By Nidal al-Mughrabi

CAIRO (Reuters) -Israeli bombardment pushed more Palestinians out of their homes in Gaza City on Thursday, while thousands of residents defied Israeli orders to leave, remaining behind in the ruins in the path of Israel's latest advance.

Gaza health authorities said Israeli fire across the enclave had killed at least 28 people on Thursday, most of them in Gaza City, where Israeli forces have advanced through the outer suburbs and are now a few km (miles) from the city centre.

French director Francois Ozon has dared to do what so many other filmmakers have shied away from -- adapting one of French literature's most-read classics, Albert Camus's "The Stranger", for the big screen.

The "8 Women" director said this week he had rediscovered Camus's 1942 novel after first reading it in school like so many other French teenagers -- but not really understanding its deeper absurdist meaning.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -Nelson Mandela's grandson has said Palestinians' lives under Israeli occupation are worse than anything Black South Africans experienced under apartheid, and urged the global community to come to their aid.

Mandla Mandela, 51, spoke to Reuters on Wednesday evening at Johannesburg Airport, where he was boarding a flight to Tunisia to join a flotilla aiming to deliver food and humanitarian supplies to Gaza despite an Israeli naval blockade.

By Sayed Hassib and Charlotte Greenfield

KABUL/MAZAR DARA, Afghanistan (Reuters) -Rescue workers battled to pull bodies from the rubble of homes razed in Afghanistan's earthquakes this week, as time runs out for survivors, who face a bleak future with global aid agencies warning of dwindling funds for food, shelter and medicines.

Search operations ran late into Wednesday in the quake-hit mountainous eastern areas as more bodies were dug out, the Taliban administration said, adding that the death toll had crossed 1,457 but exact numbers had yet to be compiled.

ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkish authorities have banned a concert of Enrico Macias, a French singer of Algerian-Jewish origin, after calls for protest over his pro-Israeli stance.

The Istanbul governor's office late on Wednesday said that Macias' performance scheduled for Friday evening in the city has been banned "after intense calls for protests against the concert."

Such protests would place protesters "in an unjust position legally, and cause grievances," the office said in a statement.

Colombia's coal exports fell by almost half in July compared to the same month last year, official figures showed Wednesday, amid a global price crisis and days after President Gustavo Petro's ban on sales to Israel.

Colombia is Latin America's leading coal producer but the sector has contracted for five consecutive quarters due to the collapse of international prices and domestic policies.

(Reuters) -The Israeli military said on Wednesday it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen, as sirens were activated in Tel Aviv and several other areas across the country.

Yemen's Houthis later claimed responsibility, saying they fired two ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv in what they said was an initial response to Israeli attacks on Yemen.

"This morning ... a field examination concluded that the Houthi terrorist regime used a cluster surface-to-surface missile", the military said in a statement late on Wednesday.

CAIRO (Reuters) -Hamas reiterated on Wednesday that it is ready for a comprehensive Gaza deal through which all Israeli hostages are released in exchange for the release of an agreed upon number of Palestinian prisoners.

The group's remarks came shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump called on Hamas to release all 20 hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office criticized Hamas' comments in a statement.

"Unfortunately, this is yet another spin by Hamas with nothing new in it," it said.

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) -A federal judge on Wednesday ruled U.S. President Donald Trump's administration unlawfully terminated about $2.2 billion in grants awarded to Harvard University and can no longer cut off research funding to the prestigious Ivy League school.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston marked a major legal victory for Harvard as it seeks to cut a deal that could bring an end to the White House's multi-front conflict with the nation's oldest and richest university.

Israel estimates that its imminent offensive on Gaza City would displace one million Palestinians, a senior military official said Wednesday, as Gaza's civil defence reported dozens killed across the territory.

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, hundreds of Israeli protestors took to the streets to call for a truce and hostage release deal after nearly two years of war.