Snowmail: lorry drivers in fuel picket

Last Modified: 29 Apr 2008
By: Jon Snow

On tonight's show...

Welcome to the land of the £5 gallon, or more properly the £1.20 litre. As the oil price looks to move about beyond $120 a barrel, the wheel nuts are beginning to squeak. Specifically, Britain's hauliers are losing business they say and have taken to the streets today.

In the skies above them fly British Airways passengers who from Friday will be paying a higher surcharge. One presumes other airlines will follow suite. Not sure whether this will affect people who've already booked their Mediterranean holidays.

All this on the day when BP and Shell have announced more than £7 billion of profits (first quarter only). Lindsay Taylor has the test for truckers, drivers and aviators.

Katie Razzall asks why oil prices are so high, whether they'll ever fall back again, and we explore the political and economic consequences with a stellar panel.

Cellar man detained for two weeks

Sue Turton remains in Amstetten where still more information is coming out about the daughter locked in her father's cellar for 24 year. We anticipate health bulletins both on the extremely ill daughter, the eldest of the incarcerated children at 19, who is currently in hospital on an induced coma; and on the younger children who are elsewhere.

We'll also be reporting on the Austrian soul-searching that is developing apace.

Britain is sending 300 more troops to Kosovo. That suddenly seems to say maybe things are getting a bit heated there. We are investigating.

How fast is your connection?

Finally, we report on the extent to which broadband and the internet are being clogged by people downloading and viewing large quantities of high quality video material - much of it courtesy of the BBC iplayer.

Five per cent of Britain's entire internet traffic is now high quality video, and that's just the BBC's portion. Good news for viewers, but possibly bad news ahead. Some experts are forecasting that the internet itself could eventually be paralysed by all this stuff.

Our Technology Correspondent Benjamin Cohen is on the case.