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  Paris:  From sizzling temperatures to Messi and Ronaldo and pensioners in space, here are some of the most significant records struck in 2021. Hottest month July 2021 was the hottest month globally ever recorded, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says. And wildfires in Siberia, North America and around the Mediterranean caused record levels of CO2 emissions in July and August, the EU's Earth monitoring service says. Record gas prices As economies reopen from their Covid-induced slumber firing heightened gas demand, prices in Asian, European and British gas hit record peaks. Europe's reference Dutch TTF gas price hit 187.78 euros per megawatt hour. Biggest airlift The United States carried out its biggest ever airlift in the wake of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, bigger even than the evacuation of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. It airlifted more than 123,000 people out of Kabul, including US citizens, Afghan interpreters and ...

  Vienna:  The United States said Tuesday it had seen possible progress in talks with Iran but joined European negotiators in pressing for urgency in rolling back Tehran's nuclear programme. Negotiations resumed Monday in Vienna in a fresh push to make headway on reviving a landmark 2015 agreement that curtailed Iran's nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief. "There may have been some modest progress," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington. "But it is in some ways too soon to say how substantive that progress may have been. At a minimum any progress, we believe, is falling short of Iran's accelerating nuclear steps and is far too slow." Former president Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew from the nuclear accord and imposed a slew of punishing sanctions, including a unilateral US ban on Iran selling its key export of oil. President Joe Biden supports a return to the agreement but Iran has kept taking steps away from compli...