During his visit to Norway, President Dmitry Medvedev offered Statoil a role – potentially worth billions – in exploring Russia’s Prirazlomnoye oil field, apparently in a bid to gain foreign input where it lacks expertise.  Medvedev also pledged to end the Barents Sea border dispute.  Still avoiding making any definite pronouncements on Iran sanctions, Medvedev said that the country was ‘behaving irresponsibly‘ with respect to its nuclear program.  France’s EDF is to be granted a 20% stake in the Russian-Italian South Stream gas pipeline project after Gazprom raised its initial 10% limit in coordination with Italy’s Eni.  Following his meetings with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Vladimir Putin revealed that Italy has received $2 billion in contracts relating to the Nord Stream gas pipeline, and the two also announced that Italy’s Enel would contribute to the construction of a nuclear plant in Kaliningrad.  Putin also announced ‘massive proposals‘ for cooperation with Ukraine in nuclear energy, proposing at a meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych that the two form ‘a major holding that would include unification of nuclear power generation, unification of nuclear equipment construction and of the nuclear cycle.‘  This Times correspondent wants to remind you that nuclear power is not green energy.  The failure to stop oil pipeline leaks in the Gulf of Mexico, now in their third day, is threatening an environmental disaster as planes drop dispersing chemicals which ‘can be as toxic to mammals as the oil itself‘.