Germany jailed a jihadist militant for three years and nine months Friday in the country's first trial of a recruit of the Islamic State group fighting in Syria and Iraq.

Kreshnik Berisha, 20, born near the financial capital Frankfurt to a family from Kosovo, was found guilty of membership in a foreign terrorist organization, said presiding judge Thomas Lagebier.

German industrial orders, a key measure of demand for German-made goods both at home and abroad, rose strongly in October, suggesting Germany's period of economic weakness could be over, data showed Friday.

Industrial orders rose by 2.5 percent in October compared with the previous month, the economy ministry said in a statement.

A Nazi war criminal who topped most wanted lists for his part in the Holocaust is "almost certain" to have died in Syria four years ago, a Nazi-hunting group said Monday.

"I am almost certain that he's no longer alive," Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office, told Agence France-Presse.

Vanilla sugar for Christmas biscuits trickling from an envelope sparked a bioterrorism scare at a German mail distribution center on Monday, local police said.

Police, paramedics and a fire brigade team in full protective suits swarmed the facility after staff spotted the white powder and an employee complained of itching, apparently fearing it was a dangerous chemical or biological agent.

Moldova went to the polls on Sunday in a crucial parliamentary election that will help determine whether the impoverished ex-Soviet country pursues integration with Europe or returns to Russia's fold.

Polling stations opened at 7:00 am (05:00 GMT), with voters facing a choice between political parties aiming for membership in the European Union and those that back joining Russia in a customs union.

Prosecutors in the trial of an alleged German jihadist called Friday for him to be jailed for more than four years for having fought with the Islamic State group in Syria.

In the first German criminal proceedings involving IS, Kreshnik Berisha, a 20-year-old born near the business capital Frankfurt to a family from Kosovo, was charged with membership of a foreign terrorist organization.

A Greek court on Monday handed handed a 20-year prison sentence to a man who took hostages at a German school twice in three years, local officials said.

Costas Arabatzis, 55, kidnapped the headmaster, bursar and a teacher at the school in the northern city of Thessaloniki in 2009 and demanded a 10-million-euro (12-million-dollar) ransom.

Business confidence in Germany appears to be stabilizing after long months of decline, with the Ifo business climate index rising in November for the first time since April, data showed on Monday.

The closely watched barometer rose to 104.7 points in November from 103.2 points in October, the Ifo think-tank said in a statement.

Some 60 Germans have been killed while fighting under the banner of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, the head of the German domestic intelligence service said Sunday.

"About 60 people from Germany have died or killed themselves, at least nine in suicide attacks," Hans-George Maassen told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

About 500 protesters, among them neo-Nazis and angry local residents, protested in the German capital on Saturday against the construction of a center for refugees seeking political asylum.

A large number of police kept watch over the protest march and over a large anti-fascist counter demonstration in the eastern Berlin working class district of Marzahn.