UK’s Prime Minister, Theresa May, has appointed Tracey Crouch as the country’s Minister of loneliness. The portfolio was created to tackle modern public health problems associated with social isolation. The government said Wednesday it appointed Tracey Crouch after research showed as many as one in ten people felt lonely “always or often” and that hundreds of thousands of elderly people hadn’t spoken to a friend or relative in the past month.

Pope Francis said on Monday he was really afraid about the danger of nuclear war and that the world now stood at “the very limit”. His comment, made as he flew off for a visit to Chile and Peru, came after Hawaii issued a false missile alert that provoked panic in the U.S. state and highlighted the risk of possible unintended nuclear war with North Korea.

More than 12 million boxes of powdered baby milk have now been recalled in 83 countries in a salmonella scandal involving French company Lactalis. According to NAN, Children in 83 countries may have been affected with salmonella bacteria through contaminated baby milk following the discovery of the microorganism at a diary company in France.

European officials have recommended that eight countries, including Panama and Tunisia be moved from the EU’s tax haven blacklist to its grey list, after they promise to reform.

The Europe Council’s group of tax experts – the so-called Code of Conduct group – recommended that EU Finance Ministers move Barbados, Grenada, South Korea, Macau, Mongolia, Panama, Tunisia and UAE off the list of “non-cooperative” tax jurisdictions at their regular meeting next Tuesday, according to a leaked memo.

With the recommendation to move Panama to the grey list, the council’s blacklist “becomes laughable” according to Markus Ferber, German MEP and member of the parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. Pardoning “the world’s most prolific tax haven… would be a fatal signal for the EU’s role in fighting tax evasion and money laundering. Panama has built its reputation of a top-notch tax haven and money-laundering hub for years – the Panama Papers are proof of that. To pardon Panama after only a little more than month and a noncommittal letter promising to do better is hard to beat in terms of naivety.”

French magistrates dismissed a case brought against a group of French soldiers accused of sexually abusing children while on deployment in the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2013 and 2014, a judicial source said. Paris prosecutors in 2017 filed for the case to be dismissed because some of the testimony was deemed inconsistent and some elements could not be confirmed, even if they could not exclude that abuses took place.

Sami Anan

Former Egyptian army chief of staff, General Sami Anan is to run in the forthcoming presidential elections, his party said on Thursday. “The party leaders took a decision for General Sami Anan’s candidacy and informed him of the decision and there was no problem at all and no objection,“ from him, said Sami Balah, the secretary general of the Arabism Egypt Party. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is expected to seek a second term but is yet to announce his candidacy.