Ukraine's prime minister meets German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday to press her to keep up the economic pressure on Russia at joint crisis talks with Vladimir Putin next week.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk's high-stakes trip to the European Union's biggest nation comes with the 28-nation bloc -- teetering on the verge of another recession -- mulling an easing of financial restrictions on Russia that have hurt both sides.

Hackers blocked the website of German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday in an online attack claimed by a pro-Russian group opposed to the Ukrainian government.

Merkel's official website and those of the government and the Bundestag lower house of parliament were temporarily inaccessible after what spokesman Steffen Seibert called a "serious attack".

U.S. President Barack Obama led global condemnation of the shooting at a French magazine on Wednesday which left 12 people dead, with world leaders and media groups branding it an act of terror and an attack on free speech.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Queen Elizabeth II also offered their sympathy, after masked men armed with Kalashnikov automatic rifles opened fire at the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

Germany has become the latest European country to witness mass anti-Islamic protests which have grown increasingly common across the continent. 

"In Europe in general, there is an anxiety, an anti-Islamic phobia, developing," said left-wing activist and Green euro MP Daniel Cohn-Bendit. 

New car registrations in Germany, a key measure of demand in one of the most important sectors of Europe's top economy, rose in 2014, partly reversing two previous years of declines, the VDA industry federation said Monday. 

A total of 3.037 million new cars were registered year, an increase of 3.0 percent over the figure for 2013, VDA said in a statement. 

Ukrainian police on Monday launched a terror probe into a blast in the government-controlled port of Odessa after an explosion outside a building housing a soldiers' support center.

Local authorities said the late Sunday explosion in the city of one million caused no injuries but shattered windows in the office of volunteers helping soldiers fighting pro-Russian insurgents in eastern Ukraine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel came under fire Sunday over a magazine report suggesting she would be prepared to let Greece exit the euro should a far-left party win a snap Greek election.

Der Spiegel news weekly quoted government sources as saying Berlin sees a Greek exit from the eurozone as "almost inevitable" should the radical leftist Syriza party win the vote and abandon Athens' current austerity course. 

Tougher sanctions may destabilize the situation further in Russia and plunge the country into chaos, German deputy chancellor Sigmar Gabriel warned in a newspaper interview on Sunday.

"The goal was never to push Russia politically and economically into chaos," Gabriel told the Bild am Sonntag.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Britain next week for talks with Prime Minister David Cameron, her office said Friday.

The visit Wednesday will focus on bilateral, European and international issues and on preparations for a G7 summit Germany hosts in Bavaria state on June 7-8, a statement said.

An Australian and two Germans who went missing on New Zealand's notorious Mount Cook are feared dead, police said Thursday, after days of fruitless aerial sweeps of the mountain.

Australian Michael Bishop, 53, Johann Viellehner, 58, from Germany and his 27-year-old son Raphael were last seen roped together as they climbed towards the summit of the mountain on Monday.