Delays and disruption are expected in the convoy's wake

Hundreds of lorry drivers angry at soaring fuel prices are travelling in convoy to protests in central London and along the M4 in Wales.

Hauliers say diesel prices topping 120p a litre, plus a planned 2p fuel tax rise, will drive firms "to the wall".

Protesters are demanding an "essential user" duty rebate for HGV drivers.

It comes as Chancellor Alistair Darling prepares to meet Labour MPs concerned about plans to increase road tax on older, more polluting vehicles.

Forty-two MPs have signed a Commons motion asking the government to reconsider.

Amid horn beeps, convoys of lorries from the M2 in Kent and other sites around the UK are making their way to London.

UK'S CHEAPEST & MOST EXPENSIVE FUEL Cheapest unleaded: 108.9p (Mansfield) Most expensive unleaded: 126.9p (Newport, Isle of Wight) Cheapest diesel: 115.9p (Banff) Most expensive diesel: 140.9p (Isle of Mull) Latest figures from PetrolPrices.com Car tax rates guide

Motorists have been warned to expect major delays.

The eastbound A40 was due to be closed from 1000 to 1600BST between the northern roundabout A3220 junction and Paddington as lorry drivers left their vehicles to head to 10 Downing Street to hand in a petition.

In Wales, about 100 drivers began a 60-mile convoy protest from Cross Hands, near Llanelli.

They had been due to hand in a petition to the Senedd in Cardiff Bay but instead were heading to a service station west of the city to hand it to Conservative Welsh Assembly members.

The convoy was delayed by police issuing public order notices to drivers instructing them to drive at at least 40mph, depending on conditions, and to keep to the inside lane of the motorway.

Mike Presneill, of protest group Transaction 2007, said: "Fuel is rocketing. The government has the power to act but appears not to be listening. Hundreds of UK transport firms are being driven to the wall."

Haulage company boss Peter Carroll, another of the protest organisers, told BBC News: "The main thing we're hoping to achieve is to get the government to recognise that this isn't a problem, or even a big problem, it's an absolute crisis."

Aerial footage of the protest

With each lorry now costing £1,000 per week in fuel and bills up £40,000 a month at his firm since last October, he said hundreds of UK companies would go out of business if nothing was done and they would be replaced by continental hauliers using cheaper fuel from abroad.

He said drivers recognised the government could not control global oil prices but said an "essential user" duty rebate of between 20p and 25p per litre for lorries would help firms compete on a "level playing field" with foreign hauliers.

Mr Carroll said a similar rebate scheme was already operating in the UK for bus companies.

He added: "If they do that, we keep in business, we continue to pay our taxes and play our part in UK business and also the government wins because we take some of the inflationary pressure out of the economy.

LONDON CONVOYS Trucks from Cowbit, Lincolnshire head to A40 in London via M1, A406 and Hanger Lane Gyratory Trucks from M2 Medway Services, Kent head to A40 in London via Vauxhall Bridge, Grosvenor Road, Chelsea Embankment, Finborough Road, Warwick Road, Holland Road and West Cross Route (A3220) Coaches take drivers from parking on A40 to 1130 BST Marble Arch rally All vehicles supposed to leave A40 by 1530 BST

"Because all the time that our fuel is going up, we're trying to push those costs onto our customers, who in turn try to push it onto members of the general public."

The government is coming under mounting pressure over fuel prices and its plans to increase road tax for vehicles registered since 2001 which emit higher levels of pollutants.

Owners of the most polluting cars could face a tax rise of as much as £200 - a move which the Conservatives say will hit poorer drivers hardest.

Some Labour MPs have signed a motion calling on the Treasury to think again about the retrospective aspects of the policy that they say is "unfair" to people who have already bought their cars.

One Labour MP says the government risks alienating "Mondeo man" - the name given in the past to middle-income voters Labour needed to woo if it wanted to defeat the Conservatives.

Environment minister Joan Ruddock has said the government "could not lose sight of the environment agenda", but Business Secretary John Hutton told the BBC the chancellor was "listening to what people are saying about vehicle excise duty".

"We are trying to get this balance right between encouraging choices to go green but not hammering people," he said.

His comments came ahead of his speech about alternative power sources at the British Atlantic Survey meeting in Cambridge later on Tuesday.

Aung San Suu Kyi has spent 12 of the last 18 years in detention

Burma's ruling junta has renewed pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest.

Police earlier detained about 20 activists as they marched to the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's home in Rangoon, where she has been held since May 2003.

The decision came at a tricky time for the generals, who have been criticised for their response to Cyclone Nargis.

Ms Suu Kyi's party won a resounding election victory in 1990, but she was denied power by the military.

The 62-year-old National League for Democracy (NLD) leader has spent more than 12 of the last 18 years in detention.

Police bundled a number of opposition activists into a truck as they marched on Tuesday from the NLD party headquarters to her lakeside villa in Rangoon.

Correspondents had expected her house arrest - which has been renewed annually - to be rolled over for another year.

Her supporters have argued that she must now legally be either released or put on trial.

Extending her detention will likely provoke further criticism of the junta by an international community already frustrated by the military's handling of the relief effort after Cyclone Nargis.

Map of the cyclone zone Will Burma keep its word on aid? Burmese anger at junta

The regime has been under fire for stalling foreign aid destined for cyclone victims.

Ms Suu Kyi's detention has long been the cause of friction between the junta and the international community.

Her party used the anniversary to denounce the regime's claim that 93% of voters had endorsed a new military-backed constitution at a recent referendum.

It said the vote was a "sham" that was not free or fair, and claimed the authorities "used coercion, intimidated, deceived, misrepresented and used undue influence" to boost the number of "yes" votes.

The party also denounced the regime for holding the referendum so soon after Cyclone Nargis, saying the ruling generals only considered "power politics and self-interest", not public welfare.

Lawyers said the woman's life would be in danger is she were sent home

An HIV-positive Ugandan woman's claim to stay in the UK has been rejected by the European Court of Human Rights.

Her lawyers argued that a lack of medical care in Uganda would lead to her early death, and this would amount to cruel and degrading treatment.

The government denies this, saying all NHS HIV drugs are available in Uganda.

The court agreed that if the unnamed woman were sent back to Uganda, there would be no violation of the bar on inhuman or degrading treatment.

When the woman entered the UK in March 1998 under an assumed name, she was seriously ill and was admitted to hospital.

Rejected claim

Soon afterwards, solicitors lodged an asylum application on her behalf, claiming she had been raped by government soldiers in Uganda because of her association with the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group in the north of the country.

The lawyers argued that her life would be in danger if she were returned to Uganda.

By November 1998, she was diagnosed with two illnesses which are known to be indicators of having AIDS, and as being in an extremely advanced state of HIV infection.

Her asylum claim was rejected in March 2001, a decision she appealed against.

In rejecting her claim, the secretary of state found no evidence that Ugandan authorities were interested in her and that treatment of Aids in Uganda was comparable to any other African country.

The secretary of state also found that all the major anti-viral drugs were available in Uganda at highly subsidised prices.

In January the government sent a terminally ill Ghanaian woman who had been receiving treatment in the UK back to her country because her visa had expired.

The portrait of Elizabeth (right) is a rare copy of a lost original Enlarge Image

A rare portrait of Queen Elizabeth I as a young princess has been discovered in a private collection at a stately home in Northamptonshire.

The portrait, dating from 1650 to 1680, was found in the Duke of Buccleuch's collection at Boughton House.

It shows Elizabeth with siblings Edward VI and Mary I, father Henry VIII and his jester, Will Somers.

It is a copy of an original panel painting, which is thought to date back to the early 1550s.

The portrait was examined by historians Alison Weir and Tracy Borman after they were told of its existence by the director of Boughton House.

It will now be put on display at the stately home, and historians hope to trace the original through publicising the discovery.

Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I before her accession to the throne are extremely rare, with only two other proven portraits known - one at Hampton Court and the other at Windsor Castle.

Mystery

Tracy Borman said that when she was first sent a picture of the portrait she realised it had never been seen before.

"The more we found out, the more obvious it was that nobody had come across this," she said.

"It's clearly a copy of a lost original and it's that mystery that we started to try to solve.

"It's also a very different look to Elizabeth and comparing it to other portraits it helps us to solve the identity of other portraits - for example one always known as the Unknown Lady in the National Portrait Gallery."

Charles Lister, house manager at Boughton House, said the picture was to go on public display when the house opens in August.

He said: "The portrait is normally in a private area of the house with a number of other Tudor portraits.

"When we had a meeting with Tracy it came under discussion and it sort of all went from there.

"We knew it was important because it's a picture of Henry VIII and his family but we did not realise it in the context of Elizabeth as princess."

The finding is reported in the latest edition of the BBC History Magazine.

There are 20 monasteries on Mount Athos - for men only

Four Moldovan women accidentally breached a ban dating back to 1060 when they were dropped off on the Greek monastic peninsula of Mount Athos.

They told police they had sailed from Turkey after paying $6,300 to two Ukrainian people smugglers, but were unaware they were breaking Greek law.

Women are banned from Mount Athos, home to 20 monasteries and considered Orthodox Christianity's spiritual home.

Police held the group, and one officer said "they were forgiven" by the monks.

Animal ban

The four women, aged between 27 and 32, and a Moldovan man, aged 41, were discovered by the monks at the weekend.

"They told police and the monks they were sorry but they couldn't have known this was a no-women area," a police officer told Reuters.

"They were forgiven."

Under Greek law, breaching the ban can lead to a jail sentence.

Women - even many female domestic animals - have not been allowed on the mountain since a decree banning women was issued by Byzantine Emperor Constantine Monomachos in 1060

The new scheme has been delayed for six months

A banking scheme for one-day cash transfers over the telephone or on the internet has started without any major problems, High Street banks say.

The new scheme will speed up the process which previously meant that it took up to four days to transfer money between banks.

Banks made an estimated £30m in interest from the delay last year.

By 7am on the first day, 898 payments totalling £461,383 were made successfully under the new scheme.

The £300m Faster Payments Service, developed by 13 banks, starts on 27 May, although only a fraction of payments will be quicker from day one.

Slow start

Customers can make one-off payments up to a maximum value of £10,000 over the telephone or via the internet, which will leave their account and arrive at the destination account on the same day.

Given we have been waiting for years, if not decades, for the industry to invest in decent systems, if the price of embedding it properly is a delay of a few months, then that is sensible Philip Cullum National Consumer Council See the big five banks' timetable Changes in the way we pay

For many consumers the frustration has been most common when money disappeared for a few days when they transferred cash from a current account to their own savings accounts with a different bank.

The same-day project will be extended to standing orders from 6 June.

In 2007, there were 124 million internet and phone payments made at an average value of £303. The number of payments is expected to rise to 300 million in 10 years.

Some 347 million standing order payments were made in 2007, expected to rise to 422 million in a decade, at an average value of £321.

The banking industry says it does not want to flood the new system from day one, and various banks will phase in the system at different times.

"Given we have been waiting for years, if not decades, for the industry to invest in decent systems, if the price of embedding it properly is a delay of a few months, then that is sensible," said Philip Cullum of the National Consumer Council.

'Complex project'

The banks have been preparing for the scheme by testing the service with hundreds of penny payments.

One of the main things that you need with any payments system is total reliability Paul Smee Apacs chief executive Q&A on faster clearing times

"The final part of this enormously complex project has been to test the new system in a live environment," said Paul Smee, chief executive of UK payments association Apacs.

"After such substantial investment by the industry we would like, in time, to see the new Faster Payments Service being used for all of the UK's internet, phone and standing order payments."

One of the first payments made on 27 May under the new system was a £10,000 donation to charity Oxfam by the participating banks to help victims of the cyclone in Burma.

Some concerns have been raised about security under the faster scheme, with banks having less time to check payments.

But Apacs said that although no system could promise 100% security, the issue had been at the heart of developing the system.

Who's involved?

The 13 banks included in the scheme are: Abbey, Alliance and Leicester, Barclays, Citi, Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks (National Australia Group), Co-operative Bank, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide Building Society, Northern Bank (Danske Bank), Northern Rock, and Royal Bank of Scotland Group (including NatWest and Ulster Bank).

Cheques are not covered under the Faster Payments Service

The system was set up after the Office of Fair Trading, acting on consumers' complaints, told the banks in 2005 to make the system faster. An original deadline of last November was extended.

The new system updates technology set up about 25 years ago to deal with cheques, since when internet and telephone banking has been introduced widely and surged in popularity.

A website has been set up at www.canipayfaster.co.uk to allow people to check, using the receiving account's sort code, whether a bank is set up to receive faster payments.

Cheques are not covered under the new system. A recent report suggested they were in "irreversible decline" and new clearing rules were introduced last year.

Since November, interest must be credited no more than two days after a cheque has been paid in and the money must be available to be drawn out after no more than four days.

After six days, a cheque is deemed to have cleared absolutely and so banks cannot recoup money from a customer's account if they discovered the original cheque payment was fraudulent.

'Elizabeth' was raped by 10 UN peacekeepers in Ivory Coast

Children as young as six are being sexually abused by peacekeepers and aid workers, says a leading UK charity.

Children in post-conflict areas are being abused by the very people drafted into such zones to help look after them, says Save the Children.

After research in Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, the charity proposed an international watchdog be set up.

Save the Children said it had sacked three workers for breaching its codes, and called on others to do the same.

The three men were all dismissed in the past year for having had sex with girls aged 17 - which the charity said was a sackable offence even though not illegal.

The victims are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence Heather Kerr Save the Children

The UN has said it welcomes the charity's report, which it will study closely.

Save the Children says the most shocking aspect of child sex abuse is that most of it goes unreported and unpunished, with children too scared to speak out.

No support

A 13-year-old girl, "Elizabeth" described to the BBC how 10 UN peacekeepers gang-raped her in a field near her Ivory Coast home.

'Elizabeth' tells the BBC about her abuse

"They grabbed me and threw me to the ground and they forced themselves on me... I tried to escape but there were 10 of them and I could do nothing," she said.

"I was terrified. Then they just left me there bleeding."

No action has been taken against the soldiers.

The report also found that aid workers have been sexually abusing boys and girls.

"In recent years, some important commitments have been made by the UN, the wider international community and by humanitarian and aid agencies to act on this problem," said Save the Children UK chief executive Jasmine Whitbread.

"However, all humanitarian and peacekeeping agencies working in emergency situations, including Save the Children UK, must own up to the fact that they are vulnerable to this problem and tackle it head on."

UN SEXUAL ABUSE SCANDALS 2003 - Nepalese troops accused of sexual abuse while serving in DR Congo. Six are later jailed 2004 - Two UN peacekeepers repatriated after being accused of abuse in Burundi 2005 - UN troops accused of rape and sexual abuse in Sudan 2006 - UN personnel accused of rape and exploitation on missions in Haiti and Liberia 2007 - UN launches probe into sexual abuse claims in Ivory Coast

After research involving hundreds of children from Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, the charity said better reporting mechanisms needed to be introduced to deal with what it called "endemic failures" in responding to reported cases of abuse.

It also said efforts should be made to strengthen worldwide child protection systems.

Heather Kerr, Save the Children's Ivory Coast country director, says little is being done to support the victims.

"It's a minority of people but they are using their power to sexually exploit children and children that don't have the voice to report about this.

READ THE REPORT No One to Turn To [378k] Most computers will open PDF documents automatically, but you may need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader. Download the reader here

"They are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence."

Save the Children says the international community has promised a policy of zero-tolerance to child sexual abuse, but that this is not being followed up by action on the ground.

A UN spokesman, Nick Birnback, said that it was impossible to ensure "zero incidents" within an organisation that has up to 200,000 personnel serving around the world.

"What we can do is get across a message of zero tolerance, which for us means zero complacency when credible allegations are raised and zero impunity when we find that there has been malfeasance that's occurred," he told the BBC.

The New South Wales town does not have a large Muslim population

Authorities in an Australian town have rejected proposals to allow an Islamic school to be built there.

Councillors for Camden, a small town on the outskirts of Sydney, unanimously voted against the proposed school for 1200 pupils.

The councillors said they based their decision solely on planning grounds, citing an internal report about its environmental impact.

The proposed development had met with fierce local opposition.

Camden's authorities received some 3,200 submissions from the public about the school and only 100 in favour.

The BBC's Nick Bryant in Sydney says Camden does not have a large Muslim population so most of the pupils for the proposed school would have had to be brought in by bus from Sydney, an hour's drive away.

Town moves against school

Residents' views

The issue prompted a strong response from Camden locals.

"They've got terrorists amongst them, OK? We can't say they haven't - they have," said one resident.

"We're quite happy to integrate, we happily integrate with Italians, Greeks, English, Scottish - this town has every nationality. Muslims do not fit in this town - we are Aussies, OK?"

A variety of local residents' views were aired at a public meeting late last year and attended by over 1,000 people.

Some speakers focused solely on the environmental impact of locating an urban-scale school in such a bucolic setting.

One speaker implored the crowd to stick to planning issues, and not let the campaign be contaminated by racism or xenophobia.

Andrew Wynnet of the Camden/Macarthur Residents' Group told the BBC's Nick Bryant about local concerns for the long-term demographic impact of such a development.

"The character of the town will change," he said.

The Quranic Society, the organisation behind the proposal, has kept a low public profile throughout the process.

Its position has been that Australian parents have the right to educate Australian children wherever they wish, regardless of race or religion.

The organisation was not represented at the meeting, but it can appeal against this decision in the courts.

An internal Camden council report had earlier recommended against construction, mainly citing traffic concerns.

Lawyers said the woman's life would be in danger is she were sent home

An HIV-positive Ugandan woman's claim to stay in the UK has been rejected by the European Court of Human Rights.

Her lawyers argued that a lack of medical care in Uganda would lead to her early death, and this would amount to cruel and degrading treatment.

The government denies this, saying all NHS HIV drugs are available in Uganda.

The court agreed that if the unnamed woman were sent back to Uganda, there would be no violation of the bar on inhuman or degrading treatment.

When the woman entered the UK in March 1998 under an assumed name, she was seriously ill and was admitted to hospital.

Rejected claim

Soon afterwards, solicitors lodged an asylum application on her behalf, claiming she had been raped by government soldiers in Uganda because of her association with the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group in the north of the country.

The lawyers argued that her life would be in danger if she were returned to Uganda.

By November 1998, she was diagnosed with two illnesses which are known to be indicators of having AIDS, and as being in an extremely advanced state of HIV infection.

Her asylum claim was rejected in March 2001, a decision she appealed against.

In rejecting her claim, the secretary of state found no evidence that Ugandan authorities were interested in her and that treatment of Aids in Uganda was comparable to any other African country.

The secretary of state also found that all the major anti-viral drugs were available in Uganda at highly subsidised prices.

In January the government sent a terminally ill Ghanaian woman who had been receiving treatment in the UK back to her country because her visa had expired.