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The International Organization for Migration says a record number of people have crossed the Mediterranean into Europe this year, now topping a half a million.
As of Tuesday, the group says 522,124 people have traveled by sea to reach the continent this year. Some 388,000 have entered via Greece, more than 175,000 of them from war-torn Syria — the largest single refugee source as a country. Another 6,710 Syrians entered through Italy.
A Czech opposition group has called for nationwide referendums on whether the nation should quit the European Union and reject last week's EU decision to redistribute 120,000 asylum-seekers among its nations.
The refugee decision was approved by EU ministers this week despite opposition from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. Slovakia is planning to challenge the move but the Czech government said it would respect it.
The parliamentary Dawn group says the moves are to protest the EU refugee plan. It says the Czech Republic is a sovereign state that can take care of itself.
Dawn chairman Miroslav Lidinsky said Tuesday: "We want to join Britain to send a message to the European Union that it needs to reform."
Another parliamentary opposition group, the Freedom and Direct Democracy movement, said Tuesday it wants the government to face a parliamentary no-confidence vote over the same issue.
Danish police say a 25-year-old man who was to be deported has been arrested and is suspected of attempted murder for stabbing a police officer in the neck, arm and shoulder in Denmark's largest asylum center.
Spokesman Henrik Suhr says the suspect was "a stateless Palestinian," and the victim, a 56-year-old male officer, was no longer in a life-threatening condition.
The suspect, who was not named in line with Danish privacy rules, stabbed the policeman after he had entered a room Tuesday before dawn to find out why the lights had been turned on. Suhr added they were investigating what the suspect was doing inside the room at Center Sandholm.
Bavaria's governor says 169,400 migrants have arrived in the southeastern German state, by far the main point of entry to the country, since the beginning of September.
Gov. Horst Seehofer gave the figure Tuesday and said 10,000 people arrived on Monday alone, the dpa news agency reported. Seehofer, a conservative ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, has been critical of her decision several weeks ago to allow in refugees who had piled up in Hungary. He said "these are dimensions that in the past we didn't have in a whole year."
Asylum-seekers are slogging through rain and mud-caked roads in Croatia, as worsening fall weather plagues their journeys to seek sanctuary in richer European countries.
Some 85,000 migrants have entered Croatia since Sept. 15, when Hungary closed its border with Serbia. That action diverted people to this economically struggling Balkan nation of 4.2 million, swelling roads near its border with thousands fleeing conflict and poverty from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
