A summary of what is known so far about the Airbus A320 belonging to German budget airline Germanwings which crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 people on board.

Flight 4U 9525, took off towards 09:55 am (0855 GMT) from Barcelona in Spain for Duesseldorf in Germany, where it was expected to land at 11:57 am (1057 GMT).

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit France, Germany and Canada next month, the foreign ministry said Wednesday, on a tour expected to focus on attracting investment to the country.

Modi won a landslide election victory last May on a pledge to revive India's economic fortunes, and has embarked on an ambitious drive to attract more foreign investment to the country of 1.2 billion people.

Flags flew at half-mast and workplaces fell silent Wednesday as Spain grieved for the 150 people, including at least 51 Spaniards, killed in a plane crash in the French Alps.

Mourners stood still for a minute's silence at noon at countless points around the country, including both houses of parliament in Madrid, theaters and football fields.

Investigators on Wednesday made the first breakthrough in the probe into the crash of an airliner in the French Alps, as President Francois Hollande vowed everything would be done to explain the tragedy that killed 150 people.

Officials from the BEA crash investigation agency said they had extracted "usable data" from one of the Germanwings Airbus A320's two "black boxes" found among the debris, with recordings from the cockpit, but still had no explanation for the mysterious crash.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier welcomed an improved tone in discussions with debt-mired Greece, after meeting visiting Greek premier Alexis Tsipras Tuesday.

Steinmeier met Tsipras at his hotel in central Berlin one day after the Greek leader held crunch talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in which both called for an end to the bitter recriminations the countries have traded in recent weeks.

A plane operated by the budget carrier of Germany's Lufthansa crashed in a remote area of the French Alps Tuesday, killing all 150 on board in France's worst aviation disaster in decades.

With the cause of the accident a complete mystery, authorities recovered a black box from the Airbus A320 at the crash site, where rescue efforts were being hampered by the mountainous terrain.

Germany on Friday criticized Russia for signing an alliance with Georgia's breakaway region South Ossetia this week, joining a chorus of Western condemnation.

"With this treaty, Russia once more puts into question Georgia's territorial integrity and sovereignty," German government spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz said.

Seventy years ago they crushed Nazi Germany together but raging tensions over Ukraine mean Russia's former World War II allies in the West will snub the Kremlin's showcase victory anniversary celebrations.

As top Western leaders give President Vladimir Putin's Red Square parade on May 9 the cold shoulder, the guest list of those likely to be coming -- including China's president and North Korea's reclusive leader -- shows how Moscow's international standing has shifted.

German Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development Gerd Mueller vowed on Thursday to increase assistance to Lebanon to help it confront the burden of Syrian refugees.

In the past three years, Germany granted 850 million euros to the countries hosting the refugees, with 250 million euros to Lebanon alone, Mueller said following talks with Prime Minister Tammam Salam at the Grand Serail.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there was no reason to despair over Greece, although she warned that a solution to the country's debt crisis would not be found at Thursday's EU summit. 

"If we look at what we have achieved on the road to the European Union, I don't see any reason to give up, or despair. On the contrary," Merkel said in a statement to the German parliament, just hours before the summit in Brussels.