Angela Merkel will become the first German chancellor to visit the former Nazi concentration camp Dachau next week, her spokesman said Wednesday.

She will travel to the memorial near the southern city of Munich on Tuesday and, after making a short speech, lay a wreath of flowers and tour the remnants of the site.

The rate of inflation in Germany, Europe's biggest economy, continued to climb in July to reach the highest level seen this year, final data showed on Tuesday.

The cost of living rose 1.9 percent this month on a 12-month basis, up from 1.8 percent in June, the federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle met Sunday with Israeli officials on a visit to support nascent peace talks, offering to try to soften a European ban on dealings with Jewish settlements.

"This meeting comes after we relaunched the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and I know that Germany is deeply supportive of the need of direct, bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians," Israeli Justice Minister and chief negotiator Tzipi Livni said ahead of their Jerusalem meeting.

Germany's three biggest email providers announced Friday a partnership to bolster the security of messages sent between them in the wake of revelations of U.S. online surveillance.

Telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom as well as GMX and Web.de, both subsidiaries of Germany's United Internet, will automatically encrypt their email traffic from now on.

Twelve Germans, including seven children, were rescued off Iceland overnight after their sailboat took on water in bad weather and later sank, the coast guard said Friday.

None of the crew members was injured, rescue officials said.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle will travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories in a bid to lend backing to revived peace talks, a ministry spokesman said Friday.

Westerwelle will meet President Shimon Peres and the chief Israeli negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, in Jerusalem on Sunday, followed by talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.

Germany said on Tuesday it had cancelled a 1960s surveillance pact with France after annulling similar accords with the U.S. and Britain in the wake of revelations about U.S. online spying.

The 1969 accord was axed "in mutual agreement", the foreign ministry said, four days after the Washington and London accords were nixed amid the debate on data privacy protection sparked by the snooping scandal.

A 72-year-old German was arrested on the Greek island of Chios in the eastern Aegean suspected of spying on behalf of unknown Turkish nationals, police said Saturday.

"For at least three years, he photographed camps and other infrastructure of the (Greek) armed forces in Chios and was paid to give the material to Turkish nationals," the police said in a statement.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle arrived in Cairo on Wednesday for talks with Egypt's interim government and backers of ousted president Mohammed Morsi.

A spokesman said the visit was aimed at encouraging the country to return to the path of democracy and had been closely coordinated with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who visited Cairo this week.

France and Germany called for "innovative" ways to boost European military cooperation in a letter Friday to EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton ahead of a major defense meeting in December.

The letter highlighted Europe's responsibility to ensure peace and security in "today's changing world, with new centers of power and growing asymmetrical security threats, such as cyber security or terrorism".