it is the. answer to the journey. the at. the at. this is g.w. news line from violent australia's prime minister is forced to apologize for vacationing in hawaii whilst false areas of his country but thousands of firefighters are struggling to contain catastrophic blazes across several states also coming up afghanistan's president ashraf ghani appears to have been reelected

by a narrow margin in long delayed results from september's election but his rival abdullah abdullah warns he won't concede our correspondent has the details. and to mourn his legal folk or glad that he came in too much a 17 level points with league leaders like seek and waving to reclaim the top spot going into the wintel break. i'm having a home free glad you could join me australia's prime minister 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 9 people have been killed since the fires began by there is now

hope at last of a break in the weather. the air is acrid the dense smoke is causing serious health problems. laid waste in the town of let's go 80 kilometers west of sydney. it's. the firestorm all but wiped the village of balmoral southwest of sydney off the map the flames came so fast that steve harrison had no time to escape. the day before i had actually build myself. into. the heating there for half an hour. saturday was catastrophic sunday.

it was cooler and firefighters could make some progress in containing the flames but the crisis is far from over. we've got to keep in mind that we're not expecting any rainfall to mike any meaningful difference for those 4 hours until january january february that's the way to go i was still talking 4 to 6 weeks at best before we start to see a meaningful reprieve in the weather. here. has already been fighting wildfires for months extreme heat and drought gave this year's fire season an early start. prime minister scott morrison returned from a vacation in hawaii after widespread public criticism earning the nickname smoke for not being present during the country's worst ever fire in the agency he said he was sorry if his absence had caused offense a response many have branded as inadequate to really start challenging weeks still lie ahead for the public and the firefighters who are battling not only the flames

but also extreme exhaustion. when journalist rajan menon asked him how australians had responded to prime minister morrison's apology. well particularly well i mean australians are basically pretty cynical people and they have girl talk of politicians particularly politicians all prime ministers ago and all its own like this has been noted criticized and lampoon do 'd a certain extent on social media or it in the newspapers here and these are a lot of pressure politically so he's pulling out all the stops to repair the damage and joy to enhance his image this morning you went to the roof of our service the coors and certainly they had all the offices there for there are efforts at the press conference he did accept criticism leveled at him apologize for any offense caused by his absence over the past week janice roger may not

speaking to us there earlier well afghan president ashraf ghani appears to be heading for a 2nd term preliminary results released a short while ago show that he won september's election with just over 50 percent the else meant had been delayed because of irregularities and every count turnout was on the 30 percent and a 3rd of the votes cast were declared invalid now danny's closest rival of the abdullah who currently shares power with him is the country's chief executive says he does not accept the result and wants an investigation for more let's bring in journalist at unity for he joins us from the afghan capital kabul alley what are people there making of the prospect of another 10 for ashraf ghani as president. i think people are very tired of the selection process you know they just wanted to be over it's been 23 months since the election took place and people have been waiting for results and now we're seen again but there are questions of legitimacy

we're seeing that doctor of the law is refusing to accept the results saying that the clean votes were not counted that fraudulent votes are counted that widespread fraud was committed that fraud in the election leaves as much damage as a suicide bombing what so really you know it's not resolving very much because it just seems to be leading to more electoral tension and more political drama for the people in it with those allegations and the fact that these results are preliminary how much could they still be subject to change i think getting them to change will be very difficult because it only lead to more problems it could lead to a 2nd round which would be even more problematic because they would have to wait until after the winter to conduct that so really the best thing that the president can hope for this point is to convince his rivals that you know this was a clean election that this was a proper election and the best thing is to do is to accept his government you know as he said this is the continuation of the republic and he really sees it as

a positive mandate for him so what he wants is for them to accept his victory and you know if it takes them joining in the government if they're willing to come in and you know i think that's a concession is going to have to make at some point or another with at least some of them but i think more than anything he just wants this done and he wants this over badly i wondering do you think afghans will accept such a close result especially considering we've got about a 1000000 votes that were declared invalid. i think the afghan people you know don't have much faith in the electoral process and we saw that only 1800000 people turned out so whoever becomes president will only be declared the winner with about a 1000000 votes in a country of 32000000 people so i think at this point you know what the people really want is some kind of closure you know they want to move on to the other issues they're businessmen whose goods are stuck at different courts and at different corners willing to come in because they don't know how to invest their people you know wanting to know what's going to happen with the negotiations with

the taliban was going to happen with the relations with the u.s. and with other countries and i think they just want to start to get answers once again and so the reality is is that you know a lot of people know that they don't really have a change in the way these things are run and that the decisions will be made anyways but i think what they just want is a sense of closure the right journalist adding a t.v. reporting for us from kabul thank you so much. you. know it's have a look now at some of the other stories making news around the world protesters in iraq have taken to the streets to oppose the nomination of education minister qusay so healy to the post of prime minister they accuse him of having close ties to iran the previous prime minister resigned last month and a constitutional deadline to find a replacement has already passed. it home calling police have broken up a sit in protesting china's treatment of it's we get i think minority police were

seen striking protesters with battens and making arrests now the process to say china is abusing over 1000000 weak a muslim is held in camps something beijing denies or. indian prime minister narendra modi has defended a new citizenship rule that critics say discriminates against muslims addressing his supporters in new delhi he said that there was no need to worry for muslims born in india or to indian parents now at least 23 people have been killed in violent protests against the law. and as those protests against the proposed new continue authorities have imposed strict security measures including temporarily shutting down internet and mobile networks in part of the country he w. reporter called osman joins me in the studio now with more cause you've been looking at this estate's i suppose if experience teaches us anything it is that perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised about this latest shutdown yeah i mean india is the world's biggest democracy right but it's not so democratic when it comes to

internet access india actually leads the world in the number of internet shutdowns it's really not even close there been more than $100.00 of them so far this year and under no brand or modi india has really become the king of internet shutdowns and you can just see that in the numbers these are from last year as you can see india 134 shutdowns compare that to 2nd place pakistan with just. wells iraq and yemen 7 shutdowns each bangladesh shut off the internet 5 times last year in fact india in 2018 shut down the internet more times than the rest of the top 10 countries combined and this is a trend for india we've seen this happening shutdowns have increased dramatically in just the past few years and here's that trend for india now starting in 2015 there were around 14 internet shutdowns in india that went up to 31 another doubling in 2017 and then you can see those numbers for 28 seen so clearly this has

been going on for a little bit but spiking in the over the last 2 years definitely becoming more popular way of treating the internet in the last couple of years this is certainly very clear to see what explains this call the reason the government gives this is security they say this is necessary shutting down the internet at times during times of unrest is necessary for quote preventing a breakdown in law and order but what many experts say is that this is directly because of these protests that we've been seeing against this law they're trying to disrupt the flow of information and prevent these protesters from organizing a local journalist told me this week for example the protesters are often sharing information sharing calls to action on platforms at once up and facebook so if there's no internet makes much more much harder to communicate and the movements mostly leaderless so it's very effective as well we saw that in hong kong lots of communication happening online the other reason is of course kashmir in indian administered kashmir there's been a lockdown a crackdown on the internet in place for more than 4 months both broadband and

mobile have been shut down that shutdown shows no sense signs of ending officials say that's necessary of course not region because there has been unrest there as well so that is the line from the officials i can't help but wonder what kind of message does this send to the wider public from modi at least this is a very mixed message if you look back 220141 of his biggest platforms of during his campaign. what was more internet access and this is certainly less i mean the other message being sent here is to other countries and other countries are watching what's going on in india in particular china and you can see that here this is actually from a chinese newspaper the people's daily it's an official newspaper of china's communist party it's making the case as you can see that these shutdowns during protests mean quote that shutting down the internet in a state of emergency should be standard practice for sovereign countries that being written only just a few days ago india of course not the only offender the number of shutdowns worldwide has been increasing but all eyes right now in india already w.

reporting calling us and bringing us those latest developments thank you so much. suppose now on some football news a 2nd place gladbach needed a win against had to bend to keep them level on points with illegally is 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. pat the but in season has brightened up of late they were looking to spoil blackbox 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 davies ok i made what move and stepped up. his effort crashed off the crossbar much to the relief of a stranded here and zama in the glass back names. at the other end the photos were inaccurate madhu's to round was denied by billy ja stein and offside florrie

annoyed house squandered the rebound and the schools stayed left. marco was a side not performing like credible contenders for the title. 2 direct passes in the 2nd half gave got back the best shots of the game but on his side play are fighting to make cowards another simply say for yosh are still trying to score on the one more opportunity before the whistle but he is good says misuse shoulder swipe symbolic of gladbach struggle in front of the ets a go marco was a disappointment is your going cleans man's part for rewards while glad back now full 2 points behind lights head to head into the winter break unbeaten in 40 games . now as let's take a look now at all the results so far all much j 17 well part of an upset frankfurt does little feat only on bad in hats a bad ending and it's scoreless spine left it late to be both but like they came

from behind to defeat. cologne down vet at the same initial current freiburg shot the point smites lost to 10 man lay the course in an on friday hoffenheim stunned dormant. we're watching the news live from but then you can always get the latest news on our web site that is d.w. dot com i'm having a home for a about and thanks for your company i'll see you with more news at the top of the alibi for now. it's all happening good job it. sure linked to news from africa the world your links to exceptional stories and discussions to no one will come to their views after coming program tonight from florida jenny from the zito i would say don't close much africa join us on facebook t.w.

africa. hello and welcome to a particularly exciting new episode of my.