PARIS (Anadolu) – As the details of the French government’s controversial new pension reform plan become clearer, a poll found that 52% of those asked said they would like to see France experience a “social explosion” in the coming months with the rise of a “Yellow Vests-type movement.” This is the conclusion of a survey conducted by the French polling institute Ifop, which also found that 79% of the respondents also consider the scenario of an imminent “social explosion” including a new protest movement, to be realistic. It is the second highest figure ever recorded by the polling institute since it was founded in 1998. Only in November 2020 was the figure higher, at 85%. At that time, it was due to the government’s strict coronavirus restrictions, including a second lockdown. According to the latest survey, 48% of French people are “outraged” over the country’s economic and social situation. Some 32% declared that they are “resigned” to the situation, while only 18% said they are “confident.”

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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Although Pope Francis often compared having former Pope Benedict living in the Vatican to having a grandfather in the house, a book by Benedict’s closest aide shows what he says were strains while two men wearing white lived in the tiny city-state. Benedict was buried on Thursday and hours after the funeral in St. Peter’s Square an Italian publishing house began sending journalists advance copies of the 330-page “Nothing But The Truth - My Life Beside Benedict XVI”, by Archbishop Georg Ganswein. Ganswein, 66, was Benedict’s personal secretary from 2003, when Benedict was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and remained as his side for nearly 20 years until his death on Saturday. He was Francis’ gatekeeper until he was replaced in 2020. In the book, due to be in bookstores on Jan. 12, Ganswein says Benedict did not agree with some of Francis’ stands.

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MOGADISHU (AP) – Somalia’s government claimed Saturday that the al-Shabab militant group has for the first time asked to open negotiations, amid a military offensive the government has described as “total war.” There was no immediate statement by al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda-affiliate that for well over a decade has carried out high-profile bombings in Somalia’s capital and controlled parts of the country’s central and southern regions, complicating efforts to rebuild the once-failed state after decades of conflict. “Al-Shabab requested to open negotiations with the Somali government, but there are two groups within al-Shabab,” Deputy Defense Minister Abdifatah Kasim told journalists in Mogadishu. “The first part is foreigners, and the second part is local Somalis. Those locals have a chance to open up negotiations, but those foreigners who invaded our country have no right for talks. The only option is to return to where they are from.”

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PARIS (Al Jazeera) – A newly discovered comet could be visible to the naked eye as it shoots past earth and the sun in the coming weeks for the first time in 50,000 years, astronomers have said. The comet is called C/2022 E3 (ZTF) after the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first spotted it passing Jupiter in March last year. After travelling from the icy reaches of our Solar System it will come closest to the Sun on January 12 and pass nearest to earth on February 1. It will be easy to spot with a good pair of binoculars and likely even with the naked eye, provided the sky is not too illuminated by city lights or the Moon. The comet “will be brightest when it is closest to the earth”, Thomas Prince, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology who works at the Zwicky Transient Facility, told AFP. Made of ice and dust and emitting a greenish aura, the comet is estimated to have a diameter of around a kilometer, said Nicolas Biver, an astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory. That makes it significantly smaller than NEOWISE, the last comet visible with an unaided eye, which passed earth in March 2020, and Hale–Bopp, which swept by in 1997 with a potentially life-ending diameter of around 60 kilometers.

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TUNIS (Reuters) – At least five African migrants died and another 10 were missing after a boat sank off Tunisia, as they tried to cross the Mediterranean to Italy, a judicial official said on Saturday. The coastguard rescued 20 migrants who had been on the overcrowded boat, which sank off Louata in Sfax region on Friday, the official told Reuters. The coastline of Sfax has become a major departure point for people fleeing poverty in Africa and the Middle East for a chance at a better life in Europe. In recent months, hundreds of people have drowned off the Tunisian coast, with an increase in the frequency of attempted crossings from Tunisia and Libya towards Italy. In light of an unprecedented economic and financial crisis in Tunisia, more than 18,000 Tunisians travelled by boats to Europe in 2022, according to rights group Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights.