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."

HAVANA (AFP) - Guerrilla revolutionary and communist idol, Fidel Castro was a holdout against history who turned tiny Cuba into a thorn in the paw of the mighty capitalist United States.

The former Cuban president, who died aged 90 on Friday, said he would never retire from politics.

But emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006 drove him to hand power to Raul Castro, who ended his brother’s antagonistic approach to Washington, shocking the world in December 2014 in announcing a rapprochement with US President Barack Obama.

Famed for his rumpled olive fatigues, straggly beard and the cigars he reluctantly gave up for health reasons, Fidel Castro kept a tight clamp on dissent at home while defining himself abroad with his defiance of Washington. In the end, he essentially won the political staring game, even if the Cuban people do continue to live in poverty and the once-touted revolution he led has lost its shine.

As he renewed diplomatic ties, Obama acknowledged that decades of US sanctions had failed to bring down the regime -- a drive designed to introduce democracy and foster western-style economic reforms -- and it was time to try another way to help the Cuban people.

A great survivor and a firebrand, if windy orator, Castro dodged all his enemies could throw at him in nearly half a century in power, including assassination plots, a US-backed invasion bid, and tough US economic sanctions.

Born August 13, 1926 to a prosperous Spanish immigrant landowner and a Cuban mother who was the family housekeeper, young Castro was a quick study and a baseball fanatic who dreamed of a golden future playing in the US big leagues.

But his young man’s dreams evolved not in sports but politics. He went on to form the guerrilla opposition to the US-backed government of Fulgencio Batista, who seized power in a 1952 coup.

That involvement netted the young Fidel Castro two years in jail, and he subsequently went into exile to sow the seeds of a revolt, launched in earnest on December 2, 1956 when he and his band of followers landed in southeastern Cuba on the ship Granma.

Twenty-five months later, against great odds, they ousted Batista and Castro was named prime minister.

KUWAIT CITY (AFP) - Kuwaitis vote Saturday to elect the seventh parliament in a decade in the oil-rich Gulf emirate, at a time of sharp disputes over subsidy cuts due to falling oil revenues. The snap polls see the return of opposition groups after a four-year boycott in protest at the government’s amendment of the electoral law.

Opposition candidates called at their election rallies for wide democratic reforms, promising to fight for economic and social justice and to end rife corruption. The government’s austerity measures, mainly hiking petrol prices, were the top issue at election rallies.

"The government will most likely accede to some of the demands of the opposition," but stand firm on others, Stratfor, a leading intelligence platform, said in a report. 

"The country has the financial luxury of taking a long-term view on reform. Even if it continues to draw down its sovereign wealth fund by $30 billion a year for 10 years, it would still have roughly half the fund left," Stratfor said.

Analysts see little hope the election will bring political stability to the Gulf state, which has been rocked by lingering disputes since mid-2006, apart from a period of relative calm after 2013.

The emir dissolved the last parliament after MPs called for ministers to be grilled over subsidy cuts, in a state with a traditionally generous cradle-to-grave welfare system. Around 30 opposition figures, out of 300 candidates, including 14 women, are running for the 50-seat parliament. Half of the opposition candidates are Islamists.