A car bomb damaged a US diplomatic car in Beirut yesterday, killing at least three people and wounding 16, and the US State Department said no Americans died in the blast.

The bomb sent a column of smoke into the sky, tore masonry from buildings and destroyed at least six cars in a Christian suburb north of Beirut, as well as damaging the armoured four-by-four embassy car.

The blast coincided with US President George W. Bush’s visit to Saudi Arabia as part of a week-long tour of US Middle East allies.

Mr Bush is not visiting Lebanon, though Washington has been a strong backer of the Beirut government in its power struggle with the Hizbollah-led opposition backed by Syria.

Lebanon has seen more than 30 explosions in the past three years, many hitting anti-Syrian politicians and journalists.

Members of the US-backed governing coalition who have blamed Damascus for previous attacks condemned the bombing but did not name any suspects.

Lebanon’s stability has also been rocked by attacks on UN peacekeepers in the south and an insurrection by al Qaeda-inspired Islamist militants in the north last year.

An inquest has been opened after a man from Northampton was crushed to death by a forklift truck in an horrific accident.

Michael Whateley, a 28-year-old of Eastfield Road in Delapre, died instantly when the truck toppled onto his car at a housing development in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

The Health and Safety Executive launched a joint investigation with police to establish what had happened to cause the nine-tonne industrial vehicle to fall over.

A spokesman for Thames Valley Police confirmed their coroner’s office had opened and adjourned an inquest following the accident, which took place on Friday.

He said: “Police were at the scene of an industrial incident that occurred at the Linden Homes building site on Broughton Road, Banbury. Three people were involved in the incident.

“A man was pronounced dead at the scene. Health and Safety Executive investigators will undertake a joint investigation with Thames Valley Police. It is understood that the accident happened after the car Mr Whateley was a passenger in had driven on to the building site.

“It was waiting for the truck to finish maneuvering when it toppled on its side and the arm of the truck fell onto the car.

A spokesman for Linden Homes, which is overseeing the development, added: “We can confirm that there was a fatality at the Linden Homes site in Banbury.

“The police are currently on site and the HSE has started an investigation but at this early stage we are not in a position to comment further.”

The site finally re-opened on Tuesday morning and work continued on the new development, which will consist of 18 new four-bedroom homes.

Meanwhile tributes to Mr Whateley have been set up on social networking site Facebook, where a number of his friends and family members have joined an on-line group in his memory.

One friend, Stephen Symons, emailed the Chronicle & Echo to say: “We were friends for several years at school and often bumped into each other in recent years.

“I was shocked at his death and very, very saddened. I liked him very much and always enjoyed his company. He was kind hearted and very easy to get along with.

“I’ll always remember him.”

Toyota is readying a low-cost vehicle for sale in emerging markets but rival General Motors Corp. says a $2,500 car such as the Nano model rolled out by Tata Motors of India last week is not in its immediate future.

“I wouldn’t say that right now we have been specifically enamored of the $2,500 price point,” GM chief executive Rick Wagoner said in an interview in Detroit Monday, adding “the magic” price for an ultra budget car is yet unknown.

GM’s strategy for the low end of the market will be to try to take costs out from existing vehicles such as the ones built by its GM Daewoo unit in Korea, Mr. Wagoner said.  GM has tried before to make a cheapo car from scratch, trying to cut costs by using coloured plastic panels, for example, instead of painting the cars later on. Overall, the effort hasn’t worked, he said.

“What we ended up with was not a very good looking car that wasn’t that cheap,” Mr. Wagoner said.

GM and Toyota are battling for the title of world’s biggest automaker by sales. Emerging markets are crucial for the automakers as growth in North America, Europe and Japan slows.

Geely Holdings Group Co, the Chinese maker of $5,000 compacts, will add five new models a year, including sedans, until 2010 because of faster-growing demand for larger cars in the world’s second largest auto market.

The carmaker will also raise its annual production capacity in China to 1.7 million vehicles by 2015, Vice-President Zhao Fuquan said at the Detroit motor show yesterday. China’s largest privately controlled carmaker can currently make 300,000 cars a year, according to its website.

Geely plans to add larger models and to boost sales overseas as Chinese drivers, enriched by stock market gains, shun compacts in favor of more expensive cars. The company’s Hong Kong-listed unit missed its vehicle sales target in 2007 for at least the second year in a row.

The carmaker is planning to open plants in Europe and southern Africa, Zhao said at the North American International Automobile Show. He declined to provide more details. Earlier this week, the company said it will set up an assembly venture in Mexico to serve markets in the Americas, including the US.

Geely’s new models this year will include a five-door hatchback KingKong compact and a 1.8-liter China Dragon sports car based on its Beauty Leopard model. It will also add a 1-liter compact named the Panda in the local market.

The company’s Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd unit sold 186,000 vehicles last year, an increase of more than 20 percent, Geely Chairman Li Shufu said earlier this week. The unit cut its sales target to 190,000 in September. It aims to boost vehicle sales 18 percent this year to 220,000, Li added.

Geely expects to export 1.3 million vehicles a year by 2015 compared with about 30,000 last year. The company now operates factories in Russia, Ukraine and Indonesia, assembling vehicles from component kits.

The automaker and unidentified partners will make an initial investment of $500 million in the Mexican plant, which will eventually have a capacity of 300,000 vehicles a year.

The Detroit Motor Show has put a spotlight on the looming battle for supremacy in the fast-growing market for green cars, especially between US and Asian auto makers.With a rise in worldwide concern over global warming and soaring oil prices, carmakers from every country have accelerated their investments into producing cars with improved fuel efficiency and reduced harmful emissions.

The whole range of new green car technologies is on show at the annual Detroit exposition, the world’s biggest auto show: standard hybrids, plug-in hybrids, electric motors, fuel cell vehicles, and flex-fuel engines that will burn biofuels like ethanol and even fuel made from urban waste.

New green car technologies are a “business necessity and an obligation for society,” said General Motors chief Rick Wagoner during previews of the show, which opens to the public from January 19 to January 27.

“The demand for energy around the world is growing faster than supply,” he said. “We need to develop alternative sources of propulsion.” Wagoner called for the US government to accelerate construction of the infrastructure necessary to support an entire new generation of environmentally-sensitive vehicles.

Among the US auto manufacturers, GM has launched an offensive in the green car market — even as it has joined the others in resisting tighter regulations on emissions.

In Detroit, GM announced that it would launch a plug-in hybrid as soon as 2010 — the Saturn Vue sports utility vehicle — and also by the same date offer a fully electric car, the Chevy Volt, after an abortive first try in 2003.

Chrysler, slow to get on the green bandwagon, has presented three prototype green cars in Detroit. And Ford announced two hybrids for the end of 2008 and the accelerated development of cars with better fuel economy by 2012.

But all of them face the formidable Japanese giant Toyota — now the number two auto-seller in the US market, after GM and ahead of Ford.

Toyota has stolen a strong lead in the green car market with its hybrid Prius, now on the market for ten years.

In Detroit, Toyota presented its new rechargeable hybrid, and announced projects to develop other clean-auto technologies.

Still up for grabs is the half of the US market that is dominated by inefficient, polluting SUVs and pick-up trucks — segments which have proven extremely profitable for US carmakers.

The Detroit show made clear that all carmakers, especially Asian companies, are working on clean diesel, hybrid and flex-fuel versions of their SUVs and trucks.

Even China, with its ambition to get a foothold in the US auto market, has introduced sedan and SUV models, developed by their own research teams with the backing of Japanese or other foreign partners.

The promise and challenge of the green market comes as US manufacturers struggle to get back on their feet after sweeping losses and retrenchments.

Ford announced that its plan to return to profitability in 2009 was progressing well, while GM said it would reap the benefits of its efforts, and Chrysler talked up its own progress.

But all the excitement about the US market pales in the face of the looming economic slowdown and possibly recession in 2008, a result of higher oil costs, the crash of the real estate market and the resulting fallout in the banking sector.

Both US and Japanese automakers said 2008 would be difficult with contracting demand.

But European builders remained relatively optimistic for 2008 in the United States, with attractive new models in both the mini-car and luxury segments, and a rising demand for their diesel cars.