Asylum applications in January more than doubled compared to the same time period in the previous year, government figures show. A growing accommodation shortage is dividing regional parliaments and the local communes.
The Tuscan branches of the Migrantes foundation and Caritas have said that they are against the building of a migrant repatriation center in the city of Florence.
Spanish rescue services say they found at least one deceased person on a rubber dinghy with 42 other migrants on board. They were brought to Lanzarote in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The Italian government has handed over a search and rescue boat to Libya's foreign minister in northeastern Italy. The cooperation between the EU and Libya is highly controversial due to migrants' inhuman treatment in Libya.
For her 'open door' refugee policy in 2015, the former German chancellor will be awarded the Felix Houphouet-Boigny UNESCO Peace Prize in Ivory Coast.