no the findings are we're just. going to sit in the big. stores december 23rd to. the at. the at. this is d w news live from berlin australia's prime minister is forced to apologize for vacationing in hawaii wall vast areas of his country but thousands of firefighters are struggling to contain catastrophic blazes across several states also coming up croatia's left-wing former prime minister's daughter i'm eleanor beardsley it's the

1st round of voting to the president but with a runoff ahead all eyes are on the 2 right wing candidates vying for 2nd place. and hong kong police cracked down on a 16 rally as activists tried to call attention to china's alleged abuse of its we got muslim minority. i am. i have and i am 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 had to contain hundreds of blazes around sydney now a combination of record temperatures drought and powerful winds is fueling the inferno at least 9 people have been killed since the fires began but there is now hope at last the break in the weather. the air is acrid the dense smoke

is causing serious health problems. laid waste in the town of lythgoe 80 kilometers west of sydney. logs last. 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 built myself. just big enough for me to call in so i know he didn't there for. 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 make any meaningful difference in those 4 hours until january january february that's the way to go i was still talking for 6 weeks at best before we start to see a meaningful reprieve in the weather going to committee. 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 being present during the country's worst day of a fire in the agency he said he was sorry if his absence had caused offense a response many have branded as inadequate to start challenging weeks still lie ahead for the public and the firefighters who were battling not only the flames but

also extreme exhaustion. where he was very generous raja may know it and asked him how australians had responded to the prime minister'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 pilloried in the newspapers here and these are a lot of pressure politically so he's pulling out all the stops to repair the damage it tried to enhance his image this morning you went to the rule for a service that coors and certainly they had all the offices there but there are efforts at a press conference he did accept criticism leveled at him apologize for any offense caused by his absence over the past week roger may not that generous speaking to us

as well polls have closed encouraged his presidential election with exit polls showing a tight race between 3 candidates. he's been left his former. prime minister as are men of which leads with just under 30 percent of the vote in a conservative incumbent gravatt could take it are over which was close behind with just over 26 percent followed by right wing folks saying i'm in s.f. scotto who ran as an independent now run a folk must be held within 2 weeks. the one joined by journalist fight but now he's monitoring the vote from neighboring civvy near joins us from now the results indicate that the incumbent president is in 2nd place behind social democrat men over why did so many croatians decide to punish the conservative government. well there are

a lot of reasons for that 1st and foremost the economy is fairly slow except in a very few sectors sectors like for example the tourism the christian economy is doing badly and is doing so since a long time which results also in a relatively high unemployment rate hand in hand with that goes a dramatic brain drain a lot of people leave the country it's mostly the young and felt educated to leave the country you have in some areas of the country and i can east and so on your entire villages that have been deserted in the last in the last years and dead or to a certain mood in the country the creation of government they're willing each the set that controls the public life since a long time in this country could have done much more in terms of the needs of the people it also you have a widespread unhappiness for example with the health sector there are lot of hospitals in the country that don't have enough budget to pay their staff or by

even the most necessary medicaments any indication he might win the 2nd round of voting come january. that is very hard to say of course expression ministers are in milan which from the social democrats he managed to to mobilize the left wing specter of political specter in creation but gravity terror which an incoming president is not too far away from him and not to forget the 3rd candidate he nearest rush for he's an extreme hard right wing nationalist and is dead let kalinda gravity parry which also to conduct a companion that was very much right wing leaning with a lot of nationalist topics she brought into her campaign and turner she might collect quite some votes from and from him in the 2nd round so it's quite open race

i would say she probably might be the next president elect again but that will cast a shadow on her presidency being elected with the votes of the extreme right wing well kerry sure is taking over the council presidency of the european union next year how could the shifting croatia's politics affect the country's role in the. well it will certainly not affect the presidency directly because in the e.u. presidency usually usually is or dominated by issues that 90 percent of those political topics presidency just inherits from the previous presidency so there is an agenda there of creation government real work on creation president however is a mostly representative function that has not direct influence on the government's agenda also concerning the e.u. presidency but of course it would give a strong signal if it's shifting in its public opinion towers

right wing popular isn't even more than it has been so far it is a development that is seen risk with concern not only in brussels or in the rest of the e.u. but also among its neighbors with whom creation has a lot of unsolved issue was for example a lot of unsolved border issues fight i think clown thanks a lot. yes i get it now from the other stories making news around the world the self-styled libyan national army says it seized a ship with turkish crewmembers and forced it to a libyan port for inspection now the vessel was flying a granada flag the allen a wants to bring down the b.s. u.n. backed government in tripoli and rejects a maritime border deal made between the government and turkey. protesters across iraq have taken to the streets to oppose the nomination of education minister qusay or heli to the post of prime minister now they keys him as having close ties to

iran the previous prime minister resigned last month and a constitutional deadline to find a replacement has already passed. afghan president musharraf the guy he appears to be heading for a 2nd term preliminary results result released a short while ago show that he won september's election with just over 50 percent now the announce her meant had been delayed because irregularities and a recount turnout was under 30 percent and a 3rd of votes cast were declared invalid dani's closest rival abdullah abdullah who currently shares power with him as the country's chief executive says he says not except the result a month an investigation of a more let's bring in journalist ideality for you joins us from the afghan capital kabul ali what are people there making of the prospect of another term 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 through 3 months since the election took place and people have been waiting for results and now we're seeing again that 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 voter 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 you know 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 you 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 i have one people you know don't have much faith in the electoral process and we saw that only 120000000 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 ports in

a different borders 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 the just want to start getting answers once again and so the reality 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 all right journalist and reporting for us from kabul thank you so much you well hong kong police have broken up a sit in protesting china's treatment of its weak ethnic minority the demonstrators accused beijing of abusing over 1000000 of the week of muslims held in camps something it denies is the latest violence in more than 6 months of protests in the territory. a rally for freedom of speech that ended like this. anger and violence between activists and place. bottles flies protesters are

spun furiously to the police action. amidst a scuffle and office appointees gon have demonstrators. this is what activists are complaining about they say china is threatening the liberties the people of hong kong still have. i think that basically we're all fighting against it's a totalitarian regime or we don't wrong. china. to become this. defeated wall. painting. the rally started peacefully in hong kong's financial district hundreds of democracy activists staged to see the in to show support of mainland chinese ethnic wages some will mosques with the flag of pro independence activists in the weakest province xing jiang on the dice a beijing once

a silence pushing jiang and hong kong. i know about the so-called re-education camps where over 1000000 wages have been kept and they fear something like that could also happen here. we're watching the news from bad end coming up reporter looks at the lengths some families will go to in that quest for the perfect christmas tree to figure out you can always get the latest on a website it is d. w. dot com had an offering in ballet and more wealthy at the top of the out a seat at. the center of the famous naturalist and explorer. to celebrate clicks on the front room blogs from $250.00. 4 you tube discovery. expedition in boyd.