At least 10 people were killed and more than 50 hurt on Saturday as a coach carrying Polish holidaymakers collided with another Polish minibus near the eastern German city of Dresden, police said.

The crash happened in the early hours of Saturday morning on the A4 motorway that links Poland and Germany, with police initially putting the death toll at nine killed and 43 injured.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Friday for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine to facilitate a probe into the apparent downing of a passenger plane in the rebel-held east of the country.

Merkel said Russia in particular must do its part to bring about a "political solution" to the conflict in Ukraine, adding that Moscow bore responsibility "for what is happening" in the strife-torn country.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday that Germany had serious differences with the United States over privacy issues amid a bitter spying row but stressed the enduring strength of transatlantic ties.

Striking a conciliatory tone, Merkel said the only way to get past the deep rift between the NATO allies was through "continued dialogue", adding she was committed to working on the relationship.

A German lawmaker who resigned earlier this year is now facing criminal charges for allegedly downloading child pornography onto his work computer, prosecutors said Thursday.

The prosecutor's office in the northern city of Hanover said that it had charged Sebastian Edathy, a former high-flying member of parliament known for his fight against far-right extremists, on Tuesday.

Cambodian anti-trafficking activists voiced dismay Thursday after a court slashed the prison sentence of a German man involved in one of the kingdom's most lurid child sex cases.

The Appeal Court reduced the 28-year jail term given to Karl Heinz Henning Opitz in 2007 to 10 years, activists said. With time served he could be freed in three years.

Germany is keen to continue supporting Lebanon to help it confront the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis, visiting Christoph Strasser, Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid, said on Thursday.

“Germany wants to sense the real situation in Lebanon in the presence of more than one million Syrian refugees,” Strasser told reporters after talks with Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil at the Bustros Palace.

Gunmen riding on motorcycles kidnapped a German national on Wednesday in northeast Nigeria, police said, in the latest violence to hit the area which has come under repeated attacks from Boko Haram militants.

"Security agents are working assiduously to track down the kidnappers and free the hostage," Adamawa police spokesman Othman Abubakar said of the early morning abduction in the town of Gombi, while confirming the victim's nationality.

Russian actions to resolve the Ukraine conflict have been insufficient so far, a German government spokesman said Wednesday ahead of an EU summit that will consider fresh sanctions against Moscow.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko had agreed in a phone call Tuesday that "Russia has been insufficient in meeting expectations" on steps to end the fighting between government forces and pro-Russian separatists, said Merkel's spokesman.

Ukraine's Western-backed leaders on Tuesday invited pro-Kremlin insurgents to a video-conference aimed at halting spiraling violence and what Kiev has warned was an imminent invasion by thousands of Russian troops.

Kiev sharply raised the stakes in Europe's most explosive crisis in decades by declaring on Monday that a Ukrainian transport plane downed in the eastern conflict zone had been hit by a rocket fired from the Russian side of the frontier between the two ex-Soviet states.

German and Russian support for U.S. President Barack Obama has nosedived in the past year over revelations of spying and tensions in Ukraine, an influential American research group said Monday.

And while the United States remained relatively popular, the Pew Research Center said it found widespread opposition to U.S. eavesdropping as well as to the Pentagon's use of drones overseas.