A minister of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's new government resigned Friday over claims that he leaked confidential information about an international child porn probe.

Agriculture Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, who was then interior minister, has come under fire for tipping off the party chief of a prominent MP that the lawmaker was under investigation.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will Monday meet Ukraine opposition leaders including former world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko to discuss the country's crisis, her spokesman said.

Merkel will also meet Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a pro-EU former foreign minister of the Batkivshchyna party of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, in Berlin, Steffen Seibert said Friday.

The rate of inflation in Germany, Europe's biggest economy, inched lower in January, final official data showed on Thursday.

The cost of living rose by 1.3 percent on a 12-month basis this month, compared with 1.4 percent in December, the federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier will visit his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov for two days from Thursday to discuss issues including Ukraine's political crisis, a spokesman said.

"Ukraine is of course one of the important topics on the agenda," said the foreign ministry spokesman on Wednesday, also mentioning Iran's nuclear program, the Syrian war and bilateral as well as EU-Russian ties.

Despite the political deadlock in Lebanon, officials including Speaker Nabih Berri and Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat are gearing up to head to foreign countries.

Jumblat had pointed out in comments published in al-Joumhouria newspaper on Wednesday that he has been “reincarnated before his death... and I will be in China currently until a breakthrough is achieved.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel foresees "considerable problems" after voters in Switzerland opted to impose limits on immigration from the European Union, her spokesman said Monday.

"The government takes note of the result of this referendum and respects it," Steffen Seibert told reporters when asked to respond to Sunday's vote that was pushed by Swiss right-wing populists.

Germany's foreign minister arrived Sunday in Afghanistan on an unannounced visit and urged its president to sign a long-delayed security pact with the United States.

The Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) which would allow some U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan after 2014 was approved by a loya jirga, or tribal assembly, last November.

German police launched an arson investigation Thursday after a fire in an asylum-seekers' home killed a Pakistani woman and her two young children.

Another 15 residents were hospitalized with smoke inhalation from the blaze that ripped through the five-story building in the northern port city of Hamburg on Wednesday night.

Germany's foreign minister voiced concern Wednesday over media freedom in Egypt, which has detained a number of Al-Jazeera broadcast journalists accused of being part of a "terror cell".

Berlin sees "developments that cause us concern" in the areas of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, said Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a meeting with his Egyptian counterpart Nabil Fahmi.

Germany's government Wednesday approved increasing the number of soldiers sent to crisis-torn Mali as part of an EU-led mission to train the national army for its fight against Islamic extremists.

Up to 250 Bundeswehr soldiers may now join the mission, up from the current limit of 180, under the decision which must still be backed by the Bundestag lower house of parliament.