News in Brief

Here's Mercedes’ latest SL – the AMG Black Edition – spied testing in Germany. And instead of the standard car’s folding top, it has a fixed carbon fibre roof.

Underneath lies a facelifted front end. Its deep air intakes and vents keep the huge brakes cool and feed air into the 600bhp 6.2-litre V8. This powerplant propels the hot Mercedes from 0-60mph in 4.5 seconds and on to a 200mph top speed.

The SL AMG Black Edition is due to arrive in showrooms here in early 2008, and is expected to cost around £200,000.

IT's THE eco-friendly fuel that’s truly green – Dutch firm Bioking is launching a biodiesel which is made from water-grown algae.

And it should make a big splash as it contains up to 70 per cent oil – 25 times more than rapeseed. That means it produces much more energy per acre of crop than traditional sources.

Algae thrives in many conditions, and it’s the planet’s fastest-growing plant, so supplies should be plentiful. The fuel makes its UK debut at the Biodiesel-Expo being held in Newark, Notts, on 17 and 18 October.

THE LATEST road casualty figures have been released by the Department for Transport. They show that 32,155 people were killed or seriously injured on the UK network in 2006 – a one per cent decrease over the figure for 2005, which was 31,845.

While total road casualties fell five per cent to 258,404, there were big rises in deaths among child pedestrians (up 13 per cent) and child pedal cyclists (up 55 per cent). Also, there was a five per cent jump in motorcycle fatalities. In total, 3,172 people were killed on the roads in 2006.