The man driving the car when Diana, Princess of Wales, and her lover, Dodi Fayed, were killed knew he should not have been driving, a court heard today.

Henri Paul, acting head of security at the Ritz hotel in Paris, was reminded moments before setting off that it was not his job to drive the couple, an inquest was told.

The night security manager, Francois Tendil, said he had seen no sign that Paul, who also died in the crash, had been drinking that night, although blood tests later showed he was over the drink-drive limit.

Tendil told how a plan was devised to evade paparazzi by driving the couple from the back of the hotel while Fayed’s usual driver, Philippe Dorneau, remained at the front as a decoy.

Fayed, Paul and two bodyguards, Trevor Rees and Kes Wingfield, had come up with the plan, but Fayed had played a key part, Tendil said.

He said he had learned that Paul was to drive just before he set off.

“My reaction was that it was not his duty to do so because we had drivers in the hotel,” he told the court. He said he told Paul this but he had said nothing.

He described how Fayed had been angry at the activities of the paparazzi, who had been following him and Diana since their arrival in Paris earlier in the day.

The court heard he would have been able to see a growing crowd of photographers in the square outside from the window of the suite where he and Diana were dining.

“Due to the situation and what Dodi could see in front of the hotel, he decided at the last minute that Henri Paul could drive the car,” he said. “And the bodyguards did agree. Everybody agreed that, I would like to record that.”

Under cross-examination by Michael Mansfield QC, representing Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, he conceded that it was Paul and not Dodi Fayed who had told him of the decision.

Mr Mansfield asked: “You said it wasn’t for him to drive the car and he just said nothing, is that right?”

Tendil replied: “Yes, that’s right.”

The jury also heard from Dorneau, who said it was the first time in his experience that Fayed had been pursued by the paparazzi.

He described how earlier that evening there had been photographers “everywhere” as they drove through Paris, prompting the decision to cancel a restaurant appointment and dine at the hotel instead.

He said Fayed was “mad, angry and annoyed” and, at one point, Diana had to calm him down.

Few things have come along in recent years to excite me more as a reader and author than the Kindle digital-book platform just introduced by Amazon.com («www.businessweek.com»). I have one ordered, but even before using it, my mind is buzzing with how to make full use of the platform for my next tome.

As the author of two books—Getting the Bugs Out: The Rise, Fall, and Comeback of Volkswagen in America and Driven: Inside BMW, the Most Admired Car Company in the World—the first issue I have to sort out is whether I need a publisher at all for my upcoming titles. That is a game-changing development in the world of publishing, and one that will take the industry time to digest. Publishing Sans Publisher?

Are there ways to publish digital books now without the «investing.businessweek.com» and Little, Brown & Co.’s of the world? Sure. We have seen experiments by some big-time authors publishing serialized books on the Net—Stephen King famously published a serial, The Plant, on his Web site for a subscription cost of $7. Lesser-known authors have done the same, but we all know how tough it is for such writers to build an audience without the imprimatur of a large publishing house.

And, of course, the Sony («www.businessweek.com») Reader, which stores e-books, has been available for some time. But the interface is not very good and Sony is remarkably inept at marketing it. Let’s remember there were MP3 players before Apple’s («www.businessweek.com») iPod, but it took a brilliant user interface, design, and mystique created around the product for people like me to abandon CDs for digital music. Timely and Feature-Rich Content

Publishing digitally into an attractive user interface is akin to finding a car that is powerful and gets 40 miles per gallon. My next book, in fact, is likely going to be about a car company undergoing a huge transformation to secure its survival. The time window in which I am writing, though, is awkward.

There will probably be a four-month lag time between final proofs, based on reporting that had to be completed three months earlier, and the time the book goes on sale. At that point, a lot will still be going on with the company’s story. If I was publishing just digitally, I could write up to the week of the book’s release, and save all those trees from the paper mill at the same time. As is, I will have to settle for releasing a “dead trees” book, which will also be distributed as an e-book that will be more up-to-date with added features.

And then there are the pictures. In my first two books, I was limited to eight pictures on two pages stuck in the middle of the book. This is done for cost reasons, as publishing four-color pictures throughout a book, which is what I wanted, is much more expensive. With a Kindle book, I can drop in as many pictures as I want throughout the book. I can also include video interviews, an audio slide show, and podcasts as part of the book’s maintenance package. The Bottom Line

Books don’t have to end, and neither will my author’s revenue stream. If I sell my Kindle book to a reader for $9.99, he has saved perhaps $20 on the price of a hardcover book. Let’s say I sell 40,000 copies of the book, and further assume that I can get at least 10,000 of the buyers to subscribe to periodically updated chapters and podcasts, or perhaps a blog, for an additional $9.99. As an author, I would like to control that end of the revenue stream, which I don’t need a big publisher for anyway. That’s another $100,000 in revenue to me, minus my costs and Amazon’s cut.

SHANGHAI: Chinese stocks rebounded in volatile trading Tuesday following their sharpest one-day drop in three months as strong buying by institutions offset selling by retail investors.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index gained 2.6 percent to 3,767.10 after a rollercoaster session that saw the index plunge as much as 7.2 percent earlier in the day. It fell 8.3 percent on Monday ? the benchmarks sharpest decline since an 8.8-percent drop Feb. 27 triggered a global market sell-off.

The Shenzhen Composite Index for Chinas smaller second market rose 2.5 percent to 1,066.05.

Prices rebounded as investors returned to snap up bargains, analysts said.

“It is still a bull market. After five days of declines, I think its time for the market to bounce back,” said Chen Huiqin, an analyst at Nanjing-based Huatai Securities Co.

The Shanghai index had fallen three of the last five days.

European share markets gained in early trading and Asia markets also were generally higher, with Japans benchmark index climbing 0.5 percent and Hong Kong shares also up 0.5 percent.

Chinese investors had dumped shares Friday and Monday in reaction to a government decision last week to triple a tax on stock trades. The move was taken as a signal regulators are determined to cool frenzied trading that had lifted stock prices nearly 60 percent since the start of the year, following a 130 percent surge in 2006.

By Tuesdays close, the benchmark Shanghai index was 13 percent below its record high of 4,334.92, hit May 29. But it was still up 40 percent for the year.

Financials were among the gainers. China Minsheng Banking Corp. rose 3 percent to 12.47 yuan, China Merchants Bank Co. climbed 2.6 percent to 21.49 yuan and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank was up 1.1 percent at 32.79 yuan.

Chinas stock markets are largely closed to foreign investors. Analysts attributed the sell-off Monday to panic-selling by individual retail investors.

The stock market boom has prompted millions of first-time investors to jump into the market, tapping savings and retirement accounts and mortgaging homes to buy stocks. Authorities are worried that the new money is fueling a bubble in prices.

Shifting to damage control, on Tuesday state-run newspapers carried prominent articles announcing the approval of four new investment funds.

Financial newspapers sought to reassure investors, asserting that the tax hike on stock trades would help the markets by encouraging longer-term investments in better stocks.

International stock markets have shrugged off the declines in mainland Chinese declines. Most Asian markets rose Monday, and Wall Street also eked out gains.

Economists say the recent fall in Chinese prices should have only a modest impact on the overall economy because Chinas growth is driven by exports, not the financial markets, and families have still much more money in savings than in shares.

In currency trading, the Chinese yuan gained against the U.S. dollar after its official rate was set at its highest level ever Tuesday morning.

The dollar was trading at 7.6423 the over-the-counter market, down from Mondays close of 7.6512. It dipped as low as 7.6419, its lowest level since the current trading system was set up in July 2005.