Russia and Norway May Issue Arctic Licenses. The Russian-Norwegian agreement on delimiting the sea border and co-operation in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean will come into force on July 7, 2011. A ministry spokesman said the agreement offers new opportunities for the oil and gas industry in the northern regions. Rossiyskaya Gazeta

Reid: Senate Will Stay in Next Week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced that the Senate will stay in session next week to deal with the debt limit crisis. Reid said the Senate would hold its first vote Tuesday, the day after the Fourth of July, probably in the afternoon. Roll Call

Putin Says Russia Will Expand Its Presence in the Arctic Region, Remains 'Open for Dialogue.' Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says Russia will seek to expand its presence in the Arctic. Russia, the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway have all been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, believed to hold up to a quarter of the Earth's undiscovered oil and gas. Putin said in televised comments Thursday that Russia "remains open for dialogue" with its polar neighbors, but will "strongly and persistently" defend its interests in the region. Washington Post 

Season's First Oil-Tanker Sails Northern Sea Route. The sailing season along the Northern Sea Route has never started as early in the Arctic as it has this year.  Earlier this week, the Belgium-owned oil tanker "Perseverance' set sail from Mumansk toward the north east. "Perseverance" is loaded with 70,000 tons of oil condensate. Barents Observer

Putin Urges 'Big Cleanup' in Arctic. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called Thursday for a "big cleanup" in the Arctic Region to remove oil barrels and litter scattered around polar stations. "We need a really big cleanup for the region and the disposal of litter and fuel barrels, which have been accumulating around stations, military bases and northern settlements for decades," Putin told a regional conference of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party in Yekaterinburg. NIA Novosti  

Multination Arctic Exercises Planned. The Pentagon envisions multinational exercises in the Arctic between the United States and seven other countries that recently agreed to jointly conduct search-and-rescue missions in this vast region of the globe. This fall, Canada will host an initial "tabletop exercise" to help determine ways to implement the arctic search-and-rescue (SAR) agreement, according to David Balton, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for oceans and fisheries. Defense News 

Shell President Optimistic on Arctic, Anxious to Explore but Company wants  resolution of various permits and opposition claims. Shell Oil President Marvin Odum has faith that his company can develop vast reserves in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast. But he'd like to get on with exploratory drilling to tap into a resource that could be crucial to meeting the country's energy needs. "That's an area where working in Alaska has, frankly, been disappointing to us as a company," Odum said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It has taken much longer that we originally thought it would." Anchorage Daily News

Failure on Coastal Zone Management Cedes Alaska Sovereignty to Feds. [Opinion: Alaska State Representative Les Gara] I'm not a big fan of failure, and not a big fan of spending money on wasted special sessions.  I've now voted three times, including yesterday, to pass the Coastal Zone Management bill that passed the bipartisan Senate Monday, but surprisingly failed by three votes in the House yesterday.  Failure to pass the bill gave away a big piece of state sovereignty to the federal government. Alaska Dispatch

Murkowski, Begich and Akaka Bill Would Boost Alaska Village Development. Senator Lisa Murkowski today introduced the Native American Challenge Demonstration Act (NACDA) of 2011 - with co-sponsors Senators Mark Begich and Daniel Akaka (D-HI) - to create the same opportunities for America's First People that countries worldwide receive, in terms of U.S. investment. "There's a lot of talk about nation-building and sending American funds around the world to needy areas," said Senator Murkowski. "But Alaska Natives all too frequently face the same challenges of underdevelopment and infrastructure shortcomings, right here on American soil - they deserve the same helping hand." Senator Lisa Murkowski  

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 Arctic developed or developing regions, and, second, to look at the evolving relationships between these spaces, their peoples, and global affairs. The main focus of the meeting 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.