Euro "Stability Union" could be achieved fast: Schaeuble (Reuters)

BERLIN (Reuters) ? Euro zone countries could create a Stability Union to secure deeper fiscal integration relatively quickly, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Sunday.

"One can do that quickly," he told ARD television, referring to changes to the Lisbon Treaty that Germany has wanted to allow much tighter budget controls in the 17 euro zone countries.

"The goal is for the member states of the common currency to create their own Stability Union and to concentrate on that," Schaeuble said.

In Brussels earlier on Sunday, EU officials said Germany and France are exploring radical methods of securing deeper and more rapid fiscal integration among euro zone countries, aware that getting broad backing for the necessary treaty changes may not be possible.

Germany's original plan was to secure agreement among all 27 EU countries for a limited change to the Lisbon Treaty by the end of 2012, a way of shoring up the region's defences against the debt crisis.

But in meetings with EU leaders in recent weeks, it has become clear to both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that it may not be possible to get all 27 countries on board, EU sources say.

Even if that were possible, it could take a year or more to secure the changes while market attacks on Italy, Spain and now France suggest bold measures are needed within weeks.

As a result, senior French and German civil servants have been exploring other ways of achieving the goal, either via an agreement among just the euro zone countries, or a separate agreement outside the EU treaty that could involve a core of around 8-10 euro zone countries, officials say.

Schaeuble said a Stability Union could be a decisive step to winning more confidence from the markets.

"The important signal, to convince financial investors in the world, is and remains a stable currency," Schaeuble said. That means that every euro zone member has to do its homework on its budget discipline.

"We want to ensure that through treaty changes," he said.

(Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum; editing by David Stamp)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111127/bs_nm/us_eurozone_germany_schaeuble

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Samsung Captivate Glide (AT&T)

AT&T has plenty of smartphones, but it doesn't have plenty of keyboarded smartphones. Sure, there's the Sharp FX Plus?(Free, 3.5 stars) and the RIM BlackBerry Torch 9810?($49.99, 3 stars), but neither of those devices are particularly cutting edge. Enter the Samsung Captivate Glide ($149.99 with contract). It's a lot like the popular Samsung Galaxy S II?(4.5 stars, $199.99), with the addition of a full, slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a slight bump down in specs. It's our Editors' Choice for keyboarded smartphones on AT&T.

Physical Features, Phone Calls, and Internet
The Captivate Glide measures 4.9 by 2.5 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.2 ounces. Made out of lightly textured black plastic, the Glide looks unassuming, but feels well built and comfortable in your hand.

The 4-inch, 800-by-480-pixel Super AMOLED display is gorgeous. It has fewer subpixels than the Super AMOLED Plus display on the Galaxy S II, but it still looks excellent. The screen can get very bright, but darker colors maintain a luxurious depth and richness. Four haptic feedback-enabled functions keys sit beneath the display, which are suitably responsive. Typing on the on-screen QWERTY was fine, but I suspect most people are looking to the Glide for the real thing. The phone slides open to reveal a large, four-row physical keyboard. The keys are large and backlit, with comfortable, even spacing. They're a bit flat, but it shouldn't take long to adjust to typing on them.

The Glide is a good voice phone. Reception is average, and calls sound rich, clear, and natural in the phone's earpiece. The speakerphone also sounds good but volume doesn't go loud enough to use outdoors. Calls made with the phone are clear, though voices can sound thin and background noise cancellation is just average. I had no trouble connecting to a?Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset ($129.99, 4.5 stars) and calls sounded great. Thankfully, voice dialing works better here, using Android's native voice-dialing app, than it does on the Galaxy S II, which uses a version of Vlingo that had difficulty recognizing names.

The Glide is a world phone that uses AT&T's HSPA+ 21 network and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. It also works as a Wi-Fi hotspot with the right service plan. Download speeds averaged 4Mbps down, with peak speeds of 8Mbps, while uploads were around 1Mbps up. Those numbers are good, but they're no match for AT&T's blazing 4G LTE speeds on devices like the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket?($249.99, 4.5 stars). This isn't too big a deal, though, because AT&T only has LTE in 14 cities right now. Battery life was excellent, at 10 hours 3 minutes of continuous talk time.

Processor and Apps
The Captivate Glide is powered by Nvidia's 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor. It scored well in our benchmark tests, easily overpowering single-core devices, though not quite at the top of the dual-core heap.

The phone runs Android 2.3.5 "Gingerbread" with Samsung's TouchWiz extensions. There are some useful add-on apps, including Media Hub, a downloadable music and video store with reasonable prices, and Social Hub, a combination Facebook/Twitter client. There's also some bloatware from AT&T, including FamilyMap and the U-Verse Live TV app, which are both deletable. Other apps, like AT&T Navigator and an AT&T 'Featured Apps' store, are not. The Glide should be compatible with most everything in the Android Market, which currently has over 250,000 apps.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/1MBJ_zv1O0k/0,2817,2396819,00.asp

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