Frankfurt - Sony is to offer its e-book reader, a replacement for paper books, in Germany from the spring of next year, the Japan-based media company said Wednesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The Sony Reader device went on sale in the United States in 2006 and in Britain last month.

Sony said it would link with a German book wholesaler, Libri, and a retailer, Thalia, to market the device, which downloads books from personal computers.

Tokyo - Japan logged its first trade deficit in more than three years in August as rising commodity prices pushed up imports, the government said Wednesday.

The nation's imports jumped 20.2 per cent in August from the same month a year earlier to 6.96 trillion yen (68.02 billion dollars) while exports were almost unchanged at 6.72 trillion yen, up 0.9 per cent, the Finance Ministry said.

Japan's goods and services trade, measured on an international balance of payment basis, ran a deficit of 327.6 billion yen.

Tokyo - Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa on Tuesday announced a series of government plans to stabilize the financial markets, including the use of public money to help regional banks.

Japan's initiatives also include freezing sales of government-held stocks, extending a safety net for life insurance companies and relaxing buybacks for companies of their own shares.

Last week, the Japanese lunar mission SELENE (Koguya), which was unveiled in 2007 and is now orbiting the moon was successfully tracked by Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN), which is an intelligent communications infrastructure, designed and set up by the Indian Space Research Organization to transmit and receive signals from Chandrayaan 1. 

According to S. K. Shiva Kumar, Director, ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command (ISTRAC), “We have been able to establish downlink with the spacecraft with the help of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).”