The Milky Way's central black hole is a powerful, fickle enigma of a void

Sagittarius A is flashing the rest of the galaxy in a way that scientists have yet to fully understand.


Eric Mack
Jan. 12, 2022 

Sag A is at the center of this X-ray image of the Milky Way's galactic nucleus.

NASA/Swift/N. Degenaar

A mysterious monster lies at the center of our galaxy and after intensive study by researchers the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A (Sag A) appears just as unpredictable and chaotic.

An international team analyzed fifteen years worth of data and concluded that Sag A flares irregularly from day to day as well as over the longer term.
"How the flares occur exactly remains unclear," Jakob van den Eijnden, a researcher at the University of Oxford, said in a statement. "It was previously thought that more flares follow after gaseous clouds or stars pass by the black hole, but there is no evidence for that yet. And we cannot yet confirm the hypothesis that the magnetic properties of the surrounding gas play a role either."

Jakob van den Eijnden is co-author of a paper soon to be published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

For decades we've known that Sag A is an active, dark maw and a strong source of radio, X-ray and gamma ray emissions. As it roils and presumably consumes everything that comes near it lets off daily flashes of radiation that can be 10 to even 100 times brighter than normal background emissions coming from the black hole.

Supermassive black hole at Milky Way's core gives up a secret

 (images) See all photos

+7 More

The team used observations from NASA's Swift observatory in orbit and were unable to distinguish a pattern in Sag A's flaring activity from day-to-day or over the span of years. For example, the black hole was hyperactive from 2006 to 2008, then relatively quiet until 2012 before seeing an increase in activity again.

"The physical process producing the flares is not fully understood and it is unclear if the flaring rate varies, although some recent works suggest it has reached unprecedented variability in recent years," the paper reads.

Members of the research team say they will request more data and observing time on Swift to continue studying the little understood celestial object, which also happens to be the most powerful force within at least 100,000 light years. Seems worth taking a second look.

Archaeology: More precise age for earliest known human fossils from Ethiopia estimated

Nature

January 13, 2022

The remains of the Kibish Omo I from Ethiopia — among the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens in eastern Africa — could be at least 36,000 years older than previously thought, according to a paper published in Nature. The minimum age is estimated to be approximately 233,000 years old, a timescale that aligns more consistently with models of modern human evolution.

The Omo I has previously been predicted to be around 197,000 years old. However, this estimate, which was made by studying layers of ash corresponding to the timing of volcanic eruptions, has been challenged. Céline Vidal and colleagues re-examined the layer of volcanic ash that overlies the sediment containing Omo I, linking the volcanic deposits to a major explosive eruption of the Shala volcano in the Main Ethiopian Rift. These analyses allowed the authors to more precisely date the age of the Omo fossils below this layer, to approximately 233,000 (±22,000) years old. This new age corresponds with most models of modern human evolution, which predict that our species originated and diverged from our closest ancestors around 350,000 to 200,000 years ago.

The authors conclude that future research will be needed to obtain a robust maximum age for Omo I. Further analyses will also hopefully confirm the age of the Herto fossils — additional early H. sapiens fossils from Ethiopia, generally reported to be between 160,000 and 155,000 years old — as these are shown to lie underneath a different volcanic ash layer to that of the Omo fossils, contrary to previous understanding.

doi:10.1038/s41586-021-04275-8

Original article 

Could Indiana’s anti-CRT bill ban teachers from condemning racism?

By Aleksandra Appleton Jan 12, 2022

House Bill 1134 passed the Indiana House Education Committee on an 8-5 vote with all four Democrats and one Republican, Rep. Ed Clere of New Albany, opposed. It now heads to the full House.

Two Indiana lawmakers got into a tense exchange Wednesday over whether a controversial bill would prevent teachers from condemning racism.

The bill, authored by Rep. Tony Cook, R-Cicero, would ban teachers from promoting eight concepts, including teaching about race and racism in a way that makes students feel responsible for matters like slavery and discrimination.

In an education committee hearing, Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, asked Cook whether a “good citizenship” clause added to House Bill 1134 would allow teachers to say unequivocally that “racism is bad.”

In response, Cook said teachers could teach historical events, like the Tulsa race massacre, the Selma Civil Rights march, and the Japanese-American internment during World War II.

“(Those) examples would certainly talk about racism and how it was approached in a very bad way in our country at one time,” Cook said. “What this bill is meant to caution against is bringing in my own feelings and imposing or promoting those to students.”

Cook later clarified with Chalkbeat that the bill would allow teachers to condemn racism, through the new language encouraging teachers to promote the values of the U.S. Constitution over other political systems. Racism, he said, is contrary to constitutional ideals, citing amendments that abolished slavery, offered equal protection, and gave voting rights to Americans of color.

“I will say racism is bad. I would say that in a classroom under this bill,” said Cook, a former teacher.

Cook amended his bill after a national outcry over another Indiana lawmaker’s comments that teachers should be impartial when teaching Nazism.

Cook said he does not intend to ban teaching of specific historical events, and that he wouldn’t support lists of what would be allowed and what wouldn’t. Instead, he said the bill authors are seeking to ban the promotion of ideologies, and activities like role-playing that sort children into roles of the oppressor versus the oppressed.

Some of the ideas the bill would ban are that any student is superior or inferior to any other on the basis of their race, as well as the idea that they should feel guilt for the past actions of people who share their characteristics.

Smith said civil rights groups remain concerned that the bill would prevent teachers from taking a stand against racism. He called the answers he received from Cook “evasive.”

Smith said he believes Cook’s bill is intended to censor critical race theory, which states that racism is embedded in the policies of the U.S.

“Anyone with an open mind would know that,” Smith said.

He said that by trying to protect students from feeling uncomfortable, the bill would deny them a chance to learn higher-order thinking, or the ability to analyze and evaluate ideas.

Its proposal to allow parents to remove their children from lessons they object to would create “academic bedlam,” as teachers try to reconcile parents’ requests with academic standards.

House Bill 1134 passed the House Education Committee on an 8-5 vote with all four Democrats and one Republican, Rep. Ed Clere of New Albany, opposed. It now heads to the full House.

Similar legislation, Senate Bill 167, is awaiting a committee vote.

Other changes to the House bill approved Wednesday establish a 30-day limit for parents to file complaints about forbidden concepts in the classroom.

Educators could lose their licenses for violating the bill, but the amendment adds that those violations must be “willful” or “wanton,” to address concerns about frivolous complaints brought under the bill.

The bill also would not require teachers to submit lesson plans for a curriculum review committee to approve, after teachers testified in public comment that their plans were fluid and changed daily.

Lawmakers changed the makeup of those committees to specify that they must be composed of 60% parents, rather than 40%. However, no more than 50% of those parents could also be school district employees.

The committee also dropped the wording — the singular word “include” — that teachers feared could have prevented even neutral academic examination of controversial topics. But the bill still would ban teachers and schools from promoting eight banned concepts that it lists.

Groups sue Bureau of Land Management over grazing on Agua Fria

By Ron Dungan

Published: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 - 

The Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon Society have sued the Bureau of Land Management over grazing in Agua Fria National Monument.

The groups allege that the BLM has not done enough to prevent cattle from harming endangered species on the monument, located north of Phoenix.

The lawsuit cited damage to streams and habitat for a number of threatened and endangered species.

Agua Fria has been a popular area for outdoor recreation since it was created about 20 years ago, and its streams have been affected by climate change and wildfire in recent years.

THEN FARMER BROWN COMPLAINS, WITHOUT EVIDENCE, THAT A WOLF KILLED HIS CATTLE ILLEGALLY GRAZING ON PUBLIC LANDS, HAPPENS IN CANADA TOO.

Amid Labor Shortage, US Army Offers Largest Enlistment Bonus Ever

“This is an opportunity to entice folks to consider the Army,” a military official said

Tasos Katopodis | Getty Images News | 
Members of the U.S. National Guard arrive at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 12, 2021 in Washington, DC.

The U.S. Army is seeking to blunt the pandemic-fueled labor shortage rocking the country’s economy with its largest bonus ever — $50,000.

In a release Thursday, military recruiting officials said the incentive, for qualified recruits who sign up for certain career paths and agree to an active-duty six-year enlistment, is aimed at alluring the “same talent” that private companies are competing for.

“This is an opportunity to entice folks to consider the Army,” Brig. Gen. John Cushing said in a statement.

The announcement comes after millions of Americans — perhaps fearful of getting sick or unable to find child care — voluntarily quit their jobs last year. Many large and small companies responded with bonuses, raises and other enticements.

Here’s Why Omicron Is “Milder” But Still Wreaking Havoc On Healthcare

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” one doctor said.

Dan Vergano BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on January 12, 2022

Jeenah Moon / Reuters
A woman takes a COVID test in New York City, Dec. 27, 2021.

The paradox of Omicron, now responsible for an estimated 98.3% of all US coronavirus cases, is that while it seems more likely to result in significantly milder outcomes than Delta and previous variants, the health system is as stressed as it’s ever been.

Public health officials are warning that Omicron is threatening to overwhelm the medical infrastructure with sheer numbers, and hospitals are filled with seriously ill patients.

“It's going to get worse before it gets better,” said Dean Blumberg, a pediatrician and infectious disease expert at the University of California, Davis.

Here’s what we know about why this is happening:
Omicron is more contagious

The variant appears to be roughly two to five times more transmissible than Delta, which previously dominated US cases.

“This is the second-most contagious disease in the world now, second to measles,” said Sara Murray, the director of the health informatics data science and innovation team and an associate professor of clinical and hospital medicine at the University of California San Francisco.

“While we are seeing early evidence that Omicron is less severe than Delta and that those infected are less likely to require hospitalization, it's important to note that Omicron continues to be much more transmissible,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said on Wednesday.

This means that even though a smaller percentage of patients infected with Omicron require hospitalization, the total number of COVID cases is so high that hospitals are seeing more of those patients than at any point in the pandemic.

COVID-19 cases have reached record levels in the US, averaging around 1.4 million new reported cases a day, itself an undercount. Daily, an average of 19,800 people nationwide are now admitted to hospitals with COVID, according to the CDC, a 33% increase over the past week. Almost a third of intensive care unit beds nationwide are now filled with COVID patients, meaning roughly 1 out of every 2.5 people in an ICU ward in the country has the virus


Peter Aldhous/BuzzFeed News / Via Department of Health and Human Services
The number of patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the US.

More patients are being admitted “with” COVID

COVID is so widespread right now that a significant percentage of hospitalized patients are admitted for something else but then test positive upon screening at admittance.

“We test a lot of asymptomatic patients in preparation for procedures or surgeries, planned hospitalizations — and even in those folks who are totally asymptomatic, we're seeing a case positivity right now of about 12%,” Murray said.

“It’s a very different landscape that we're seeing with overcrowding in the hospital than we've seen with the prior waves of COVID,” said Richelle Charles, an infectious disease expert at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “Almost half of these cases are in the hospital for non-COVID-related illnesses.”

At UCSF, Murray said overall about two-thirds of their COVID patients were hospitalized for the disease, while one-third were hospitalized with it. In pediatric COVID patients, about half of them were admitted for something other than the disease.

Yet even if these patients' COVID symptoms are mild or nonexistent, their positive status places an extra burden on the hospital because they require isolation and extra safety protocols for hospital staff.

Staffing shortages from exposure and burnout

Hidden in the increasing case numbers are doctors, nurses, and other healthcare personnel infected by the more contagious variant, which causes more breakthrough infections among the vaccinated than past ones, said Akin Demehin, the policy director at the American Hospital Association. Even with mild infections, those healthcare workers are still out of action for a week after their tests turn negative, per CDC policy, just as the surge fills up hospitals and drives up demand for staff.

The Omicron surge will only put more stress on doctors and nurses, who still have to care for all those extra patients. One survey last August reported that nearly 60% of doctors feel burned out, Demehin said, and that was two surges ago. “We hear this from hospital leaders all the time — their number one, two, and three priority right now is workforce,” he said. “They know just how much has been asked of healthcare providers over the past almost two years.”

More young children

“This time around, we're seeing more children less than 5 years of age,” Blumberg said.

He has observed that many of them have milder cases of bronchitis or croup, whereas the teens with COVID seen in earlier surges had more severe pneumonia. Most of these young children recover well, but he cautioned that with any infection and any hospital admission, “some children aren't going to do well.”

Hospitalizations among young children are currently higher than they’ve ever been during the pandemic, according to the CDC.

Vaccines still work, but boosters are important

One thing the Omicron surge hasn’t altered is the well-established reality that vaccines significantly improve people's odds of not dying from COVID-19. Deaths are still on the increase, averaging 1,600 a day in the US, an increase of 40% from the past week, according to the CDC. (Walensky said at the White House briefing that she thinks most of those are Delta variant cases.)

With Omicron rampant, “virtually everybody is going to wind up getting exposed and likely get infected,” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday. “But if you're vaccinated, and if you're boosted, the chances of you getting sick are very, very low.”

“At my hospital, we have a graphic that's sent out every day that has little people icons, those in the ICU, those on a ventilator, and those admitted for COVID. And the vast majority, overwhelmingly, are unvaccinated people in all three categories,” said Jeanne Marrazzo, the director of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, who spoke Tuesday at an Infectious Diseases Society of America briefing on Omicron for reporters.

“What we've learned with Omicron is that the booster really makes a big difference in terms of reducing your risk,” Murray said. Her hospital is seeing both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients hospitalized for COVID. But even patients who only had an initial series of vaccines — no booster — appear to be protected from the most severe outcomes.

“What we aren't seeing is patients ending up on ventilators if they're fully vaccinated,” she said. “I don't have a single fully vaccinated patient in the hospital on a ventilator right now.”

US lays out case against ‘unlawful’ China maritime claims
Agence France-Presse / 07:16 AM January 13, 2022

On July 12, 2016, the United Nations-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines, invalidating China’s claim of historic rights to resources within the South China Sea within its “nine-dash line.” (INQUIRER FILES)

WASHINGTON – The United States on Wednesday laid out its most detailed case yet against Beijing’s “unlawful” claims in the South China Sea, rejecting both the geographic and historic bases for its vast, divisive map.

In a 47-page research paper, the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs said China had no basis under international law for claims that have put Beijing on a collision course with the Philippines, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations.

“The overall effect of these maritime claims is that the PRC unlawfully claims sovereignty or some form of exclusive jurisdiction over most of the South China Sea,” the paper said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

“These claims gravely undermine the rule of law in the oceans and numerous universally recognized provisions of international law reflected in the Convention,” it said, referring to a 1982 UN treaty on the law of the sea ratified by China — but not the United States.

Releasing the study, a State Department statement called again on Beijing “to cease its unlawful and coercive activities in the South China Sea.”

Around 220 Chinese militia vessels were spotted moored at Julian Felipe Reef in the West Philippine Sea last March 7, 2021. (NTF WPS)

The paper is an update of a 2014 study that similarly disputed the so-called “nine-dash line” that forms the basis for much of Beijing’s stance.

In 2016, an international court sided with the Philippines in its complaints over China’s claims. Beijing replied by offering new justifications, including saying that China had “historic rights” over the area.

The State Department paper said that such historical-based claims had “no legal basis” and that China had not offered specifics.

It also took issue with geographic justifications for China’s claims, saying that more than 100 features Beijing highlights in the South China Sea are submerged by water during high tide and therefore are “beyond the lawful limits of any state’s territorial sea.”

Beijing cites such geographic features to claim four “island groups,” which the State Department study said did not meet criteria for baselines under the UN convention.

The report was issued as the United States increasingly challenges China on the global stage, identifying the rising communist power as its chief long-term threat.

In 2020, then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo explicitly backed claims of Southeast Asian nations in the South China Sea, going beyond the past US stance of challenging China without taking an issue on which countries were right.

The South China Sea is home to valuable oil and gas deposits and shipping lanes, and Beijing’s neighbors have frequently voiced concern that their giant neighbor was seeking to expand its reach.

New US report dismisses Beijing's claim to South China Sea 'historical rights'

JANUARY 12, 2022

ByROBERT DELANEY

OWEN CHURCHILL

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

Chinese coastguard ships in the South China Sea on July 15, 2014.
Reuters file

The US government stepped up its criticism of China's territorial claims in the South China Sea on Wednesday (Jan 12), issuing a report that declares "historical rights" a meaningless term.

Referencing the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) and an international ruling dismissing most of China's claims in the South China Sea, the US State Department said in its report, titled Limits in the Seas, that they "gravely undermine the rule of law in the oceans".

The report comes amid ongoing tensions between China and rival claimants in the South and East China Seas, and follows recent reports in the Japanese media that Japanese warships have conducted freedom of navigation patrols near the disputed Spratly Islands in a bid to deter Beijing.

Beijing asserts "historic rights" over more than 80 per cent of the South China Sea region, including the Spratlys, via its "nine-dash line"— an area stretching as far as 2,000km from the mainland and reaching waters close to Indonesia and Malaysia.

The July 2016 ruling by an international tribunal in The Hague determined that China had no "historic rights" in the South China Sea and ruled that some of the rocky outcrops claimed by several countries could not legally be used as the basis for territorial claims.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said last year, amid a dispute with the Philippines over a massing of hundreds of Chinese ships near the Spratly Islands, that the ruling was "an invalid waste of paper".

Indonesia asserts authority near South China Sea amid Chinese intrusions


"No provision of the Convention contains the term 'historic rights', nor is there a uniform understanding of what, specifically, the term means as a matter of international law," the State Department's report said.

"Any claim to such rights would need to conform to the Convention's provisions, including with respect to the areas of [exclusive economic zone], continental shelf and high seas," it said.

The report also disputed China's claims to more than 100 features in the South China Sea that are submerged during high tide — precluding them from sovereignty claims under international law.

It stressed that any feature's legal status must be assessed based on its "natural state", an apparent reference to China's creation over the past decade of thousands of acres of new land in the Spratly Islands through dredging and artificial island building.

"Land reclamation or other human activities that alter the natural state of a low-tide elevation or fully submerged feature cannot transform the feature into an island," the report said.

Alongside Wednesday's report, the 150th in a 52-year series examining the validity of maritime claims around the world, the State Department also released Chinese and Vietnamese translations of its executive summary.

The document builds on previous warnings about China's territorial claims in the South China Sea by US President Joe Biden's administration and that of his predecessor, Donald Trump.

In July, the Biden administration endorsed a determination by the Trump administration that virtually all of China's maritime claims in the South China Sea were unlawful, and vowed to act militarily if China were to attack any Filipino vessel or aircraft in the region.

Disputes between Beijing and Washington over the South China Sea have been escalating since Beijing began land reclamation operations in 2016 in some of the features it controls in the ocean's Spratly archipelago.

The Biden administration contends that Beijing's actions in the South China Sea threaten some US$3 trillion (S$4 trillion) worth of commerce that passes through the region each year.

During a tour of Southeast Asian nations last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed that the US, along with other countries who claim territories in the South China Sea, would "continue to push back on such behaviour".

China's embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the State Department report, which is likely to anger the Chinese government.

"It is not China that has long been stirring up trouble in the South China Sea and posing a grave threat and major risks to regional peace and stability under the pretext of 'freedom of navigation'," Zhao said in December following Blinken's remarks. "I'm sure we all know which country is in the habit of doing all these. I hope US officials will not misrepresent facts."

READ ALSO: Philippines says China is ‘the trespasser’ as it refuses to move ship from disputed South China Sea shoal

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.

100,000 Filipino healthcare workers with pending US work visa as demand soars — Romualdez

By: Christia Marie Ramos - Reporter / @CMRamosINQ
INQUIRER.net /  January 13, 2022

(File photo from the Philippine Daily Inquirer)

MANILA, Philippines — There are at least 100,000 Filipino healthcare workers who have pending visas to work in the United States amid a “very high demand” for nurses and doctors in the said country, which is currently facing a high COVID-19 infection rate, Manila’s envoy there said.

“There are quite a number of pending visas for nurses from the Philippines that I think are being considered now very seriously that they’d like to bring them over. These are nurses that have already been approved [of] moving to the United States as health workers,” Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Romualdez said in an ANC interview on Thursday.

“I would think that [there is] probably at least 100,000 visas…that are pending right now to come to the United States,” he added.

Asked if there is a preference for Filipino health workers in the United States, Romualdez said: “Definitely, there’s no doubt about that.”


(INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / RICHARD A. REYES)

“In all my discussions with the U.S. government people, we inevitably always talk about the nurses, most especially, the kind of people that we have here working in the hospitals. There’s so much appreciation, the demand is very high for Filipinos nurses and doctors actually,” he added.

At present, there are around 150,000 to 200,000 Filipino healthcare workers in the U.S., Romualdez noted.

US infection rate

According to Romualdez, the infection rate in the U.S. is “quite high.”

“They only have about a 62 percent rate of those who are vaccinated, that’s why their hospitals are a bit overwhelmed,” he added.

In terms of the vaccination status among Filipinos in the U.S., Romualdez said “most” have already been inoculated and have received their booster shot.

Philippine Ambassador to the U.S. Jose Manuel Romualdez 

(INQUIRER FILE/ MARIANNE BERMUDEZ)

“Most Filipinos follow the rules very closely, most Filipinos we know, at least from the reports we get from our consulates from Guam all the way to New York, most are vaccinated and they’ve all had their booster shots. So, we’re happy with that,” he said.

According to a Reuters tally, the U.S. reported 1.35 million new COVID-19 cases last Jan. 10, which is the highest daily total for any country in the world.

In the Philippines, the Department of Health on Wednesday logged 32,246 more COVID-19 cases, pushing the country’s active tally to 208,164.

Fox News Airs 11-Year-Old Photo of Empty Shelves in Japan to Slam ‘Bare Shelves Biden’
By Michael Luciano

Jan 12th, 2022, 

During the opening segment of Wednesday’s Fox News Primetime, the network displayed a graphic of bare shelves at a grocery store to underscore rising inflation. Earlier in the day, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. experienced 7% inflation since last December. That’s a 39-year high.

The graphic showed an image of President Joe Biden superimposed over a photo of the empty shelves. But as one eagle-eyed Twitter user pointed out, the image is actually from a 2011 NPR story (photo #15) about residents fleeing the disaster area near the Fukushima nuclear power plant.




After airing clips of shoppers noting higher prices at the grocery store, guest host Rachel Campos Duffy asked, “How can you expect to feed a family in Biden’s America with those food prices?”

She added, “Throughout the country supermarket shelves remain barren. From New York to Virginia, all the way to Alaska, people are left without groceries and can’t put dinner on the table. And they are upset. No surprise, #BareShelvesBiden was trending on Twitter. But, perhaps, what is most troubling is this might only be the beginning.”

This isn’t the first time Fox News has used photos of empty shelves that have nothing to do with the contemporary U.S. economy. In October, The Ingraham Angle issued a correction after it aired photos from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic during a segment about global supply chain problems.

During the correction, Laura Ingraham showed photos of empty shelves in the U.S. she said had been taken within the last few days

“I hope that clears some things up for the fact-checkers who were very concerned with the eight seconds from our October 19th show,” she said.

Iran, US lock horns over sanctions relief, nuclear curbs in Vienna talks

 

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Iran and the United States are displaying little flexibility on core issues in indirect nuclear talks, raising questions about whether a compromise can be found soon to renew a 2015 deal, diplomats say.

EU delegation representatives attending a meeting of the joint commission

 on negotiations aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal in Vienna, Austria 

on 27 December, 2021.

 Photo: Handout / various sources / AFP

After eight rounds of talks the thorniest points remain the speed and scope of lifting sanctions on Tehran, including Iran's demand for a US guarantee of no further punitive steps, and how and when to restore curbs on Iran's atomic work.

The nuclear deal limited Iran's uranium enrichment activity to make it harder for it to develop nuclear arms - an ambition Tehran denies - in return for lifting international sanctions.

But former US President Donald Trump ditched the pact in 2018, saying it did not do enough to curb Iran's nuclear activities, ballistic missile program and regional influence, and reimposed sanctions that badly damaged Iran's economy.

After waiting for a year, Iran responded to Trump's pressure by gradually breaching the accord, including rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output.

Following months of stop-start talks that began after Joe Biden replaced Trump in the White House, Western officials now say time is running out to resurrect the pact. But Iranian officials deny they are under time pressure, arguing the economy can survive thanks to oil sales to China.

'We need guarantees' - Iran official

A former Iranian official said Iran's rulers "are certain that their uncompromising, maximalist approach will give results".

France said on Tuesday that despite some progress at the end of December, Iran and world powers were still far away from reviving the deal.

The United States on Wednesday cited "modest progress" in recent weeks, but not enough.

"Modest progress is also not sufficient if we are going to" revive the 2015 deal, State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters.

Iran insists on immediate removal of all Trump-era sanctions in a verifiable process. Washington has said it would remove curbs inconsistent with the 2015 pact if Iran resumed compliance with the deal, implying it would leave in place others such as those imposed under terrorism or human rights measures.

"Americans should give assurances that no new sanctions under any label would be imposed on Iran in future. We need guarantees that America will not abandon the deal again," said a senior Iranian official.

Iran's Nournews, a media outlet affiliated to the Supreme National Security Council, reported on Wednesday that Iran's key conditions at the talks "are assurances and verifications."

US officials were not immediately available to comment on the question of guarantees. However, US officials have said Biden cannot promise the US government will not renege on the agreement because the nuclear deal is a non-binding political understanding, not a legally-binding treaty.

Asked to comment on that US constitutional reality, an Iranian official said: "It's their internal problem".

On the issue of obtaining verification that sanctions have been removed - at which point Iran would have to revive curbs on its nuclear programme - the senior Iranian official said Iran and Washington differed over the timetable.

"Iran needs a couple of weeks to verify sanctions removal (before it reverses its nuclear steps). But the other party says a few days would be enough to load oil on a ship, export it and transfer its money through banking system," the official said.

Threats

Shadowing the background of the talks have been threats by Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear weaponry but which sees Iran as a existential threat, to attack Iranian nuclear installations if it deems diplomacy ultimately futile in containing Tehran's atomic abilities and potential.

Iran says it would hit back hard if it were attacked.

A Western diplomat said "early-February is a realistic end-date for Vienna talks" as the longer Iran remains outside the deal, the more nuclear expertise it will gain, shortening the time it might need to race to build a bomb if it chose to.

"Still we are not sure whether Iran really wants a deal," said another Western diplomat.

Iran has ruled out adhering to any "artificial" deadline.

"Several times, they asked Iran to slow down its nuclear work during the talks, and even Americans conveyed messages about an interim deal through other parties," said a second Iranian official, close to Iran's negotiating team.

"It was rejected by Iran."

Asked for comment, a State Department spokesperson who declined to be identified told Reuters: "Of course we - and the whole international community - want Iran to slow down their nuclear program and have communicated that very clearly."

"Beyond that, we don't negotiate the details in public, but these reports are far off."

Other points of contention include Iran's advanced nuclear centrifuges, the machines that purify uranium for use as fuel in atomic power plants or, if purified to a high level, weapons.

"Discussions continue on Iran's demand to store and seal its advanced centrifuges ... They wanted those centrifuges to be dismantled and shipped abroad," the first official said.

Asked to comment on this question, a Western diplomat said: "We are looking for ways to overcome our differences with Iran about verification process".