Long portrayed as a victim of snooping by allies, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government on Monday grappled with embarrassing reports of German spying on European firms on behalf of the United States.

The German chancellor's office was informed in 2008 during Merkel's first term of German involvement in U.S. economic espionage but did not react, the Bild daily reported Monday, citing intelligence agency documents.

Several hundred movie theaters in Germany have refused to screen the new "Avengers" film in a dispute over rental fees with Disney.

News agency dpa reported that 686 theaters in 193 mostly small towns refused to show "Avengers: Age of Ultron," which opened on Thursday. It said the dispute was over a decision to raise the rental fee for the movie to 53 percent of ticket sales rather than the 47.7 percent usually charged to small-town theaters.

Berlin knew the risks of flying over war-torn east Ukraine before Flight MH17 was shot out of the sky last year but did not inform German airlines, local media reported on Sunday.

Investigators are still trying to determine who was responsible for downing the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 in July last year, killing all 298 passengers and crew on board.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday lashed out at the European Union and world leaders who have recognized the 1915 massacres of Armenians as genocide on the centenary of the events. 

Erdogan accused the leaders of France, Germany and Russia of "supporting claims based on Armenian lies" after they described the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide -- which Turkey strongly objects to. 

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he would not call the mass murder of Armenians that began 100 years ago Friday a "genocide", one day after the German president used the controversial label.

Steinmeier said that adopting the term "genocide" to describe the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces in 1915 could play into the hands of those who sought to minimize the Holocaust.

Germany condemns the massacre a century ago of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces as a "genocide", President Joachim Gauck said Thursday, adding that Germany bore partial blame for the bloodletting.

Gauck's speech at an event commemorating the centenary marked the first time that Berlin has officially used the word "genocide" to describe the killings during World War I, and an unusually strong acknowledgment of the then German empire's role in them.

Iran and major powers held a second day of talks Thursday seeking to finalize a historic deal that would make any attempt by Tehran to make a nuclear weapon extremely difficult and easily detectable.

Meeting in Vienna, Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany want to turn a framework accord reached in Switzerland on April 2 into a full agreement by June 30.

Germany and Iraq asked U.N. member-states on Tuesday to take action against the destruction by jihadist groups of Iraq's cultural sites, which they said was tantamount to a war crime.

The two countries are to present a draft resolution to the General Assembly that calls on countries to prosecute perpetrators of cultural vandalism and prevent the trafficking of stolen artifacts. 

Former SS officer Oskar Groening, dubbed the "bookkeeper of Auschwitz", asked for "forgiveness" over his role in mass murder at the Nazi death camp, as his German trial began Tuesday.

"For me there's no question that I share moral guilt," the 93-year-old former Nazi told the judges, admitting that he knew about the gassing of Jews and other prisoners.

Germany will condemn the massacre a century ago of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces, linking it to 20th century "genocides" for the first time, according to a draft parliamentary resolution hammered out Monday.

After weeks of debate in Berlin and pressure by opposition deputies to adopt the term "genocide" to describe the mass killings 100 years on, German lawmakers drew up a compromise formulation to be debated on Friday.