BERLIN (Reuters) – President Barack Obama defended U.S. intelligence methods on a visit to Berlin on Wednesday, telling Chancellor Angela Merkel and wary Germans that Washington was not monitoring the emails of ordinary citizens or damaging civil liberties.

Obama is popular in Germany but revelations before the trip that the United States has a covert Internet surveillance program, codenamed Prism, have caused outrage in a country where memories of the eavesdropping East German Stasi secret police are still fresh.

BERLIN (Reuters) – President Barack Obama defended U.S. intelligence methods on a visit to Berlin on Wednesday, telling Chancellor Angela Merkel and wary Germans that Washington was not monitoring the emails of ordinary citizens or damaging civil liberties.

Obama is popular in Germany but revelations before the trip that the United States has a covert Internet surveillance program, codenamed Prism, have caused outrage in a country where memories of the eavesdropping East German Stasi secret police are still fresh.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Angela Merkel’s conservatives want to increase the use of German in Europe if they are re-elected in September, calling in their campaign program for the language to be treated on a par with English and French in top Brussels institutions.

“German is the most frequently spoken native language and one of three working languages of the European Union,” a draft program from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), reads.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Cheered like a rockstar when he passed through Berlin five years ago on his way to the White House, Barack Obama faces a cooler reception and tough questions about U.S. spying methods when he returns next week for talks with Angela Merkel and a speech at the Brandenburg Gate.

The visit comes nearly 50 years to the day after President John F. Kennedy landed in a divided Berlin at the depth of the Cold War and, in a powerful message of American solidarity, told encircled westerners in the city: “Ich bin ein Berliner”