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The loop term in WP refers to concept of iterating over post objects and (typically) filling global variables with data of current one.

It can be identified by one of:

• the_post() function calls (main loop)
• $some_variable->the_post() method calls (secondary loops using WP_Query object)
• setup_postdata( $post ) (more raw version, working with array of post objects)

In your case this doesn’t really happen and would be problematic, because rather than iterating on set of posts ($posts = get_posts() their data is completely torn apart and rewritten into custom arrays which end up in $news through which your output loops.

Really most of this would have to be rewritten to hammer it into normal WP loop.

The path of least resistance would probably be:

1. store $p->ID with other data, when processing it
2. use get_the_post_thumbnail() function, which accepts ID argument for post to work on, instead of relying on global variable