Former British nurse and convicted child serial killer Lucy Letby on Thursday lost an attempt to appeal against her conviction for trying to murder a newborn baby, amid questions over the fairness of her trials.

Letby, 34, was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder seven more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northern England, making her Britain’s worst serial child killer of modern times.

She was convicted of an eighth count of attempted murder at a retrial earlier this year, after the original jury was unable to reach a verdict on a charge that Letby tried to kill a baby girl by removing her breathing tube.

Prosecutor Nick Johnson told Manchester Crown Court that, little more than an hour after the child was born, a senior doctor found the baby’s breathing tube dislodged and Letby standing there “doing nothing.”

Letby’s lawyer Benjamin Myers told London’s Court of Appeal on Thursday that Letby “maintains and has maintained she is not guilty of the offenses.”

He argued that the retrial was an abuse of process as Letby could not have a fair trial because of extensive coverage of her convictions, which featured “intense hostility towards her” and comments made by the Crown Prosecution Service and police.

“There was no way in which the jury in trial two were going to have the publicity and the comment and the hostility ameliorated,” Myers said.

Judge William Davis refused Letby’s application for leave to appeal against the conviction from her retrial.

Letby attended the hearing by videolink from prison and sat impassively as the judge stated the court’s reasons for refusing her application.

“The outcome of the first trial undoubtedly led to an unusually large amount of publicity and online debate,” Davis said. “That is because, on its face, the case was extraordinary.”

Letby’s attempt to overturn her convictions from the first trial was refused in May. She can now only challenge those convictions if the Criminal Cases Review Commission refer those cases back to the Court of Appeal.

Since her trials, Letby’s conviction has come under a spotlight, following criticism by some experts of medical and statistical evidence presented by the prosecution.

Some media have questioned whether she might be the victim of a miscarriage of justice, while a public inquiry into her crimes continues.

The Israeli military has forced Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped houses and tunnels in Gaza to avoid putting its troops in harm’s way, according to an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier and five former detainees who said they were victims of the practice.

The soldier, who said his unit held two Palestinian prisoners for the explicit purpose of using them as human shields to probe dangerous places, said the practice was prevalent among Israeli units in Gaza.

“We told them to enter the building before us,” he explained. “If there are any booby traps, they will explode and not us.”

It was so common in the Israeli military that it had a name: “mosquito protocol.”

The exact scale and scope of the practice by the Israeli military is not known. But the testimony of both the soldier and five civilians shows that it was widespread across the territory: in northern Gaza, Gaza City, Khan Younis, and Rafah.

The soldier explained that, at first, his unit, which at the time was in northern Gaza, used standardized procedures before entering a suspect building: sending in a dog or punching a hole through its side with a tank shell or an armored bulldozer.

But one day this spring, the soldier said an intelligence officer showed up with two Palestinian detainees – a 16-year-old boy and 20-year-old man – and told the troops to use them as human shields before entering buildings. The intelligence officer claimed they were connected to Hamas.

When he questioned the practice, the soldier said one of his commanders told him, “‘It’s better that the Palestinian will explode and not our soldiers.’”

“It’s quite shocking, but after a few months in Gaza you [tend not to] think clearly,” the soldier said. “You’re just tired. Obviously, I prefer that my soldiers live. But, you know, that’s not how the world works.”

The soldier said that he and his comrades refused to carry on with the practice after two days and confronted their senior commander about it. Their commander, who first told them not to “think about international law,” saying that their own lives were “more important,” ultimately relented, releasing the two Palestinians, the soldier said.

The fact that they were released, he said, made it clear to him that they had no affiliation with Hamas, “that they are not terrorists.”

International law forbids the use of civilians to shield military activity, or to forcibly involve civilians in military operations. The Israeli Supreme Court explicitly banned the practice in 2005, after rights groups filed a complaint about the military’s use of Palestinian civilians to knock on the doors of suspected militants in the West Bank. Justice Aharon Barak at the time called the practice “cruel and barbaric.”

Israel has long accused Hamas of using civilians in Gaza as human shields, embedding military infrastructure in civilian areas – allegations Hamas has denied. There is ample evidence for it: weapons located inside homes, tunnels dug beneath residential neighborhoods and rockets fired from those same neighborhoods in the densely packed territory.

The Israeli military frequently cites those practices in blaming Hamas for the extraordinary civilian death toll in Gaza, where Israel has dropped bombs on those same residential areas. Israeli attacks have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October last year, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The United Nations says that most of the dead are civilians.

“We saw Hamas using Palestinians as human shields,” the soldier said. “But for me it’s more painful with my own army. Hamas is a terrorist organization. The IDF shouldn’t use terrorist organization practices.”

‘Mosquito protocol’

Interviews with five Palestinian former detainees in Gaza tally with the soldier’s account. All describe being captured by Israeli troops and forced to enter potentially dangerous places ahead of the military.

Israeli airstrikes earlier this year forced Mohammad Saad, 20, from his home in Jabalya, in northern Gaza. From his makeshift home near Khan Younis, between blankets strung from rafters, Saad explained that he was picked up by the Israeli military near Rafah, while attempting to get food aid for him and his younger brothers.

“The army took us in a jeep, and we found ourselves inside Rafah in a military camp,” he said, adding that he was held there for 47 days, and during that time was used for reconnaissance missions to avoid putting Israeli soldiers at risk.

“They dressed us in military uniforms, put a camera on us, and gave us a metal cutter,” he said. “They would ask us to do things like, ‘move this carpet,’ saying they were looking for tunnels. ‘Film under the stairs,’ they would say. If they found something, they would tell us to bring it outside. For example, they would ask us to remove belongings from the house, clean here, move the sofa, open the fridge, and open the cupboard.”

The soldiers were terrified, he explained, of hidden explosives.

“I usually wore the military uniform, but for the final mission, they took me in civilian clothing,” Saad said. “We went to a location, and they told me I had to film a tank left behind by the Israeli army. I was terrified and scared to film it, so they hit me on the back with the butt of a rifle.”

Not all the Palestinians used were adults. Mohammad Shbeir, 17, said that he was taken captive by Israeli soldiers after they killed his father and sister during a raid on their home in Khan Younis.

“I was handcuffed and wearing nothing but my boxers,” he recalled. “They used me as a human shield, taking me into demolished houses, places that could be dangerous or contain landmines.”

Dr. Yahya Khalil Al-Kayali, 59, was like so many others displaced over and over after being forced from his home in Gaza City. He eventually found himself living near Al Shifa Hospital, once Gaza’s largest medical complex, joining thousands of internally displaced civilians who took up shelter there.

In March, the Israeli military laid siege to that medical complex for a third time, alleging that Hamas was using it as a command center – something that Hamas denied. Huge numbers of men were swept up in the two-week-long raid, which left the hospital destroyed and inoperable. Al-Kayali was among them.

“The leader of this group, the soldier, asked me to come,” Al-Kayali recalled from the Mawasi area of Khan Younis, by a beach tent encampment. “He was talking to me in English. And he asked me to go out of the building to find any open holes or tunnels under the ground.”

Along a row of apartment buildings, again and again, the soldiers told Al-Kayali to enter every room of every apartment and check for militants and booby traps. The canons of Israeli tanks stood ready to fire, he said, should Hamas fighters be uncovered.

“I was thinking that I would be killed or die within minutes,” he recalled. “I was thinking about my family. Because there is no time to think about many things. But I was worried also about my kids, because my kids and my family were in the building.”

To his relief, the buildings were empty, and he was released. In the end, he said, he was forced to check as many as 80 apartments.

But after the soldier left Gaza, he said he heard from his comrades that the so-called “mosquito protocol” had resumed in his unit.

“My own soldiers who refused it in the beginning were back to using this practice,” he said. “They have no strength like they had in the beginning.”

Tareq Al Hilou and Mohammad Al Sawalhi in Gaza contributed to this report.

Dinosaur fossils have been discovered for the first time in Hong Kong, on a remote island in the financial capital’s countryside.

The fossils were found on Port Island, an uninhabitable expanse of rocks in the northeastern waters of the city, by Hong Kong’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department in March, the government said in a statement Wednesday.

Researchers have determined that the bone fossils likely originated from a “large aged dinosaur” from the Cretaceous period –– an era more than 145 million to 66 million years ago that followed the Jurassic period.

Hong Kong’s Secretary of Development Bernadette Linn said that “the discovery is of great significance and provides new evidence for research on palaeoecology in Hong Kong,” the statement read.

Since 1979, Port Island has been designated as a site of special scientific interest and is also part of Hong Kong’s UNESCO Global Geopark –– a cluster of islands protected by an international framework and primarily used for education and sustainable development.

“Further studies will have to be conducted to confirm the species of the dinosaur,” officials said, adding that Port Island and the wider country park will be closed for further excavations and research. The dinosaur fossils will also be on public display at Hong Kong’s Heritage Discovery Centre from Friday onwards.

Experts in paleontology say the landmark discovery is a big deal for Hong Kong, a city with a complex geological history and ever-changing weather patterns.

The only “dinosaur-era things” Hong Kong has found so far are plants and fish, he said.

Pittman also noted that the discovery of body fossils is rare regionally, as skeletal remains are not typically found in southern China, known instead for its dinosaur eggs.

Since 2020, however, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found dinosaur remains buried shallowly across nine localities in the southwestern province of Yunnan and have carried out excavations.

Earlier this year, paleontologists in China discovered the fossils of a Gandititan cavocaudatus at a construction site in Jiangxi province. The fossils, estimated to date back 90 million years, were part of a new dinosaur species previously unknown in East Asia.

It’s unclear how long Port Island will remain closed to visitors.

“If they end up finding a whole skeleton of a big dinosaur or two dinosaurs, they might have to go back next summer, and the summer after that,” Pittman said.

Widespread flooding and landslides set off by a tropical storm in the northeastern Philippines on Thursday left at least 24 people dead, swept away cars and prompted authorities to scramble for motorboats to rescue trapped villagers, some on roofs.

The government shut down schools and offices – except those urgently needed for disaster response – for the second day on the entire main island of Luzon to protect millions of people after Tropical Storm Trami slammed into the country’s northeastern province of Isabela after midnight.

The storm – known as Kristine in the Philippines – was blowing over Aguinaldo town in the mountain province of Ifugao after dawn with sustained winds up to 95 kph (59 mph) and gusts up to 160 kph (99 mph). It was blowing westward and was forecast to enter the South China Sea later on Thursday, according to state forecasters.

At least 24 people died, mostly due to drowning in the hard-hit Bicol region and nearby Quezon province, but the toll was expected to rise as towns and villages isolated by flooding and roads blocked by landslides and toppled trees manage to send out reports, police and provincial officials said.

Most of the storm deaths were reported in the six-province Bicol region, southeast of Manila, where at least 20 people died, including 7 residents in Naga city, which was inundated by flash floods as Trami was approaching Tuesday, dumping more than two months’ worth of rainfall in just 24 hours at high tide, regional police chief Brig. Gen. Andre Dizon and other officials said.

While thousands of villagers, who were trapped in floodwaters, have been rescued by government forces, many more needed to be saved Thursday in the Bicol region, including some on roofs. About 1,500 police officers have been deployed for disaster-mitigation work, Dizon said.

“We can’t rescue them all at once because there are so many and we need additional motorboats,” Dizon told The Associated Press by telephone. “We’re looking for ways to deliver food and water to those who were trapped but could not be evacuated right away.”

Flash floods swept away and submerged cars in some parts of Naga city while mudflows from Mayon, one of the country’s 24 active volcanoes, in nearby Albay province, engulfed several vehicles, Dizon said.

Stormy weather remained in the region, hampering relief efforts, officials said.

The government’s disaster-mitigation agency said more than 2 million people were affected by the storm, including 75,400 villagers who were displaced from their homes and are sheltering on safer ground.

About 20 storms and typhoons batter the Philippines each year. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones in the world, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and flattened entire villages.

Every year, thousands of South Koreans – mostly middle-aged men – die quietly and alone, cut off from their family and friends. It sometimes takes days or even weeks before their bodies are found.

These are the country’s “lonely deaths,” known as godoksa in Korean. It’s part of a larger problem of loneliness and isolation across the country, an issue so pressing the government is pulling out all the stops to fight it.

In the bustling capital Seoul, city authorities announced this week they would spend 451.3 billion won (nearly $327 million) over the next five years to “create a city where no-one is lonely.”

Their new initiatives include loneliness counselors available on a 24/7 hotline, an online platform for similar counseling, as well as follow-up measures including in-person visits and consultations, according to the metropolitan government.

“Loneliness and isolation are not just individual problems, but tasks that society must solve together,” Seoul mayor Oh Se-hoon said in a news release. The city will “mobilize all of our municipal capacity” to help lonely people heal and “return to society,” he added.

The city also plans to introduce expanded psychological services and green spaces; nutritional meal plans for middle-aged and elderly residents; a dedicated “search system” to identify isolated residents who need help; and activities to encourage people to venture outside and connect with others, such as gardening, sports, book clubs and more.

Experts have welcomed the measures but say more needs to be done – partly because loneliness in Korea is tied to certain unique parts of Korean culture that are difficult to change.

“Loneliness is a significant social issue right now, so efforts or policies to address it are absolutely necessary,” said An Soo-jung, a psychology professor at Myongji University – cautioning, however, that “there needs to be careful consideration about how effectively these measures will be implemented.”

Thousands of lonely deaths

The problem of loneliness has gained national attention over the past decade as the number of related issues increased – such as young people who withdraw from the world and spend their days isolated at home, often for months at a time. The phenomenon, known by the Japanese term “hikikomori,” has become increasingly common; South Korea had up to 244,000 such recluses in 2022 by one estimate.

The number of lonely deaths has also been rising – reaching 3,661 last year, up from 3,559 in 2022 and 3,378 in 2021, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s latest figures released last week.

Part of that increase could be the ministry’s new, broader definition for “lonely death.” While in previous years the body had to be found only after “a certain amount of time” to qualify as a “lonely death,” the term now applies to anyone who lives in social isolation, cut off from family or relatives, and dies due to suicide or illness.

Another factor behind the uptick could be the country’s demographic crisis. An aging population and declining birthrate mean there have been consistently more deaths than births in recent years. South Korea’s overall death rate is rising – and that includes lonely deaths.

But the figures still speak to a larger problem that seems to impact middle aged and elderly men the most.

More than 84% of the lonely deaths recorded last year were male, more than five times the number of female deaths, according to the ministry. Men in their 50s and 60s made up more than half the total group, making them “particularly vulnerable to the risk of dying alone.”

What makes Koreans so lonely?

Loneliness isn’t unique to South Korea, and “it’s difficult to say that Koreans are particularly lonelier than others,” said An, the psychology professor. However, when asked about what makes them feel lonely, “there are some differences compared to other countries,” she said.

In some cultures, loneliness is seen as a feeling that happens “when relationships are not fulfilling,” An said. “In Korea, people say they feel very lonely when they feel they’re not worthy enough or lack purpose.”

A study from June this year found that the epidemic of loneliness reflects nuances in Korean culture, which “emphasizes relational orientation” – or people defining themselves in relation to others around them. As a result, South Koreans may feel deep loneliness or a sense of failure if they feel they’re not “making a significant impact on others or society,” the study said.

This is a major difference from other countries, according to An. Koreans may have a thriving social life and close connections to others, but they may still feel lonely “when they compare themselves to others and question whether they are useful, contributing enough to society, or falling behind.”

The study also identified other factors such as the rise in single-person households, decline in social interactions outside work and family, the dominance of social media and how it fosters feelings of inadequacy, and South Korea’s competitive, “achievement-oriented” culture, which drives feelings of loneliness among those falling short of their own goals.

“When we all pursue the same values excessively, we end up losing ourselves,” An said. “Our society demands highly collective social living but often fails to respect the individual” – meaning people struggle to deal with solitude or the feeling of failure.

Government efforts

South Korean authorities have launched various initiatives over the years to combat the problem, including the Lonely Death Prevention and Management Act which ordered the government to compile a comprehensive preventative plan and a five-yearly situation report.

And in 2023, the government passed an amendment making some reclusive youth eligible for financial support, including up to 650,000 won ($475) per month for living expenses, to help them “re-enter society.”

South Korea isn’t alone in fighting this battle.

Japan, where the hikikomori trend was first recognized and studied in depth, appointed a Minister of Loneliness and Isolation in 2021. The following year, the government released an intensive plan of countermeasures including a 24/7 consultation service and the expansion of counseling and social work programs.

Other countries, including the United Kingdom, have similarly appointed ministers of loneliness. The United States Surgeon General warned of an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” in a 2023 advisory, urging measures such as building stronger social infrastructure and regulating online platforms.

Even the World Health Organization launched a commission to fight loneliness in 2023, calling it a “pressing health threat.”

But An said she had “doubts about whether simply expanding physical connections will fundamentally solve the problem of loneliness … It’s not something that can be easily changed by a single policy.”

Because there are complex, culturally-specific factors at play, a larger shift may be needed so individuals can “develop the strength to be alone and face themselves,” she said.

“We need to cultivate the ability to care for both ourselves and others. But our life in society is so tough, so it feels like we lack the time to even care for ourselves.”

A deadly “terror” attack targeted a Turkish aerospace company in the capital Ankara, government officials said Wednesday.

“A terrorist attack was carried out against the Turkish Aerospace Industries Inc. (TUSAS) Ankara Kahramankazan facilities. Unfortunately, we have martyrs and injured people after the attack,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X.

Ankara mayor Mansur Yavas said he was “saddened” by the attack on TUSAS, a major defense company.

TUSAS was incorporated into Turkey’s Ministry of Industry and Technology in 1973 in order to reduce the country’s “foreign dependence in defense industry,” according to its website.

Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said an investigation has been launched into the attack.

Following the attack, the company’s general manager, Mehmet Demiroglu, left a high-profile defense fair early to return to Ankara, state news agency Anadolu reported.

The attack occurred while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in the Russian city of Kazan to attend the annual BRICS summit.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

Gisele Pelicot, the 72-year-old victim of mass rape whose ordeal has shocked the world, told a trial in southern France on Wednesday that she was determined that making her case public should help other women and change society.

Dominique Pelicot, her husband, has admitted to inviting dozens of strangers over nearly 10 years to their house to rape her after he had drugged her. Fifty other men also stand trial, accused of raping her.

Gisele Pelicot, her voice often shaking with emotion, told the court she was destroyed by what happened to her. She said how “unbelievably violent” it was for her that many of the accused in the trial, which started on September 2, said they thought she agreed to the rapes or was faking sleeping.

“I’ve decided not to be ashamed, I’ve done nothing wrong,” Gisele Pelicot, who has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence, told the court in Avignon.

She said she had insisted the trial be held publicly, and not behind closed doors, as is often the case to protect rape victims, in the hope it would help other rape victims.

“They (rapists) are the ones who must be ashamed,” she said, adding that having videos, filmed by her husband, of some of her rapes, shown during the trial, was “very difficult but necessary.”

“I’m not expressing hatred or hate, but I am determined that things change in this society,” said Gisele Pelicot.

Protests have been organized across France to show support for Gisele Pelicot, with many women expressing admiration for her courage.

“It’s not courage. It’s determination to change things,” she said. “This is not just my battle, but that of all rape victims.”

Most of the accused told the court they have been manipulated by Dominique Pelicot, rejecting the blame on him. Only a few have admitted to raping Gisele Pelicot.

Some have apologized.

“I hear those apologies, but they are inaudible,” she told the court. “By apologizing, they are trying to excuse themselves.”

Saying her husband’s betrayal of her trust was beyond measure, Gisele Pelicot told the court: “I’m a woman who’s totally destroyed.”

She had thought he was the perfect husband, she told the court, before adding: “My life has tumbled into nothingness.”

The impact of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip could erase “over 69 years of progress” in the enclave, the United Nations has warned in a new report, saying that measurement for indicators such as life expectancy, education, income and standard of living are projected to drop to a level estimated for 1955.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) said that without “lifting economic restrictions, enabling recovery, and investing in development, the Palestinian economy may not be able to restore pre-war levels and advance forward by relying on humanitarian aid alone.”

“Projections in this new assessment confirm that amidst the immediate suffering and horrific loss of life, a serious development crisis is also unfolding – one that jeopardizes the future of Palestinians for generations to come,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator.

The UN report comes as US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visits the Middle East to “emphasize the need to chart a new path forward that enables Palestinians to rebuild their lives and realize their aspirations free from Hamas’s tyranny,” according to the State Department.

Israel launched a war on Hamas in Gaza on October 7 last year after the group attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. The Israeli offensive has killed more than 42,000 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry there, displaced most of its people and flattened large swathes of the enclave.

The UN report, which looks at estimates for the Palestinian territories as a whole, says that over 4 million people in them were affected by poverty in 2024, including 2.6 million newly impoverished people. This brings the poverty rate to 74.3% across the Palestinian territories, according to the report.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has accused Israel of almost entirely destroying Gaza, saying it is “no longer fit for life.” This month, a UN inquiry accused Israel of carrying out a “concerted policy” of destroying Gaza’s health care system, adding that its policies “constitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination.” The Israeli foreign ministry called the accusations “outrageous.”

“La tasweer! La tasweer!” (“Don’t film! Don’t film!”) the general shouted, his eyes flashing with anger, his jaw clenched as he stormed towards us. A couple of fighters hopped off the back of the militia’s lead truck, fanning out around our vehicle, their rifles drawn.

The second truck that had been following us, tan-colored and laden with a heavy machine gun abruptly pulled over to our side, hemming us in.

There was a moment of panic — were they going to shoot us?

We had come to Darfur to report on the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, never intending to become part of the story.

But months of planning came apart in moments when we were detained by a militia led by the man everyone called the general.

Cameraman Scott McWhinnie handed him the camera, assuring him, “We’re not filming, we’re not filming.” Producer Brent Swails quickly got out of our truck to try to defuse the situation.

“Are we OK? Are we OK?” he asked.

Abruptly, the general turned his back on us and grabbed a rifle from one of his soldiers, before taking aim across the tree-dotted savanna. I was relieved that the gun wasn’t pointed at us but still disturbed by his erratic behavior.

I looked pleadingly at our driver. “What’s going on?” His face was ashen. “I don’t know,” he said.

The general fired off a round. The target appeared to be a bird. He missed.

We had arrived in North Darfur the previous day. The goal was to get to Tawila, a town under the control of SLM-AW, a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Abdul Wahid al-Nur, a neutral party in Sudan’s bitter civil war. Tawila is just 32 miles (51 kilometers) southwest of the besieged city of El Fasher which is the frontline of the grisly fight for the Darfur region. As a result, it has become a refuge of sorts for the tens of thousands fleeing the city.

The 18-month conflict in Sudan has been drastically overshadowed by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza but the UN fears it could become far deadlier: a cruel confluence of hunger, displacement, and disease with both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the two main warring parties in this conflict, accused of war crimes.

According to the UN, more than 10 million people have been displaced in the violence, almost a quarter of Sudan’s population. More than 26 million people — over three times the population of New York City — face acute hunger.

In particular, all eyes are on Darfur, where a genocide was perpetrated from 2003 to 2005 and where vicious war crimes have heightened fears that the worst could be realized again.

In August, a famine was declared in the Zamzam displaced people’s camp in Darfur. And yet, only a handful of international journalists have been able to get in since the start of the war to report on what is happening.

After many months of failing to get permission to visit Darfur from the SAF or the RSF, the invitation from the SLM-AW leadership to visit Tawila seemed the safest way to get in and tell the story.

But when we reached the agreed meeting spot in the town of Abu Gamra, our hosts were nowhere to be found. Instead, a rival militia stood in their place. They had two Toyota Land Cruiser pickup trucks, weighed down with rocket propelled grenades and heavy machine guns.

Our driver was led off in chains to the town jail.

For three hours we were interrogated, one by one, in a small, windowless room. About eight men asked the questions. “Why are you here?” “Who sent you here?” “Who gave you permission to be here?”

We answered their questions but got no information in return: who these men were or what they wanted with us.

When the driver returned later without the chains, there was a brief moment of optimism. Perhaps, we would be escorted to the border and simply instructed not to return.

But the militants bundled us into our vehicle and ordered us to follow them.

Our convoy quickly veered off onto a dirt track, heading deeper into Darfur.

It was at this point that the general suddenly stopped his vehicle and started shouting at us, before shooting his gun. The goal, presumably, to scare us. It worked.

We stopped again, maybe an hour later, by a dry riverbed lined with trees. The youngest fighters laid out a mat and brought out a flask of camel milk for the general and another older man known as the security chief, who wore a turban and sunglasses to hide a missing eye. Trembling, I took off my shoes and sat down in front of them.

“Please, we are very frightened,” I told them in halting Arabic. “I am a mother. I have three little boys.”

The general looked disinterested, but I could see the security chief’s face soften.

“Don’t be frightened, don’t be frightened,” he assured me, “We are human beings.”

The security chief asked us for our partners’ phone numbers, so that he could call them and assure them that we were OK. Grudgingly, I handed him my husband’s number — reluctant to put my family through any stress but conscious that it might also be a way for our captors to check my story. Later, we would find out that an English speaker had called my husband and Scott’s wife from the city of Port Sudan, thousands of miles away from where we were held, to say that we were safe and in good health but threatening that we would be imprisoned for many years if they spoke about it to anyone.

For the next 48 hours, we were held under armed guard by the general, the security chief and roughly a dozen soldiers, some who looked no older than 14. Our detention was spent out in the open, underneath acacia trees. As the only woman, and with no private space to relieve myself, I limited my water and food intake. Sleep, when it came, was a mercy, a reprieve from the clawing sense of panic at not knowing when I would be able to see my children again.

As a journalist, one never wants to become the story. And yet our experience is instructive in understanding the complexities of the conflict in Darfur and the challenges of getting food and aid to those who need it most and getting the story out to the world.

During our journey in and out of North Darfur, we spent many hours traversing the remote region on sandy tracks. We had to dig ourselves out more than 10 times and had a flat tire at least once a day. There are no paved roads in the area, which makes the distribution of aid even more challenging.

But where sturdy trucks with the appropriate tires may help expedite that process, the issue of gaining access to the territory is a much harder problem to solve. The state of North Darfur is the center of some of the heaviest fighting between the RSF and SAF. Swaths of it are under the control of a patchwork of different militias with competing agendas who regularly shift allegiances.  You can have a guarantee of safe passage from one, only to be blocked by another 10 miles down the road.

In August, at US-led talks on Sudan in Geneva, the Sudanese Armed Forces agreed to allow the flow of aid through Adre, the largest border point between Chad and Darfur. But fewer than 200 trucks have entered in the last two months — a fraction of what is needed on the ground — and only a handful of those have reached the famine-hit Zamzam camp outside El Fasher, where close to half a million people are struggling to survive.

Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced it was having to suspend its operations in Zamzam.

“This is a disaster for us. Knowing that we have the team on the ground capable to work and that this suspension is due to either administrative impediments or blockages by the warring parties is, of course, frustrating. We keep trying to push … We cannot abandon these people,” Michel Lacharité, MSF’s Head of Emergency Operations told me.

Compounding the chaos is the difficulty of communications. During our time in North Darfur, we passed at least six cell phone towers but none of them were operational. The pecking order of any group is clearly marked by who is carrying the satellite phone. Our captors confiscated our satellite phone but allowed us to keep our cell phones — confident that they would never work. And they did not. Some of the groups have Starlink satellites that they use to stay in touch. But for most ordinary people, there are few ways to have contact with the outside world.

The net result of these manifold challenges is that NGOs, human rights organizations and journalists have almost no access to North Darfur.

“The world doesn’t see us, the help doesn’t come,” the security chief mused to me one afternoon.

Instead, the most valuable and reliable data we have about the situation on the ground in Darfur comes from satellites.

According to the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which uses satellite imagery to build up a picture of the situation on the ground, in the first two weeks of October at least 14 villages in Darfur were set ablaze by the RSF, heightening concerns that after a relative lull during the rainy season, the conflict is once again ratcheting up.

But satellite images can only tell part of the story. They don’t allow us to connect, to empathize, to engage.

On our last day in detention, the general and security chief disappeared for about six hours, leaving us in the custody of their young fighters. At one point, several of them told us to remove our bags from our vehicle, saying they were taking our driver to the local market. The four of us looked at each other uneasily. Were they planning to abandon us? Or hand us over to another group? We had no choice but to do what we were told and unload our gear.

Later, when the general and the security chief returned, they were in good spirits.

“It has been decided you will be released tomorrow,” they told us. “We thought you were spies but now you can go home.”

A wave of relief crashed through my body. There were smiles and handshakes with our captors. We posed awkwardly for a photograph at the edge of the mat that had been our makeshift prison.

Our ordeal was over. We were unharmed and soon to return home. The fear and worry quickly replaced by a feeling of bitter disappointment, of failure. We never made it to Tawila. Never managed to talk to the people in Darfur whose lives have been chewed up by this vicious civil war. Untold stories that the world may never hear.

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German police busted a pizzeria in the western city of Düsseldorf that also delivered a side order of cocaine when customers asked for item number 40 on the menu.

“That was one of the best-selling pizzas,” criminal director Michael Graf von Moltke told reporters in Düsseldorf.

He said police were first tipped off by suspicious food inspectors in March. When drug squad officers began observing the restaurant they soon discovered why pizza number 40 was so popular, Moltke told reporters on Monday, German news agency dpa reported.

When police buzzed the apartment of the pizzeria manager, the 36-year-old allegedly threw a bag of drugs out of the window, which “fell right into the arms of the police officers,” Düsseldorf police said. The bounty included 1.6 kilograms (3.5 pounds) of cocaine, 400 grams (14 ounces) of cannabis and €268,000 ($289,000) in cash.

Police said the restaurant manager, who was released from detention after a few days, soon reopened his business and started selling pizza number 40 with the cocaine side order again. That gave investigators an opportunity to look into the supply chain and after several weeks, some 150 officers busted an entire drug ring in western Germany, arrested three suspects including the 22-year-old head of the drug operation, and raided the homes and businesses of another 12 suspects.

During the raids, they came across two cannabis plantations in nearby Mönchengladbach and Solingen, with 300 and 60 plants, respectively. They also found cutting and stabbing weapons, as well as cash and expensive watches, dpa reported.

The pizzeria manager was arrested when he tried to flee abroad, and remains in custody. None of the suspects’ names were released, in line with German privacy rules.

Police did not say how much the pizzeria charged for the special order.