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Hollywood reacted with skepticism on Monday to US President Donald Trump’s announcement of 100 percent tariffs on foreign films, with movie insiders calling it a policy made up on the fly by a president who fails to understand how the industry works.”It makes no sense,” entertainment lawyer Jonathan Handel said of Trump’s idea.Handel told AFP …

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A senior Hamas official said Tuesday the group was no longer interested in truce talks with Israel and urged the international community to halt Israel’s “hunger war” against Gaza.”There is no sense in engaging in talks or considering new ceasefire proposals as long as the hunger war and extermination war continue in the Gaza Strip,” Basem Naim told AFP.He said the world must pressure the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the “crimes of hunger, thirst, and killings” in Gaza.The comments by Naim, a Hamas political bureau member and former Gaza health minister, came a day after Israel’s military said expanded operations in Gaza would include displacing “most” of its population.They come a day after Israel said its security cabinet approved the military’s plan for expanded operations, which an Israeli official said would entail “the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories”.Nearly all of the territory’s inhabitants have been displaced, often multiple times, since the start of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.Gaza has been under total Israeli blockade since March 2 and faces a severe humanitarian crisis.Israel’s military resumed its offensive on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month truce.The spokesperson for Gaza’s civil defence agency, Mahmud Bassal, said Tuesday that three Palestinians including a little girl were killed in Israeli dawn attacks on different areas of Gaza.A UN spokesman said Monday Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “alarmed” by the Israeli plan that “will inevitably lead to countless more civilians killed and the further destruction of Gaza”.- ‘Large-scale evacuation’ -“Gaza is, and must remain, an integral part of a future Palestinian state,” Farhan Haq said.The Israeli decision comes as the UN and aid organisations have repeatedly warned of the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine again looming.On Monday, a senior Israeli security official said that “a central component of the plan is a large-scale evacuation of the entire Gazan population from the fighting zones… to areas in southern Gaza”.Military spokesman Effie Defrin said the planned offensive will include “moving most of the population of the Gaza Strip… to protect them”.French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot in a radio interview on Tuesday called Israel’s plan for a Gaza offensive “unacceptable”, and said its government was “in violation of humanitarian law”.For Palestinians, any forced displacement evokes memories of the “Nakba”, or catastrophe — the mass displacement in the war that led to Israel’s creation in 1948.On Monday, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 2,459 people had been killed since Israel resumed its campaign on March 18, bringing the overall death toll from the war to 52,567.Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Out of the 251 people abducted by militants that day, 58 are still held in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Australia still wants to make “great films” with the United States, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Tuesday, as new tariffs threaten the home of Hollywood hits like The Matrix, Elvis and Crocodile Dundee.US President Donald Trump on Sunday announced 100 percent tariffs for all films produced in “foreign lands”, saying struggling Tinsel Town would be …

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Dutch medical device maker Philips reported a net profit for the first time in three quarters Tuesday despite weak sales in China but warned of “intensified” uncertainties due to tariffs.Net profits came in at 72 million euros ($82 million), compared to a net loss of 998 million euros in the same quarter last year and …

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