Possible Weekend Work for House Called Off. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy's office told Members on Wednesday that they no longer must be prepared to be in session this weekend. Members were told the day before to anticipate working Saturday and Sunday. Roll Call

Debt Talks Impede House Spending Bills. The ongoing debate on the debt limit is forcing House appropriators to scale back their goals for moving spending bills through the House. House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers said he hopes to get two more spending bills through the House before possibly moving to a continuing resolution to give Congress more time to finish work on the fiscal 2012 spending bills. Roll Call 

Sides Edging Toward Short-Term Debt Deal. Members of the Senate's Gang of Six began on Wednesday to sell the group's bipartisan deficit reduction proposal to House Democrats as the likelihood grew that lawmakers would need to approve a short-term increase to the $14.3 trillion debt limit. The pressure of the ticking clock weighed on officials both in the White House and at the Capitol, who cheered the new Senate proposal but acknowledged there was not enough time to enact it before the Aug. 2 deadline to avoid an unprecedented default by the U.S. government. The Hill 

Russia's Arctic Vision, How Different Is It Really? At the same June 30 regional conference of the United Russia party in Yekaterinburg where Vladimir Putin defended Russia's growing presence in the Arctic, he spoke about his vision for developing the region. He focused on environmental restoration in the Arctic waterways and on natural gas development. First, he called for a "big cleanup" in the region. Putin lamented, "I was in the North last year, and I was terrified by the number of old barrels, once used for fuels and lubricants, which have been piling up for many decades near geologists' stations and military bases there. Sometimes, these barrels become rusty and leaky from age, and the contents pour out. This is impermissible. If we don't start to clean up the Arctic right now, the consequences may be very sad." Alaska Dispatch 

Arctic Also Sees Heat Wave, On Course for Record Ice Melt. This year could be well on its way toward earning a dubious spot in the record books. Arctic sea ice has melted away with astonishing speed in the first half of July, at an average rate of about 46,000 square miles per day, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo. That's equivalent to an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania melting into the sea every 24 hours. MSNBC 

Star Exclusive: Canada Looking at Building Military Bases in Arctic. It is costly to operate in the vast and inhospitable Arctic. But the Canadian military is exploring a way to cut costs and speed up the movement of troops and equipment by building several new northern bases. Along the way it could help to strengthen the country's Arctic sovereignty claims by placing additional boots on the tundra throughout the year. The Star 

Scientist Heads to Nunavut to Find Fish with Legs. There are thousands of species of animals in Canada, but a U.S. scientist is looking for a very specific one: a fish with legs. This might sound strange, but if he succeeds, it won't be the first limbed-fish he's discovered in the Canadian Arctic. Dr. Ted Daeschler is a paleontologist from Philadelphia who specializes in vertebrate paleontology. He and his colleague from the University of Chicago, Neil Shubin, have been trekking Nunavut since 1999, exploring the peculiar area where it's thought fish evolved into creatures with limbs. Yahoo! News   

Edmonton Firm Wins Contract for Arctic Methane. Edmonton-based Synodon Inc. has won a $350,000 federal contract to use its realSens technology for remote sensing survey services to detect and measure naturally occurring methane seeps in the Canadian Arctic. The project will expand on a successful small scale survey completed in 2009 in conjunction with Natural Resources Canada, and will test the technology's ability to remotely survey large areas of the Arctic. Edmonton Journal 

Northern Research Forum 6th Open Assembly, September 4-6, 2011."Our Ice Dependent World," organized by the Northern Research Forum and its partners as the Northern Research Forum 6th Open Assembly, will be hosted by the University of Akureyri in the town of Hveragerði, Iceland. Addressing the three 'poles' - the Arctic, the Antarctic and the Himalayan region- the sub-themes represent different  perspectives for viewing the subject of natural ice and evaluating its importance.  The event will consider implications of ice melt on humanity, communities, minds, perceptions and knowledge on ice; International law, 'soft law' and governance on ice.

The Arctic in Transition: Regional Issues and Geopolitics, October 3-4, 2011. The conference is organized by the Center for Geopolitical Studies of the Raoul Dandurand Chair, in collaboration with the Centre Jacques Cartier (France), ArcticNet (Universite Laval, Quebec), and the Northern Research Forum (University of the Arctic; University of Lapland, Finland). This high-level international meeting reunites political scientists, lawyers, geographers, historians and practitioners to discuss, first, the socio-economic, political and security issues of developed or developing Arctic regions, and, second, to look at the evolving relationships between these spaces, their peoples, and global affairs. The meeting mainly seeks to adress security issue(s) of the various region(s) that make up the circumpolar world. Three Arctic regions will be highlighted: a) the North-American Arctic (United States (Alaska); Canada (Northwest Territories, Yukon, Nunavut, Nunavik) and Greenland; b) the North Pacific Rim (Alaska, Russian Far East, Beaufort Sea/Chukchi); c) the Barents Euro-Arctic Region (Nordic countries - Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland - and Russia).

The Tenth International Conference on Permafrost, June 2012. The conference will be held in Tyumen, Russia, and is organized and hosted by Russia. The last conference was held in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 2008. Details to follow.   

15th International Congress on Circumpolar Heath, August 5-10, 2012. This event is sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Society for Circumpolar Health, and the International Union for Circumpolar Health.  The forum will consider community participatory research and indigenous research; women's health, family health, and well-being; food security and nutrition; social determinants of health; environmental and occupational health; infectious and chronic diseases; climate change-health impacts; health service delivery and infrastructure; and, behavioral health.

Arctic/Inuit/Connections: Learning from the Top of the World, October 24-28, 2012.  The 18th Inuit Studies Conference, hosted by the Smithsonian Institution, will be held in Washington, DC. The conference will consider heritage museums and the North; globalization: an Arctic story; power, governance and politics in the North; the '"new" Arctic: social, cultural and climate change; and Inuit education, health, language, and literature. For more information, please email Lauren Marr.