own sovereignty we have checked to them in the strongest terms moreover this behavior is entirely in comprehensible and is not at all appropriate between friends and nato allies. the sanctions target companies like swiss based all sees it operate ships that lay pipelines at sea but because the sanctions could threaten business the company does in the united states its announced its suspending work on north stream too many german politicians are outraged by the american measures. just wants more markets for their fracking gas they want to force europeans to buy environment damaging fracking again. but the government in berlin says it won't retaliate. we do

not want to trade in warm weather on this issue or any other we believe that political differences should be resolved politically and shouldn't contribute to making a trade conflicts worse conflict. the consortium building north stream too says construction will continue but finishing the pipeline may now take longer and cost more. so work on the pipeline halted with only a few 100 kilometers to go we. political editor. if the project could be stopped altogether. you know it's actually very unlikely that u.s. sanctions will stop this project from going a hot head over all because it's more strategic that it is a technical question at the moment there's a swiss company that is simply afraid to continue any work because of the threat of sanctions and they have specialty ships technology you can't replace but what you also can't replace is that strategic alliance between germany and russia on this

particular point of energy security and supplies this is a project that's also been hot these bases within the european union and the united states simply wants to kill it's unlikely it will do so because it's also a matter of principle even for the opponents that imposing sanctions is simply against international law and how international business is currently done debby's chief political editor me look there now to some of the other stories making news around the world today in india the death toll from protests against a controversial new citizenship law has risen to at least 23 police say more than 600 people have been arrested demonstrators clashed with police across the country despite curfews and tough measures aimed at stopping protests. cuba is getting its 1st prime minister in more than 40 years as a minister of many well number of coups takes over the post last held by communist

leader fidel castro is expected to share responsibility as with president yes can now under a plan to decentralize power. sports now and german football leipzig are on top of the league or as the league enters christmas break the team secured the top spot with a $31.00 win at home to. support coach martin schmidt managed to smile as he greeted his counterpart to leonardo's. against. leipzig of all teams philip max would have to sit out the match with a sore throat leaving it all up to his strike partner thought he i need a lesson. and he rose to the occasion opening the scoring for the visitors with their 1st chance in just the 8th minute i'm about the 8th goal of the season for the summer newcomer my checking video replay for

a possible offside took 2 and a half minutes which is better to feel the fire for opponents of the system who say it kills the mood when after that light sic woke up of a but they couldn't capitalize on any of their 1st half chances my but that changed in the 68 minutes when conrad lima got hold of the ball when the austrian netting the long overdue equaliser by it was like 616th shot in the game and they finally managed to take advantage of the one with the pipes they wanted to make sure they went into the winter break top of the table and that was guaranteed 12 minutes later when patrick shit i shut off felix. and headed in to make it to one of my pipes it played

a clever game the rest of the way team oh berna stepped on the gas and set up substitute use of pulse and 5 to tap in and round out the 31 scoreline in the final minutes my. it's all very tight all the top teams are there in the mix be a lot of big things happening for us in spring and. fall like this next year and in the summer of 08 that's but 1st leipzig will be having a merry christmas at the top of the table thank you. 2nd place claude block needed a win against her to berlin to keep them level on points with the league leaders but they found the going tough in the german capital they only managed to nil nil draw against the team led by former usa coach you can klinsmann. that's about in season has brightened up of late they were looking to spoil got back to christmas with a 3rd straight victory to pulling his best 1st off chance came from

a free kick when this counterattack ended in a foul on davis and white move in stepped up. his effort crashed off the crossbar much to the relief of a stranded here and zama in the cab back next. at the other end the foes were inaccurate markers to ram was denied by billy yosh time and offside through a annoyed house school and that the rebound and the school's stay left. marco's aside not performing like credible contenders for the tight. to direct passes in the 2nd half they've got back the best shots of the game but allyson clay are fighting to make coutts another simpler safer yasht i'm still trying to score on the one more opportunity before the whistle but he is good says miss choose shoulder swipe symbolic of the outback struggle in front of the head to go marco

rose as disappointment is you're going cleans man's heart for reward while glad back now full 2 points behind lights hats ahead into the winter break unbeaten in 4 league games. coming up after the break porter and location looks at the search for the perfect christmas tree unlike a local will see with more news at the top of the alice. 50 years of religions for peace people from many different things are working together toward a common goal of peaceful resolution of religious conflicts. now female members of religions for peace from the middle east are demanding the lord.