EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso says a blueprint for a banking union and supervision of the banking system will be presented at the EU's October summit as part of measures to raise confidence in the euro currency.
Barroso spoke with reporters Saturday after meeting with Malta Prime Minster Lawrence Gonzi following a gathering of five southern European countries with five North African nations.

A senior European Central Bank official is insisting that the bank can't help Greece by agreeing to roll over the government bonds it holds or accept lower interest rates.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who wants more time to enact reforms and budget cuts, has suggested the ECB could help that way.

Authorities say a single batch of deep-frozen strawberries appears to have been behind an outbreak of gastroenteritis in eastern Germany that hit more than 11,000 people, mostly children at schools and day-care centers.
The national disease-control center, the Robert Koch Institute, said late Friday that studies showed a strong connection between eating food prepared with the strawberries and the cases of vomiting and diarrhea.

Google and major book publishers have settled a lengthy legal battle over digital copyrights, but a bigger dispute still looms with thousands of authors who allege that Google is illegally profiting from their works.
The truce announced Thursday ends a federal lawsuit filed in 2005 by several members of the Association of American Publishers after Google Inc. began stockpiling its Internet search index with digital duplicates of books scanned from libraries.

Greece's Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said his country can survive until the end of November without receiving the next planned installment of its bailout loans.
Officials from the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank are currently in Greece assessing the country's progress in fulfilling the terms for receiving the aid.

Oil prices retreated a day after posting big gains as traders turned their attention to the release later Friday of a monthly U.S. jobs report.
Benchmark oil for November delivery was down 33 cents to $91.38 a barrel at midday Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

A Chinese state media report says security for the Shanghai Masters is being tightened after an online death threat against tennis star 1 Roger Federer.
Shanghai's Youth Daily quoted tournament official Yang Yibin as saying police were notified about the threat and that security will be increased for Federer for the tournament, which starts this weekend.

Lending support to two companies struggling to make a comeback in smartphones,AT&T Inc. said Thursday it will be selling Nokia smartphones that run Windows Phone 8, Microsoft's upcoming software release.
The phones are a critical part of Nokia Corp.'s attempt to stem its rapid decline from the position as the world's largest maker of phones. The Finnish company's presence in the U.S. market has been very small in recent years, but AT&T and T-Mobile have been selling Nokia's earlier Windows Phones.

The potential scope of the meningitis outbreak that has killed at least five people widened dramatically Thursday ashealth officials warned that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of patients who got steroid back injections in 23 states could be at risk.
Clinics and medical centers rushed to contact patients who may have received the apparently fungus-contaminated shots. And the Food and Drug Administration urged doctors not to use any products at all from the Massachusetts pharmacy that supplied the suspect steroid solution.

More Americans than ever are taking generic drugs, as blockbuster medicines like Plavix and Lipitor become available in low-cost versions. But the government's revelation this week that it mistakenly approved a defective generic antidepressant could stoke longtime concerns about the quality of knockoff drugs.
