China says it is "seriously concerned" after US President-elect Donald Trump expressed doubts about continuing to abide by the "One China" policy.

Under the policy, the US has formal ties with China rather than the island of Taiwan, which China sees as a breakaway province. In a TV interview on Sunday, Mr Trump said he saw no reason why this should continue without key concessions.

China urged Mr Trump to understand the sensitivity of the Taiwan issue. Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters that the "One China" policy was the basis for relations with Washington.

China's hawkish Global Times tabloid dubbed Mr Trump "ignorant as a child"

Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo beat rival Lionel Messi to win the prestigious Ballon d'Or award for a fourth time.

The 31-year-old is now one behind Barcelona's Messi, who took the honour for a fifth time last year.

Atletico Madrid's French forward Antoine Griezmann finished third in the vote.

Ronaldo helped Real Madrid win last season's Champions League and scored three goals as Portugal won Euro 2016.

He has now won the Ballon d'Or in 2008, 2013, 2014 and 2016, with Messi the only other recipient of the award since winning it for the first time in 2009.

"I never thought in my mind that I would win the Golden Ball four times. I am pleased. I feel so proud and happy," said Ronaldo.

"I have the opportunity to thank all of my team-mates, the national team, Real Madrid, all of the people and players who helped me to win this individual award."

The former Manchester United forward has scored 19 goals in 20 games for club and country this term, to add to the 54 he got last season.

Ballon d'Or winners

2016: Cristiano Ronaldo 2009: Lionel Messi

2015: Lionel Messi 2008: Cristiano Ronaldo

2014: Cristiano Ronaldo 2007: Kaka

2013: Cristiano Ronaldo 2006: Fabio Cannavaro

2012: Lionel Messi 2005: Ronaldinho

2011: Lionel Messi 2004: Andriy Shevchenko

2010: Lionel Messi 2003: Pavel Nedved

Ronaldo's Real Madrid team-mate Gareth Bale finished sixth in the vote, while Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy - the only Englishman included on the 30-player shortlist - was eighth.

The Ballon d'Or is voted for by 173 journalists from around the world.

It has been awarded by France Football every year since 1956, but for the past six years it became the Fifa Ballon d'Or in association with world football's governing body and was awarded to the world's best player.

However, Fifa ended its association with the award in September.

Fifa will hand out its own prize for the world's best men's player, along with the best women's player and team of the year, at the Best Fifa Football Awards ceremony in Zurich on 9 January.

Venezuela has closed its border with Colombia for 72 hours in the latest measure to combat smuggling gangs. President Nicolas Maduro says the "mafia" operating in border areas is causing huge damage to the economy.

Many items subsidised by Venezuela's socialist government, including diesel and petrol, are sold at a huge profit over the border in Colombia.

On Sunday, he announced that the country's highest denomination bank note would be taken out of circulation.

'Destroy the mafia'

President Maduro said the move would stop gangs hoarding the currency.

"Let's destroy the mafia before the mafias destroy our country and our economy," he said on national television.

"This measure was inevitable, it was necessary," he added. "The mafias will go bust."

There were emotional scenes in court on the first day of the blasphemy trial of Jakarta's governor, a Christian of Chinese descent. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, cried as he denied allegations he insulted Islam.

Mr Purnama is the first non-Muslim governor of Indonesia's capital in 50 years. The case is being seen as a test of religious tolerance in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation.

The prosecution said Mr Purnama insulted Islam by misusing a Koranic verse which suggests Muslims should not be ruled by non-Muslims, to boost public support ahead of February's governorship election.

He insisted his comments were aimed at politicians "incorrectly" using a Koranic verse against him, not at the verse itself. If convicted, he faces a maximum five-year jail sentence. After the short hearing, the trial was adjourned until 20 December.

Rights groups say the authorities have set a dangerous precedent in which a noisy hardline Islamic minority can influence the legal process, says the BBC's Rebecca Henschke in Jakarta.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US president-elect Donald Trump on Friday hired as a senior adviser a Republican national security veteran who first worked in the White House situation room under Richard Nixon. As deputy national security adviser, 65-year-old Fox News commentator Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland, will return once again to the executive mansion as number two to former general Mike Flynn.

"She has tremendous experience and innate talent that will complement the fantastic team we are assembling," Trump said, in a statement issued from his luxury Florida golf resort. White House national security roles do not need to be confirmed by the Senate, so McFarland will take up her duties when President Barack Obama passes Trump the baton on January 20 next year.

She would in any case have been an uncontroversial choice, with decades of experience under three former Republican presidents and as a former aide to foreign policy heavyweight Henry Kissinger.

She has never herself held elected office, but in 2006 was defeated in a bid to seek the Republican nomination to challenge then New York senator Hillary Clinton s successful re-election bid.

Her most prominent roles before joining Fox News were as deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs under president Ronald Reagan and between 1982 and 1985 as defense secretary Caspar Weinberger s speechwriter and spokeswoman.

McFarland s appointment came as Trump was ensconced with senior advisors in his Mar-a-Lago resort drawing up transition plans. A spokesman said no more major decisions are expected before Monday.

ISTANBUL (AFP) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the Syrian conflict with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin by phone Friday after the Turkish army accused Moscow ally Damascus of killing its soldiers in northern Syria. Erdogan informed Putin of the strike that killed four Turkish soldiers, presidential sources said, which the Turkish army assessed to have been by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad early on Thursday.

It was the first time Turkey had blamed the Assad regime -- which is given military support by Russia -- for a deadly strike on its troops during Ankara s three month campaign inside Syria.

Erdogan and Putin also agreed to accelerate their efforts to find a solution to the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo, where the regime continues its Moscow-backed offensive to recapture the whole city, which is divided between the government and rebels.

During the phone call, Erdogan told Putin of how the Turkish-backed offensive in Syria was evidence of Ankara s determination to fight against terror, the sources added.

The president stressed Turkey s commitment to Syria s territorial integrity -- Russia had previously said it was "deeply concerned" by Turkey s incursion while Damascus has called it a "blatant violation of sovereignty".

The presidents also backed the process to normalise relations between Russia and Turkey after the crisis sparked by the shooting down by Turkish forces of a Russian jet over Syria last year.

The army said on Friday that a fifth Turkish soldier was killed in northern Syria in clashes with Islamic State (IS) jihadists. 

Seventeen Turkish soldiers have been killed since the military began an unprecedented operation in Syria on August 24 to back pro-Ankara rebels.

Turkish planes also carried out air strikes against seven IS targets in northern Syria, the army said in a statement on Friday carried by the state-run Anadolu news agency.

Turkey launched the operation in August -- dubbed "Euphrates Shield" -- in support of Syrian rebel fighters seeking to retake IS-held territory in northern Syria and also to halt the advance of Kurdish militia.

Since it began, the pro-Ankara rebels have captured the IS stronghold of Jarabulus, cleared IS from Al Rai and retaken the symbolically important town of Dabiq without much resistance.

They are now pressing to take Al Bab from the jihadists and will then move to Manbij to ensure there are no Kurdish militia members remaining, as agreed with Washington.

The battle to recapture Al Bab appears to be proving more difficult and violent as Dogan news agency reported on Friday evening that five more soldiers were injured after an IS attack.

They have been taken to the southeastern city of Kilis for medical treatment, Dogan said, adding that the total number of soldiers wounded in the day s action was seven.

ISTANBUL (AFP) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the Syrian conflict with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin by phone Friday after the Turkish army accused Moscow ally Damascus of killing its soldiers in northern Syria. Erdogan informed Putin of the strike that killed four Turkish soldiers, presidential sources said, which the Turkish army assessed to have been by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad early on Thursday.

It was the first time Turkey had blamed the Assad regime -- which is given military support by Russia -- for a deadly strike on its troops during Ankara s three month campaign inside Syria.

Erdogan and Putin also agreed to accelerate their efforts to find a solution to the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo, where the regime continues its Moscow-backed offensive to recapture the whole city, which is divided between the government and rebels.

During the phone call, Erdogan told Putin of how the Turkish-backed offensive in Syria was evidence of Ankara s determination to fight against terror, the sources added.

The president stressed Turkey s commitment to Syria s territorial integrity -- Russia had previously said it was "deeply concerned" by Turkey s incursion while Damascus has called it a "blatant violation of sovereignty".

The presidents also backed the process to normalise relations between Russia and Turkey after the crisis sparked by the shooting down by Turkish forces of a Russian jet over Syria last year.

The army said on Friday that a fifth Turkish soldier was killed in northern Syria in clashes with Islamic State (IS) jihadists. 

Seventeen Turkish soldiers have been killed since the military began an unprecedented operation in Syria on August 24 to back pro-Ankara rebels.

Turkish planes also carried out air strikes against seven IS targets in northern Syria, the army said in a statement on Friday carried by the state-run Anadolu news agency.

Turkey launched the operation in August -- dubbed "Euphrates Shield" -- in support of Syrian rebel fighters seeking to retake IS-held territory in northern Syria and also to halt the advance of Kurdish militia.

Since it began, the pro-Ankara rebels have captured the IS stronghold of Jarabulus, cleared IS from Al Rai and retaken the symbolically important town of Dabiq without much resistance.

They are now pressing to take Al Bab from the jihadists and will then move to Manbij to ensure there are no Kurdish militia members remaining, as agreed with Washington.

The battle to recapture Al Bab appears to be proving more difficult and violent as Dogan news agency reported on Friday evening that five more soldiers were injured after an IS attack.

They have been taken to the southeastern city of Kilis for medical treatment, Dogan said, adding that the total number of soldiers wounded in the day s action was seven.

TEHRAN (AFP) - Two trains collided and caught fire Friday in a remote region of northern Iran, killing 44 people and injuring dozens more, in one of the country s worst rail disasters.Provincial governor Mohammad Reza Khabbaz told state television that the crash took place in Semnan province on the main line between Tehran and Iran s second city Mashhad.

An express train operating from Tabriz in the northwest to Mashhad had stopped, Khabbaz said, initially suggesting the cause could have been mechanical failure or extreme cold, although it was later put down to human error.

Two coaches on the express burst into flames when a passenger train behind smashed into the back of it at 7:50 am (0420 GMT). The front four coaches of the second train -- running from Semnan to Mashhad -- derailed and overturned.

"One minute I was sleeping and the next I was being carried out of a coach on fire," one hospitalised passenger told state television.

Television broadcast images of a huge column of black smoke and flames shooting into the sky from coaches with their windows shattered, as firefighters battled the blaze and rescue workers searched for victims.

With the toll climbing throughout the day, Hossein Kulivand, head of Iran s emergency services, said late Friday that 44 people were killed and 82 hospitalised, of whom 17 were treated for light injuries and released.

Human error was determined to have caused the accident.

"For some unknown reasons due to human fault, the train (from Semnan) was ordered to move and so it hit the other train from behind," said Mohsen Poor-Seyed Aghaie, the head of Iranian railways.

The province s Red Crescent director, Hassan Shokrollahi, said the remo

"Due to the difficulty of access, only our helicopter has managed to reach the scene," he said.

The injured were airlifted to hospitals in Semnan and Damghan.

The Tehran-to-Mashhad line was briefly closed to allow an investigation into the cause of the crash, said Sadegh Sokri, spokesman for Iran s railways.

A collision on the same line between a freight train and a passenger train left two dead and 30 injured in June 2014.

President Hassan Rouhani called for "all technical, administrative and preventive measures to be taken to prevent the recurrence of such an accident".

Iranian trains have been involved in four collisions this year with road vehicles, including a crash with a truck in July that left around 30 injured near the Caspian Sea in the northern province of Mazandaran.

Collisions between trains are rarer.

In the country s deadliest rail disaster, 328 people were killed when a train transporting sulphur, petrol and fertilisers exploded in northern Iran on February 18, 2004.

Iran s roads are notoriously deadly, mainly because drivers show scant regard for rules, with 16,000 lives lost in the Iranian year between March 2015 and March 2016.

In a sign of progress, however, an average of 28,000 deaths a year were registered on Iranian roads a decade ago. 

ALEPPO (AFP) - Syrian army units advanced in Aleppo on Friday and pounded rebel-held eastern neighbourhoods with air strikes and shelling, causing new deaths among besieged civilians and adding to their despair.

The US military, meanwhile, announced its first combat loss in Syria, saying a service member had been killed by a bomb during an offensive against the Islamic State group.

Ten days into the offensive to recapture all of Syria s battered seco

On Friday, regime forces pounded several eastern districts with air strikes and shelling that killed eight civilians, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Clashes also rocked Masaken Hanano, east Aleppo s largest district, more than 60 percent of which is now under the control of regime forces, the monitor added.

State television said the army was advancing into Masaken Hanano "from three axes", calling it the "largest front" in the battle for Aleppo, the capture of which could deal a decisive blow to rebels.

More than 250,000 civilians have been besieged in eastern Aleppo since July, with food and fuel supplies dwindling and international aid exhausted.

The Observatory said four children fled Friday to Sheikh Maqsud, a Kurdish-controlled enclave between the government-held west of Aleppo and the east.

But rebels prevented "dozens of families" from Bustan al-Basha from leaving, it said.

And regime raids on two villages west of Aleppo killed at least 15 civilians on Friday, four of them children, said the Observatory.

Damascus says east Aleppo residents and surrendering fighters are free to leave but accuses the rebels of using civilians as "human shields".

Residents endured a brutal night Thursday of bombardment during which 32 civilians, including five children, were killed.

"I m terrified by the army s advance and the increasing bombardment," said Abu Raed, a father-of-four from the Fardos neighbourhood.

"There s no safe place for me and my family."

Rescue workers in several parts of the east battled to extricate civilians trapped under the rubble of bombed buildings.

In Bab al-Nayrab, an AFP cameraman saw them struggle for more than an hour to pull out a boy who was stuck from the waist down in the rubble, with the back of his head badly gashed.

"Living under these circumstances is unbearable," said 43-year-old Mohammed Haj Hussein, in Tariq al-Bab district.

"There s no work, there s no food, and the bombing is incessant... I want to get out of here by any means possible."

Resident Abu Hussein added: "I don t know what the UN is waiting for. Why don t they at least evacuate the children and women?"

Retaliatory rocket fire by the rebels has killed at least 18 civilians in the government-held west, 10 of them children, since the regime assault began on November 15, said the Observatory.

The UN says it has a plan to deliver aid to Aleppo and evacuate the sick and wounded, which rebel factions have approved.

But Damascus has yet to agree, and additional guarantees are needed from regime ally Moscow, UN officials say.

On Thursday, the head of the UN-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria, Jan Egeland, warned there was no plan B to help civilians in east Aleppo.

"In many ways plan B is that people starve, and can we allow that to happen? No we cannot," he said.

Further east, in Raqa province, where a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters is battling IS, Washington suffered its first combat loss in Syria, the coalition announced.

It said the service member died on Thursday from wounds caused by an improvised bomb near the town of Ain Issa.

US special forces are on the ground in the area supporting an offensive to retake the city of Raqa, the jihadists  de facto Syrian capital.

Also on Friday an air strike carried out by an unidentified aircraft hit a small maternity hospital in the north of Idlib province, killing a civilian and putting the clinic out of service, said the Observatory.

Rebel-held areas in the Eastern Ghouta near Damascus were also pounded by regime forces on Friday, the monitor said, killing at least two civilians and wounding 15 in the town of Douma.

The charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported "multiple air strikes" on Eastern Ghouta, adding that the number of the wounded "is still being counted."

At least 49 civilians have been killed in regime bombardment on the rebel stronghold since November 17, almost half of them children, said the Observatory.

UK citizens could pay to retain EU perks, says top negotiator

LONDON (AFP) - Britons wanting to retain benefits of European Union membership after the country leaves could pay Brussels for individual citizenship, European Parliament s lead Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt told The Times on Saturday.

"Many say  we don t want to cut our links ," the former Belgian prime minister told The Times.

"I like the idea that people who are European citizens and saying they want to keep it have the possibility of doing so. As a principle I like it."

Prime Minister Theresa May has vowed to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty by March, setting the ball rolling on two-years of negotiations to set the terms of the divorce.

Trade and immigration are set to be the key issues, with European leaders saying they will not compromise on open borders within the bloc.

Brexit-supporting MP Andrew Bridgen accused Verhofstadt of trying to sow division in Britain.

"It s an attempt to create two classes of UK citizen and to subvert the referendum vote," he told the Times.

"The truth is that Brussels will try every trick in the book to stop us leaving."