Video:The BBC's Andrew Marr interviews the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ahead of the G20 summit in London-29/3/09

Only one in eight Russians may believe he is in charge but President Dmitry Medvedev presides over a nuclear arsenal and one of the biggest reserves of natural fuel in the world, and he is increasingly media-savvy as the BBC's Andrew Marr found out.

The crunch of snow underfoot, a brisk cold wind blowing through the birch forests and, at last, a single black official car sweeping up the drive.

President Dmitry Medvedev is reckoned by most Russians polled to be much less important than his mentor Vladimir Putin - the former president and currently prime minister.

But when he arrives, he feels important - the leather-jacketed security men snapping into activity. At this official dacha outside Moscow, the mood is suddenly urgent.

It is a curious situation. I am greeting him at his own official residence, a gothic Germanic castle dating from the 1880s.


Russia says it is working on plans as well for a new European security treaty
Once, the Czar came here.

Now it is in the middle of an area colonised by super-rich Russians - the road junction has a "Luxury Village" sign and adverts on the road here are all for Rolex, Gucci and condos in the US.

But here, Barvikha, is where President Medvedev receives foreign visitors. He has not done extended interviews like this before - we are very privileged.

He bounds out, smiling, and thrusts a buff coloured folder at me. My FSB file?

No - phew! - just the Wikipedia file on another Marr, this one a philologist from the Stalin era, who tried to apply the principles of class struggle to the development of language..........Continue at BBC

Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979-DailyTech reports (But is Al Gore listening?)

According to the DailyTech

Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago

Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.
Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.
The data is being reported by the University of Illinois's Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions....

Al Gore has stated that The North Polar Ice Cap will disappear by 2013. This data flatly contradicts his claims.

Yellowstone Super Volcano Eruption could destroy mankind

Yellowstone National Park holds one of the world's largest super-volcanoes. Scientific research has shown that the ground is 74cm higher than it was in 1923. The reservoir is filling rapidly with magma.The upward movement of the Yellowstone caldera floor has been 7 centimeters per year for the past three years. This supervolcano has regular eruption cycles of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago. So the human race is living on borrowed time. The Yellowstone Volcano could erupt with 10,000 times the force of the explosion at Mount St. Helens in 1980.

What are the likely effects of the eruption of the Yellowsone supervolcano ? Bill McGuire, professor of geohazards at the Benfield Greig Hazard
Research Centre at the University College of London told the UK
Daily Express that magma would be flung 50 kilometers into
the atmosphere. Within a thousand kilometers virtually all life
would be killed by falling ash, lava flows and the sheer explosive
force of the eruption. One thousand cubic kilometers of lava would
pour out of the volcano, enough to coat the whole USA with a layer
5 inches.He adds that it would once again bring "the bitter cold of Volcanic Winter to Planet Earth. Mankind may become extinct." (Source:UnMuseum)

Yellowstone supervolcano would blast so much ash and sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere that it would blot out the sun, causing a catastrophic drop in the Earth's temperatures. This would not just be confined to North America . Its effects would be felt in Europe. Crop growing would become impossible. Many would die from starvation as key world breadbaskets such as the Prairies of North America , the Steppes of Russia, East Anglia and the Paris Basin could no longer grow grain crops. Similarly grass growth would cease. World economies would be devastated. The Earths population would be decimated. Scientists and geologists who monitor the volcano see no major threat of a catastrophic eruption in the immediate future. Hopefully they are correct.