It was the day after Kristallnacht, a state-sponsored spree of looting and destruction of Jewish property across Germany and Austria that marked a turning point in Nazi policy as Adolf Hitler unleashed the general population against the Jews.

"The two Nazis looked us over and after a while - this was November 10th, it was cold out - they told my father to get his hat and coat and said: 'You're coming with us,'" Drukker told Reuters on a visit to Vienna from her home in Philadelphia. "We saw from the window how they got out of the building and pushed my father into the back seat of the car that was parked in front and drove away," she said. "We didn't know where they took him or what was happening. There were rumors."

Scores of Jews were killed in the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), and thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues were ransacked as law-enforcement organs looked on, signaling the start of the Holocaust. The 75th anniversary of the infamous pogrom is being marked with ceremonies in Berlin, Vienna and elsewhere this weekend.

Following the withdrawal of US troops in December 2011, instead of engaging in post-war and occupation recovery, Iraq has been with each day plunging deeper into inter-ethnic violence, prompted by ever-growing tensions mostly between the country’s majority Shiite community and the Sunni minority.

2013 saw the situation aggravate to its worst, with almost daily deaths of civilians becoming the harsh reality the country is facing today. “You, I and anyone who walks in the streets, at any moment may face a car bomb, motorcycle bomb, or explosive belt. At any moment anyone may be killed,” a Baghdad resident sums it up speaking to RT’s Egor Piskunov. “It’s 10 or 11 years now that they’re talking about a new security plan, but nothing changes and the situation is only getting worse,” another Iraqi adds.

Speaking to the BBC, Mohamed Javad Zarif blamed some Sunni countries for what he called "fear-mongering". "Some people have fanned the animosity for short-sighted political interests," he said. Syria, Iraq and Pakistan are among the countries currently grappling with a surge in sectarian violence.

Mr Zarif said conflict between Sunnis and Shias was "the most serious security threat not only to the region but to the world at large". "I think we need to come to understand that a sectarian divide in the Islamic world is a threat to all of us." Sectarian tension between Shia and Sunni Muslims has been a fact of life for more than 1,000 years, says the BBC's Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen. But upheaval in the Middle East this century, especially since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, has made it much worse.

Around 6,500 civilians have been killed in sectarian attacks in Iraq so far this year - a death toll not seen since 2008. Meanwhile, the Syrian war did not start as a sectarian conflict but it has become one, our correspondent says. President Bashar al-Assad, who is from a Shia sect, is an ally of Shia Iran. The mainly Sunni rebels are backed by Sunni powers, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

A police statement said hundreds of people were arrested in the Manfuhah neighbourhood. Video on social media websites showed security forces in riot gear using truncheons to disperse large crowds. Last week police rounded up thousands of migrant workers after an amnesty linked to new employment rules expired.

On Sunday, witnesses said police were surrounding the district while units from the National Guard and special forces were sent in. Nearby, hundreds of men, women and children lined up with their belongings to board police buses taking them to an assembly centre before their deportation, AFP news agency reported.

Nearly a million Bangladeshis, Indians, Filipinos, Nepalis, Pakistanis and Yemenis are estimated to have left the country in the past three months. An estimated nine million migrant workers are in Saudi Arabia - more than half the workforce - filling manual, clerical, and service jobs.

EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton told a press conference that there had been a lot of "concrete progress but some differences remain". Baroness Ashton, who coordinated talks, said they would resume on 20 November. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he was not disappointed with the outcome, and that the talks were "something we can build on". He said all parties were "on the same wavelength" and "there was the impetus to reach an agreement".

Meanwhile US Secretary of State John Kerry said: "There is no question in my mind that we are closer now than we were before. "The international powers are concerned that Tehran is trying to build a nuclear weapon - but Iran says its programme is peaceful." A proposal that was floated would require Iran to freeze expansion of nuclear activity in return from limited relief from economic sanctions. Delegates had earlier suggested there was "good progress".

Why the unease? The Israelis fear that an agreement could let the Iranians off the hook without altering their programme. They believe that once there is a limited easing of sanctions, perhaps including Iranian access to some of their assets in foreign banks, the entire sanctions regime will inevitably erode.

Some countries would see the easing as a sign they can go back into business with oil-rich Iran — and the Iranians will know they can simply play for time, and need not make further concessions as the economic and political squeeze on them dissipates.

Obviously, this is not the scenario that the Obama Administration, the British, French, Germans, Russians and Chinese present of any emerging deal. For them, an agreement would represent a first step to cap and limit the advance of the Iranian nuclear program without changing the architecture of sanctions.

And here lies the rub with the Israelis: they fear even limited sanctions relief would take the pressure off Iran and ensure that the first step would become a permanent one. That would leave the nuclear programme intact with over 19,000 centrifuges (including 1,000 advanced models) and enough enriched uranium to make about six nuclear bombs, should Iran choose to process this material into weapons grade.

But it's also clear that they have not reached a deal. Serious differences clearly remain. The two negotiators wouldn't reveal what those differences were. Instead they agreed to meet again. These three days of talks were the most intensive negotiations about Iran's nuclear programme for many years.

It's worth noting in particular the fact that the US Secretary of State John Kerry took part in more than eight hours of direct talks with his Iranian counterpart. This marked the most extensive high-level contact between the US and Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. That, in itself, counts as something of a breakthrough.

France is urging caution as top diplomats seem to be on the verge of a landmark nuclear agreement with Iran saying that though it hopes a deal is clinched, there is “no certainty” of a deal at the Geneva talks. “There are still a couple of points that we are not satisfied with,” Fabius told France Inter radio station, adding that the Arak nuclear plant and the 20 percent enriched uranium stock were of particular concern to Paris.

“We are for an agreement, that's clear. But the agreement has got to be serious and credible. The initial text made progress but not enough,” he said, adding the France should avoid falling for “a fool’s game.” In Tehran, Fabius’ comments stirred criticism, with a senior Iranian lawmaker accusing him of “blackmail” and trying to widen the gap between the Islamic Republic and the six world powers, reports Fars news agency.

“The behavior of France’s representative in the nuclear negotiations shows that France seeks to blackmail the negotiations, and this illogical behavior should be confronted by the other members of the P5+1,” rapporteur of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Seyed Hossein Naqavi Hosseini, told the agency on Saturday.

In the most complete explanation yet of the delay in the talks, Laurent Fabius told France-Inter radio that France does not want construction of the Arak plutonium reactor to continue during final negotiations over the nuclear program, which could take six months.

He said world powers needed to limit construction of the reactor because it will be capable of generating huge quantities of plutonium. France was “absolutely firm” on this point, he said. Fabius said France also wanted a provision for converting most of Iran’s stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, which can be easily upgraded into nuclear bomb fuel, to a low-enrichment status.

The program included a video simulation of a potential response by Iran to an Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities. The video showed computer-animated launches of Iran's long-range Sejjil ballistic missiles. The animations show Israel's air defense systems intercepting a few missiles as others penetrate the protective layer and destroy different strategic targets across Israel.

Among the targets shown are the Azrieli Towers and the Kirya in Tel Aviv, the IDF base Tzfirin in central Israel, a generic missile launch site, Ben Gurion Airport, and the nuclear reactor at Dimona. The targets were circled on Google Maps, and the video finished with real pictures of casualties from the Second Lebanon War.

An agreement between the United States and Iran over the latter's nuclear program seems imminent, but the charm offensive in Geneva is not mirrored at home. In Tehran, the Iranian government sent a different message with a broadcast on state television of a simulated missile attack on Israel.

In 2012, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened Israel with the destruction of Tel Aviv and Haifa – part of the usual rhetoric employed by the Islamic regime. "At times, the Zionist entity threatens a military attack, but they know that if they make the smallest mistake, the Islamic republic will obliterate Tel Aviv and Haifa."

Agent Carrie Mathison is a topical figure. The main character in the American TV series "Homeland," played by the wonderful Claire Danes, shows her true relevance in the first few episodes, in which Mathison is nervously sitting at home, observing and listening in on the life of a terror suspect on a large screen. His apartment is bugged and Mathison is determined to find out as much as she can about him. She is hysterical, bipolar, paranoid and sick - all advantageous traits for her job.

The real-life intelligence services of the United States take things much further than agent Carrie Mathison. They spy on just about anyone, even German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who, so far, has not been suspected of maintaining ties to Islamist terrorism, and yet whose cellphone was tapped.

It is often assumed that intelligence agencies are worlds of their own, and that they sometimes act on their own authority. However, they are also an expression of the societies in which they exist, especially of their fears. In other words, it is quite possible that there are not just paranoid agents, but also paranoid democracies that act in hysterical ways out of fear.

They are characterized by a strong freedom myth, which leads to paranoia. It, in turn, poses a threat to freedom. The United States is currently in a late phase of this cycle. Other nations also have their fears, but they lack the power to turn the world upside down. Power and paranoia are a dangerous mix.

A Russian official spokesman said that Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, and Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, would discuss issues touching on “military and technical co-operation” – seen as a Russian euphemism for arms sales.

Cairo’s relations with Washington, its primary aid donor and military supplier for four decades, have frayed since the coup in July that ousted the Islamist Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first elected president. As tensions with Washington increased over the summer, culminating in a US decision to withhold part of its annual $1.3 billion in military aid, Egyptian officials started to hint that their country would seek a realignment in foreign relations.

Nabil Fahmy, the foreign minister, went to Moscow on one of his first trips abroad after the coup. The second of two “popular diplomacy delegations”, made up of intellectuals and public figures, is currently visiting Russia. Observers in Moscow said Russia was eager to build support in the region to ensure that the proposed Geneva II conference aimed at ending the conflict in Syria got off the ground.

While those negotiations now appear on the verge of a breakthrough the key condition for Iran — relief from crippling sanctions — began quietly and modestly five months ago. A review of Treasury Department notices reveals that the US government has all but stopped the financial blacklisting of entities and people that help Iran evade international sanctions since the election of its president, Hassan Rouhani, in June.

On Wednesday Obama said in an interview with NBC News the negotiations in Geneva “are not about easing sanctions.” “The negotiations taking place are about how Iran begins to meet its international obligations and provide assurances not just to us but to the entire world,” the president said.

When an entity is designated as a sanctions violator it can be catastrophic. Banks and other investors almost never take the risk of doing business with the people and companies on a Treasury blacklist because of the potential reputational harm and the prospect they could lose access to US financial markets.

Mark Dubowitz is the executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an organization that has worked closely with Congress and the administration on devising the current Iranian sanctions. By Dubowitz’s estimates, Iran is now selling between 150,000 and 200,000 barrels of oil per day on the black market, meaning that Iran has profited from the illicit sale of over 35 million barrels of oil since Rouhani took office, with little additional measures taken by the United States to counter it.

"I met Secretary Kerry right before he leaves to Geneva," said Netanyhau. "I reminded him that he said that no deal is better than a bad deal. That the deal that is being discussed in Geneva right now is a bad deal. It’s a very bad deal. Iran is not required to take apart even one centrifuge. But the international community is relieving sanctions on Iran for the first time after many years.

Iran gets everything that it wanted at this stage and it pays nothing. And this is when Iran is under severe pressure. I urge Secretary Kerry not to rush to sign, to wait, to reconsider, to get a good deal. But this is a bad deal - a very, very bad deal. It’s the deal of a century for Iran; it’s a very dangerous and bad deal for peace and the international community."

A member of Denmark’s Parliament and, he hopes, mayor of this commuter-belt town west of Copenhagen, Mr Dencker is furious that some day care centers have removed meatballs, a staple of traditional Danish cuisine, from their cafeterias in deference to Islamic dietary rules. No matter that only a handful of kindergartens have actually done so. The missing meatballs, he said, are an example of how “Denmark is losing its identity” under pressure from outsiders.

The issue has become a headache for Mayor Helle Adelborg, whose center-left Social Democratic Party has controlled the town council since the 1920s but now faces an uphill struggle before municipal elections on November 19. “It is very easy to exploit such themes to get votes,” she said. “They take a lot of votes from my party. It is unfair.”

It is also Europe’s new reality. All over, established political forces are losing ground to politicians whom they scorn as fear-mongering populists. In France, according to a recent opinion poll, the far-right National Front has become the country’s most popular party. In other countries — Austria, Britain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland and the Netherlands — disruptive upstart groups are on a roll.