What's happening with the current Syrian/Iraqi refugee crisis in Europe?

Some questions that are being asked frequently:

• What and where are the refugees fleeing from?
• Why has this crisis seemingly peaked in recent weeks?
• Why are they heading into Europe?
• Why do they want to go to Germany specifically?
• Why are other countries seemingly not doing more to help?

1. The refugees are coming mainly from Syria, who are fleeing from the civil war, and Eritrea, who are fleeing from their violent government. Other nationals are coming from Afghanistan, Sub-Saharan African states and other areas in the Middle East and Africa with high levels of violence.
2. The crisis has long roots, in April five boats carrying almost two thousand migrants to Europe sank, killing over a thousand people. In recent weeks, there have been a high frequency of tragic events like this, such as the chaos at Calais and the truck full of dead migrants in Austria. I think it's got to the point where the media and the public are taking notice as opposed to a peak.
3. Migrants are heading to Europe for multiple reasons. European countries are highly developed, have a good regard for human rights, have stable governance, generous welfare programs and are better places to raise a family. They also don't get shelled on a regular basis...
4. Germany is regarded as the most wealthy country in the EU and is easy to travel to once you are inside the European Union because of the free movement Schengen area (as opposed to the UK, which is also a popular destination but much harder to get to)
5. A lot of European countries are helping: they have taken in substantial amounts of migrants and have donated a lot of aids. Many governments also have to contend with anti-migration sentiment though, and in the context of a continent where there has been a recent economic crisis with the 2008 recession and the recent Euro crisis regarding Greece, feelings of generosity towards unfortunate 'others' isn't high amongst all sections of the populace.

I will say one last thing about the last point. European countries are at least trying to help in some way. This is a hard problem to deal with, and obviously Europe cannot accommodate all asylum seekers and migrants seeking to escape. And it's not even as if European countries are the nearest to these countries. What are the Arab countries doing? Stable countries in Africa and Asia like South Africa, China or Japan? Russia? Europe could be more generous, but at least they are doing something, but sometimes it seems that because European countries have developed a high regard for human rights in recent decades the burden on them to help is always higher than other economically well of countries around the world.