Hamas said Thursday that it will send a delegation to Cairo as soon as possible to keep working on cease-fire talks, in response to Egypt’s latest proposal. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been back in the Mideast this week in a renewed push for a cease-fire deal. New estimates from the United Nations show that if the Israel-Hamas war stopped today, it would still take until 2040 to rebuild all the homes that have been destroyed in nearly seven months of Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives. The war has driven around 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes. The death toll in Gaza is more than 34,500 Palestinians, and the territory’s entire population has been driven into a humanitarian catastrophe.

The number of people arrested in connection with protests on college campuses against the Israel-Hamas war has now topped 2,000. The Associated Press has tallied arrests at 35 schools since the protests began at Columbia University on April 18. Some of the campus protests popping up over the last two weeks have led to agreements with administrators to consider the protesters demands. At Fordham, Northwestern, Minnesota and Brown, students will be able to make their case to university leaders about divesting from Israel. More frequently, demonstrators have been arrested after refusing to disperse or vandalizing property.

A haunting new video released in the early morning hours is the latest effort by the Army to lure soldiers to some of its more secretive units. Hints of its origin are tucked into the frames as they flash by touting the power of words, ideas and “invisible hands.” Army Special Operations Command hopes that those drawn to the video may be interested in joining as one of its psychological warfare soldiers. The release of the Ghost in the Machine 2 video comes two years after the first one which generated a firestorm of online chatter.

A judge declared a mistrial after a jury said it was deadlocked and couldn't reach a verdict in the trial of a military contractor accused of contributing to the abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq two decades ago. The mistrial Thursday came in the jury’s eighth day of deliberations. The eight-member civil jury in Alexandria deadlocked on accusations the civilian interrogators who were supplied to the U.S. Army at Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004 had conspired with soldiers to abuse detainees as a means of “softening them up” for questioning. The trial was the first time a U.S. jury heard claims brought by Abu Ghraib survivors in the 20 years since shocking photos of detainee mistreatment.