WORLD

London, United Kingdom | AFP | Britain appointed a “minister for loneliness” on Wednesday to tackle what Prime Minister Theresa May described as “the sad reality of modern life” affecting millions of people. Tracey Crouch, a junior minister for sport and civil society, will take on the role as part …

United Nations, United States | AFP | UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday expressed concerns after Myanmar and Bangladesh reached a deal on the return of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingyas that sidelined the UN refugee agency. “We believe it would be very important to have UNHCR fully involved in …

Perris, United States | AFP | Investigators sought to shed light Tuesday on how a California couple arrested on suspicion of torture were able to keep their 13 malnourished children — ages 2 to 29 – confined in their suburban home in grim conditions with no one noticing. Sheriff’s deputies …

Washington, United States | AFP |  Identifying animals and reciting a list of words are among the type of challenges contained in the cognitive fitness test taken by US President Donald Trump. According to White House doctor Ronny Jackson, Trump scored “exceedingly well” (30 out of 30) on the Montreal …

Doha, Qatar | AFP | El Salvador wants some of its 200,000 nationals facing potential deportation from the United States to be recruited by Qatar, the central American country’s foreign minister said on Tuesday. Speaking on a visit to the Gulf state — one of the world’s richest countries which …

London, United Kingdom | AFP | The British government on Tuesday defended its decision not to bail out imploding construction-to-catering group Carillion, as criticism grew of its handling of the giant firm’s demise. Carillion, which has a variety of private and public service contracts in Britain and employs 43,000 staff …

Washington, United States | AFP | Former White House strategist Steve Bannon was expected to be peppered with questions on the Trump campaign’s links to Russia in closed testimony to the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday. Bannon, who has been mostly quiet since the release of an incendiary book about President …

STOCKHOLM, Sweden | AFP | Danish prosecutors on Tuesday formally charged inventor Peter Madsen with last year’s murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall, whose dismembered body parts were found at sea after she interviewed him on his homemade submarine. Madsen, who was arrested and detained shortly after Wall’s disappearance in August, …

New York, United States | AFP | She is without question a unique first lady: a former model who once posed nude in her husband’s private jet; the first foreign-born wife of a US president in nearly 200 years; and the first for whom English is a second language. A year …

Santiago, Chile | AFP | Pope Francis will hold a closely watched meeting with members of Chile’s under-fire clergy on Tuesday, the first full day of his visit to a country whose Church is beset by sex abuse scandals. He arrived in Santiago Monday night and was received by leftist President …