The signs of home are everywhere. A small boy playing football dressed in a faded Arsenal shirt. The Union flag fluttering on the shop awning fashioned from old tarpaulins. But this isn't the UK. It's South Sudan. And it's a country in crisis.

Famine is the biggest single crisis facing our planet right now.

Across East Africa, 16 million people face starvation. Men, women and children are dying, every day.

It's bigger than any food shortage we've ever seen before. It's so vast a problem that it's almost hard to know how to tackle it.

South Sudan's famine has conflict at its very heart. A bitter civil war that's raged since 2013 sends deadly ripples across the country.

I walked around a village, once a thriving community with homes, a school, a soul.

But it had been attacked, the people were chased away, and their crops withered and died. That's where the hunger comes from. If you can't stay in one place, you can't grow food to feed your family. Any kind of sustainable life is impossible.

Wherever you go, there's fear. As a mum showed me the small, sticky dish of sorghum porridge her family would eat that day, five cows loomed over us in the gloom of her dark hut.

Cattle are precious in these tough times, and even if there's barely room to move, they're kept inside so they can't be looted.

Well-stripped husks of maize hang from the wall, and a few mangoes bought from a child who's shinned up a tree to search the branches. They're small and hard, cut down long before they turn ripe and tasty in order to feed a constant hunger.

The fighting has driven thousands of people into protection camps run by the United Nations.

Surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed peacekeeping soldiers, they're so big they've turned into tented cities.

At Bentiu in the north, more than one hundred thousand people shelter. That makes it the second-biggest population centre in the whole country.

Conditions are tough there, but at least there's a constant source of food handouts.

In the bush, anything from bad weather to armed troops blocking the road can stop vital deliveries from reaching the people who so badly need them.

At the camp hospital, mothers queue to have their babies weighed. A tape is placed around their thin, fragile arms - if it's red - the child is severely malnourished, and treatment starts straight away.

Packets of peanut paste, mixed with oil and milk, are squeezed straight into their mouths. It's simple, but it saves lives.

The children make the best of what they can find.

It's hard not to smile at grinning girls dancing and twirling in tasseled skirts they've made themselves from old food aid bags, or boys stamping out a tune with home-made tin can instruments tied to their legs.

They revel in their lessons, loudly chanting the alphabet in schools specially set up by organisations like UNICEF. Every small detail gives them hope of a life outside the wire.

Now it's up to their government - and to us - to deliver them a future to look forward to.

You can read the full article from Anna here and listen to the podcast - 15 minutes from South Sudan here. 

What do people in Europe think of Brexit? As Theresa May prepares to trigger Article 50 on March 29, we sent 5 live presenter Chris Warburton to find out what people on the continent had to say. Here's his blog.

Germany

My trip started with 24 hours in Munich, Germany. It’s a wealthy city, famous for cars, football and beer.

Ludwig meets his friends at the city’s largest beer hall every week for a stein of beer and a roasted pig’s head. Sitting next to the oompah band, surrounded by Lederhosen, they talk politics.

He isn’t a fan of the EU and thinks Germany acts like a bank for poorer countries. He’d like Germany to leave too.

The majority of people I came across didn't agree - Doris told me she was sad that Britain had voted to leave, and doesn't think Britain will get a good deal

Norway

City number two is Trondheim in Norway, which lies on a large fjord, surrounded by snow covered mountains and frozen waterfalls.

The fish shop sells dried cod, a local speciality, and has a huge pool containing oysters and crabs.And, as you’d expect, a lot of salmon.

Norway has an interesting relationship with the EU – being outside it, but inside the single market.

In Trondheim I spoke to both the older and younger generations.

Trondheim has a large student population, and at a cafe in the city centre, I met some students who were born in 1994, the last time Norway voted on EU membership.

For Sigvart, who turns 23 this year and it studying in Trondheim, life outside the EU is the only life he's known. He tells me he's perfectly content not being a part of the EU.

I meet him in a cafe in the centre of the city, along with another student Charlotte.

She would love to see Norway join the EU - she thinks at the moment they get none of the benefits.

Netherlands

It was an interesting time to visit Amsterdam. As we arrived polls were closing in the national elections and I headed to an election party.

Geert Wilders’ Freedom party, which fought on an anti-immigration and anti EU stance, finished second.

Several people told me they’d not bothered going to an election party before, but this vote felt especially significant because they felt the world watching the result for some sort of sign of a trend across Europe.

The next morning I headed to the Albert Cuyp Market, the biggest in the Netherlands.

It has more than 300 stalls, and some of the stallholders, like Andre who sells Poffertjes (Dutch mini pancakes) voted for Wilders.

Andre was surprised and disappointed with the election result.

Spain

Onto the fourth stop, Valencia on the Spanish coast. I arrived in the middle of the annual fire festival, Las Fallas – celebrating the arrival of Spring.

I think it’s a problem for British people”
Emilio - Valencia

The city is full of giant statues celebrating popular culture and fantasy, there are fireworks, bonfires, lots of music and very loud firecrackers.

The perfect environment to ask people about Brexit!

The Spanish economy has improved recently, but youth unemployment remains stubbornly high at around 42%.

This means young people are looking for work outside Spain – many of them in the UK.

Jorge says he knows someone who had to go to England to work as a nurse, because he couldn’t find work in Spain. He says they’re all waiting to see how the UK treats EU citizens.

Antonio thinks the UK and the EU will reach a deal in the future, and both will benefit. He says his parents support Brexit because they have concerns about immigration.

France

My final stop is Paris.

As French rugby fans meet for a drink at the imaginatively named “Le Rugby” bar ahead of their Six Nations match against Wales, some told me they thought Brexit would be a catastrophe.

But others told me they were envious, and hoped France would follow Britain out of the EU.

 

You can hear the podcast in full here and revisit the original article to see more pictures and videos here. 

The most important stories are often the hardest to tell.

For weeks Manal tried everything she could to save her dying, malnourished children. Every day, she cried and begged for the food and medical help they so desperately needed. But no-one listened.

For more than two years people in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul have been prisoners in their own streets, trapped in their own homes. The so-called Islamic State took lives and voices. Until now it’s been almost impossible to hear those stories, but as the gruelling battle to liberate the city stretches on, people are finally starting to escape and share what they’ve been through.

You can drive from IS-controlled territory to the refugee camps surrounding Mosul in 15 minutes. I wanted to use that time to paint a picture of the life people are leaving behind, a grim sketch of often unbelievable violence and crushing poverty. Everyone I spoke to wanted to let the world know their story. They wanted you to hear it.

From the flattened ruins of one man’s home in a former IS stronghold village to the teenagers recounting tales of the whippings and beheadings they witnessed, this is a tough listen. But it’s an important story, and it deserves to be told.

LISTEN: Click here to download the 15 minutes from Mosul podcast.

Sitting in a cafe in Paris on a crisp autumnal evening with a Grand Creme, it’s hard to imagine the horror that was meted out at La Belle Equipe, in Rue de Charonne. And it’s impossible to forget.

Twelve hours after the attack in this cafe - part of a wider, co-ordinated attack across Paris which left a total of 130 people dead and hundreds wounded - I was standing outside amid candles and flowers. There were blood stains on the floor. In a neighbouring window, two bullet holes had broken the glass. A few hours later, someone had transformed it into an image of a sad face.

Of course there is joy and laughter and happiness and romance and perhaps my mood is this way because of the people I’m here to meet - the survivors, the bereaved - but the Paris I knew is hard to find. The overt policing of last winter has gone - the rows of police vehicles in side streets, full of officers armed with rifles, have dispersed around the country again - but the people I speak to feel on edge.

 

 

Julien Pearce, 24, a reporter with Europe1 radio station, was in the Bataclan nightclub when the attack happened. He puts his survival down to the man who was shot dead next to him. His body fell on Julien and shielded him. He escaped from the concert venue 20 minutes later through a side door. Those that tried to follow him were shot.

Since November 13th 2015, he’s never walked past the scene of the attack. He gets taxis to take another route. I ask him if we should meet in a cafe but he tells me he prefers to drink at home. He doesn’t like to go on the Metro: “I see people and they are so frightened... and I am too. Every time I see a face that is strange, I get out and I take another one.”

Dr Philippe Nuss, a psychiatrist at Paris’ Saint-Antoine Hospital treated many of the injured on the night of the attack. Subsequently, he’s worked with many of the survivors, helping them cope with the guilt he describes as a common side effect amongst those who lived.

He says there is less "insouciance", less of a Gallic shrug about things, “Paris is more intimate, more people know the price of things”.
On another evening, I realise I can wander into almost any bistro and get a street-side seat. No queues, no waiting. Service is preposterously quick and efficient. Tourism is down - a million fewer visitors in the first six months of the year compared to the same period in 2015.

When I tell people at home I’m heading back to Paris they say two things: firstly, they can't believe it’s so long since the attacks happened, that it feels like yesterday. Then they always ask, “is it safe?”.

One night, I walk through the Place de la Republique where so many flowers and tributes to the dead were laid. In one corner of the huge square lies a brass plaque in tribute to those who died in the Charlie Hebdo and November 13th terror attacks.

I hear music and wander over to where half a dozen couples are dancing to Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher. As the jazz classic rings out, they dance in darkness, the music turned up as loud as they’re allowed without attracting too much attention.

A regular event, from what I can gather, to chase the cold away. As the song ends, the couples wander off home, arm in arm. One man carries two glasses and a bottle of Champagne.

Paris may have changed, but romance in the city has a way of surviving and flourishing.

All photos copyright Nick Garnett.

2016 was the deadliest year ever for migrants trying to reach Europe. Around 5,000 people died in the Mediterranean.

BBC Radio 5 live's Lucy Grey reflects on the 12 days she spent broadcasting live from a search and rescue ship as it pulled nearly 400 people from the sea near the Libyan coast.

She met people with harrowing tales of rape and brutality and heard the story of Faith, who climbed into a dinghy on a Libyan beach 9 months pregnant.

You can read Lucy's full blog here: Hate And Compassion On A Migrant Rescue Ship Near Libya

As Europe experiences a rise in the numbers of migrants, 5 live's presenters travelled across the continent to give a snapshot of how the situation is affecting the people living there - and those moving there.

Reporter James Shaw visited the Serbian / Hungarian border, where Hungarian authorities have built a four-metre (13ft) fence stretching the 175km (109-mile) Hungary-Serbian border.

Drive's Anna Foster visited Germany, where migrants have received a warmer welcome. She went to a refugee processing centre which gives people the opportunity to play football, in order to "forget their troubles".

Afternoon Edition's Sarah Brett visietd Budapest, where she saw hundreds of shoes waiting for refugees beneath Keleti Station

And Breakfast's Rachel Burden visited Bodrum beach to see the shrine to Aylan Kurdi. The image of the three-year-old's body washed up on the beach sparked an international outcry over the human cost of the crisis.

Click here to read the full article: A snapshot of the European migration crisis in one day

One year ago, the Kenema Red Cross Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone was a very different place.

Doctors and nurses, working in heavily protected suits, treated 599 patients with the highly contagious virus in crammed tents.

The World Health Organisation is expected to declare Sierra Leone Ebola Free in early November 2015. Ahead of this 5 live Drive’s Anna Foster visited the once “high risk” contamination area of the site.

Although today the buildings are now empty and the tents stripped bare, the 241 people who lost their lives remain in the graveyard outside.

Anna brought Haura Binta Bah, an Ebola survivor, and Abdulai Fatorma, who lost three members of his family, to see the graves of their loved ones for the first time.

Surviving through sport

Anna also visited Kenema, where the outbreak was first recorded in Sierra Leone, to see how Ericson Touray is using the Kenema Ebola Survivors Football Club to help young people look to the future.

You can read Anna's full article here: How is Sierra Leone moving on from Ebola?

There are hundreds of ‘hilarious’ jokes made about women drivers. However, as more female drivers make their mark in motorsport the last laugh could well be on our male friends.

It’s over 35 years since the last female took part in a Formula 1 race, but the tide is turning. For a BBC 5 live F1 special I decided to find out how close we are to having a serious competitor who could take on the likes of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton.

Joining me in the studio are the Williams pair of Susie Wolff, the team’s development driver, and Claire Williams, Williams’ deputy team principal. We also hear from motorsport icon Sir Stirling Moss and F1 head Bernie Ecclestone.

Let’s start with a quick history lesson. The first female to ever take to the F1 circuit was Italian Maria Teresa de Filippis who competed in 1958/59. She started three races, cruising round the circuits at the same time as Juan Manuel Fangio - who treated her like a daughter and gave her driving tips - and our very own Stirling Moss.

Next came the most successful female so far, Lella Lombardi. The Italian made 12 starts between 1974 and 1976 and is the only woman to ever have scored points in F1: ½ a point for a 6^th place finish in the 1975 Spanish GP.

Since then three women have tried and failed to qualify for a F1 race: Brit Davinia Galica, South African Desire Wilson and, most recently, Italian Giovanni Amati. Amati drove for Brabham in 1992 in three meetings.

It’s not a glittering history and it’s pretty short. So how bright is the future for women in Formula 1?

Susie Wolff made history last year when she was named as Williams F1 team development driver. She has seven years’ experience driving in DTM (German touring cars) with Mercedes. She’s also been a finalist in the BRDC McLaren Autosport Young Driver of the Year Award.

Susie knows she has to earn her place in the F1 paddock and is hopeful she can get a Young Driver test this season to do just that.

“When it was announced I was joining Williams people were saying, ‘When are you on the grid?’” she tells me. “It’s about learning to walk before you can run. It’s about proving that I’m good enough at each step of the way; you have to prove your worth at every level.”

“By no means do I think that I’m there just because I’m a girl or they want the publicity, I’ve got to be good enough to hold my place.”

There are some people in the paddock who still think that women just don’t have what it takes to drive at the top level.

Sir Stirling Moss says, “I don’t know if women have the mental aptitude to race hard wheel to wheel. I just feel, as one would expect in a fight, I don’t think women are equipped to come in and fight with men.”

F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone thinks it’s unlikely we’ll see a women race in F1 any time soon, “unless someone has done something quite extraordinary in racing.”

“The only chance they would have is one of the lesser teams and they would only take someone if they come along with a good sponsor to support the team,” he says.

“Regretfully, this is what the problem is. There might be many, many, girls or ladies that could compete probably as well as some of the guys today but won’t get a chance.”

However, there is hope, according to F3 cup and GP3 racer Alice Powell. Alice is one of the brightest developing female talents we have in racing in our country. She has competed against boys and men, and beaten them repeatedly. With the right funding she could be a contender to at least test a Formula One car.

“I noticed people saying I cant get beaten by a girl but once you’ve shown you’re not useless and you have a bit of speed they give you more respect,”  says Powell.

“I think it’s all about the pennies, unfortunately. Male or female, you need someone to sponsor a driver and if you want a female in Formula 1 that’s what it’s going to need.”

Will we have a female driver competing in F1 any time soon? Can Susie Wolff persuade Sir Frank Williams to give her a young driver test? Can Alice Powell get the budget to continue her career path to F1?

Interestingly, Red Bull have just signed their first female young driver. A real talent from the Netherlands, Beitske Visser is definitely one to watch and may well be the next great hope we have of seeing a woman competing in F1. Watch this space. 

Listen to Women Drivers at 9.30pm on Tuesday 30 April. The programme will be available for download after broadcast here.

With his country teetering on the brink of financial meltdown, Chris Shakallis offered his own analysis to Europe's top brass. "They can bully us all they like," he told me. "We're skint."

Chris is a straight-talking Cypriot from Larnaca, with an accent that makes it evident he spent much of his youth living in north London.

He's been earning some extra cash by driving an overseas TV crew to the Cypriot Parliament, then patiently waiting in the bus-stop seat opposite for a rescue plan to be agreed.

He's made tough choices of his own. The family books have been balanced with the postponement of his daughter's wedding.

This is a crisis that has monopolised conversation, creating a national coming together - at the hole in the wall. The queues I encountered have all been good-natured. Apart from some disturbances, the protests have been angry but controlled. 

A key factor may be the high proportion of women among those bank workers who've picked up their placards, worried about their jobs and pensions.

Over the past week, Cyprus fast became a cash-in-hand society. A petrol station manager I met was rather nervous about the volume of cash in his hand. Forty thousand euros that required a series of hiding places.

Even the country's footballers joined in the debate. International winger Nectarios Alexandrou, who I bumped into ahead of Cyprus's encounter with Switzerland, spoke to me of his concerns over the economy. It made me wonder about the Rooney take on quantitative easing! 

And then there's the Russians. Will they pull out and take their money with them?

Perhaps more worrying is whether a young generation of Cypriots would do likewise. An 18 year old student told me she wanted to leave when she finished college. So did her friends, seeing no future in Cyprus.

Of course the vast majority of Cypriots will stay. They'll tough it out and wait for a time, as Chris might put it, when their country is no longer skint.

Mark Hutchings is a reporter for BBC Radio 5 live

Our final day in the city saw 14 car bombs explode, a suicide attack and multiple IEDs. Almost 60 people were killed and nearly 200 injured, mainly in Baghdad, but in other parts of Iraq too. It was the worst loss of life in this country for six months. We didn't witness any of this terrible destruction, but we were close enough to hear the loud thud of the last car bomb of that deadly sequence. It happened minutes after our live broadcast into the Breakfast programme from Firdos Square - the square where the Saddam Hussein statue was toppled in April 2003, effectively signifying the end of his rule.

Think of the 7/7 attacks in London, and the profound impact those had on our country. Now imagine killings on that scale, month after month,  year after year, seemingly without end, and you begin to imagine how life might be for Iraqis. The sense of fear, the not knowing whether your journey to work, or trip to the market, might be your last.

You see and feel the tension in the number of checkpoints across Baghdad. Those who were here in the worst years of sectarian violence - in 2006 and 2007 - tell me there are actually fewer checkpoints now, but to someone visiting for the first time they really stand out. And the number of police and army officers on the streets is also striking. One of the people we interviewed told us that there are now three times as many security forces as under Saddam Hussein, but security remains elusive. 

The official figures suggest Iraq's economy is booming - growth is around 10 per cent and oil production is now above pre-war levels and projected to rise sharply in the future. Looking around, not much of that appears to have filtered down - the majority of people are poor and much of the infrastructure is rundown. There are definitely pockets of wealth though. We visited a shiny new GM dealership selling top of the range Cadillacs. The manager told us business was good and with increased oil revenues he was confident there would soon be more people able to buy his cars.

 

Getting around the city has involved meticulous planning with security experts and colleagues.  Our helmets and body armour are always close to hand. It's felt that wearing them routinely would draw more attention to ourselves. Whether we'd have time to get the kit on if we did come under attack is open to question, and something I try not to dwell on. When we stop to do interviews in the street, we're advised not to stay in one place for more than half an hour.

Of course, the protection and safety we're afforded isn't on offer for the vast majority of Iraqis. People like Naji, for example, an unemployed labourer we spoke to on a street corner. With his friends - also searching for work - gathered around him, he told us how he'd been the victim of a roadside bomb. He then showed us the scars and badly healed bones in his leg.

He wasn't the only person we met who's been physically and emotionally wounded by the events of the past 10 years. 

Layla, a woman now in her late 50s, showed us her shattered front teeth - the result of a vicious assault by members of one of the militia groups which emerged during the worst of the sectarian violence. As well as being physically attacked, she was forced out of her home, which was then used as a base by the militia. She's since returned, but the way she broke down when telling us what had happened to her suggested the scars may never heal.

Muqdad's life will certainly never be the same. Now 25, he learnt English from selling DVDs to American soldiers in Baghdad. He became an interpreter for coalition forces for 2 years. That made him a target and he was kidnapped twice by militia groups and tortured. The scars from electricity burns were clearly visible on his arms. His family was forced to pay a £16,000 ransom. After those ordeals, things got even worse when his wife - who he'd married just 6 months before - and several members of her family were murdered by militia.

The people we've spoken to so far on this 10th anniversary of the invasion have expressed a range of often conflicting emotions. There's anger from some towards Britain and the US for both starting the war and for how its aftermath was handled. Others have told us the two countries should actually have stayed longer. Many accuse the Iraqi government of corruption and incompetence for not being able or willing to keep people safe. And there's undoubtedly a sense of outrage at the indiscriminate killing. Perhaps overall though, after more than three decades of war, sanctions, more war and continuing violence, there's a weariness, and a general longing for it all to stop. 

Reporter James Shaw and producer Liam Hanley are in Iraq marking ten years since the US led invasion to see how the country has changed.

It feels strange to be stepping out of the climate-controlled cabin of an aeroplane into the fierce heat of an early afternoon in Baghdad.  Particularly because after British troops left in 2009, I thought I'd never be here again. But here I am, back to mark the tenth anniversary of the start of the war.

Foreign jobs are always a bit of a challenge.  Making sure you have the right kit to broadcast - recording device, satellite dish, laptop, smartphone - is a top priority.  Then there's the issue of the visa, broadcasting permits and risk assessment.

If you're trying to get to Iraq you need to take those challenges and double them - at least.  In the two days before we travelled our senior producer Helen battled through thickets of bureaucracy to get the visas for myself and our field producer Liam Hanley.

The biggest issue of all is, of course, safety.  The BBC takes it pretty seriously, which means we have to go into a lot of detail about what we're planning to do and the measures we're taking to stay safe.  At the moment, we're trying to figure out whether it will be safe to travel by road from Baghdad to Basra.  Is there a terrorist threat? Will there be police checkpoints?

In truth, preparations have to be thorough and they have been (thanks to Helen), but you only really know what's possible when you speak to the BBC's high risk advisers on the ground.  They will tell us if there've been kidnappings, bomb threats or violent demonstrations.

Perhaps the closest call I ever had - and to be honest it probably wasn't that close - was when I was part of a 5 live team that arrived in Basra in southern Iraq on the day Saddam Hussein was captured.  People were celebrating by firing their guns in the air and I was out in the street recording the gunfire.  Suddenly there was the sound of a hard metal impact.  We realised that a spent bullet had fallen out of the sky and hit an oil tank close to where I was standing.  It was one of those moments when you have to pause and collect your thoughts.

I haven't brought the bullet with me, but I have got a photo of it on my phone.  To remind me that in a country where thousands have died and millions been affected by war, safety still can't be taken for granted.

5 live reporter James Shaw has tracked the progress of British troops and the Iraqi people over the last decade, visiting the country several times. He returns to take stock of how Iraq has changed. From Monday 18th March on 5 live.