Tokyo - The Japanese parliament on Thursday approved a supplementary budget of 1.81 trillion yen (17.85 billion dollars) for the 2008 fiscal year through March, mainly to finance the government's economic stimulus package amid the global financial crisis.

The stimulus package allocates 446.9 billion yen to measures to support small businesses and 188.1 billion yen to promote energy-saving efforts and to help the agriculture and fisheries industries deal with higher oil prices.

About 351.8 billion yen of the extra budget will go to reduce the financial burden on the elderly under a medical insurance programme introduced last April, while 729.6 billion yen will be spent for disaster prevention measures.

Tokyo - Japan's second-largest automaker, Honda Motor Co, said Thursday that it sees no need to revise its earnings projections for the current fiscal year despite worries about a global economic slowdown.

The remarks by Honda President Takeo Fukui came after his counterpart at market leader Toyota Motor Corp said the business outlook for the automotive market was "very severe."

As world stock markets fall as part of the global financial crisis, consumer spending has been affected, Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe said.

Tokyo - The Tokyo stock market slipped in early trading Thursday after Wall Street's blue-chip Dow Jones industrials los

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.