Invite friend email not sent and not showing sent date

when testing the Invite friends by email option, after clicking send, the name of the friend is listed and the message "invited on" but the date of sending is not shown. Also, there is no email received by the friend. Using latest version ES 1.4.3 and Joomla 3.4.5. Please advice.

Also, when using the social share option to share an update by email, the email is not send, and this time the name of the sender is not shown. It seems the latest Joomla and/or ES update did something that caused emailsending to fail.

note: the crons are activated for every 5 mns, and working