Anchorage Daily News

Bush and McCain agree on offshore drilling, disagree over ANWR. President Bush today will ask Congress to lift a ban on offshore drilling and renew his call to open ANWR. News services worldwide are reporting on this, and in the same breath, mentioning that Republican presidential candidate John McCain agrees on offshore drilling, disagrees on ANWR. A columnist for the BBC questions how long McCain will maintain that stance.

A little background. The drilling moratorium was a Congressional act in 1982 and has been renewed every year after that. Since 1990, it has been supplemented by the first President Bush's executive order that the Interior Department not conduct offshore leasing until 2000. President Bill Clinton extended that until 2012. Now here we are.

The New York Times points out that offshore drilling is a testy topic in the Bush family, citing the senior Bush's ban and brother Jeb Bush's equally solid stance against drilling off the coast of Florida. If he takes executive action, as some think likely, President Bush would essentially be rescinding his father's order.

Here are some of the links:

< Bush will seek to end offshore drilling (The New York Times)

< The gas-price election (BBC)

< Bush looks offshore for remedy to high oil prices (Associated Press)

< John McCain open to drilling offshore, not in Arctic Refuge (Los Angeles Times)

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Alaska woman fights Netflix online tax. Debra Burkhardt lives near North Pole and loves the Netflix account she's had for three years. But in April, she noticed a new item on her bill, a tax. Her efforts to figure out why it was there pulls back the curtain on Internet-based companies and how they handle taxes, reports the Fairbanks Daily News Miner.

North Pole has a sales tax, but Burkhardt lives outside that jurisdiction, and local officials told her Internet sales are exempt from local taxes. When she called Netflix and asked, she was told the 65-cent fee was "a municipal tax on hotel stays."

No final answer yet. Check your Netflix bill.

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The rush to save Alaska's coral gardens. The Christian Science Monitor reports that nearly three centuries after Georg Steller and Vitus Bering sailed Alaska's coast, scientists continue to make new discoveries off the 1,000-mile long Aleutian archipelago. This time, it is "vast cold water coral gardens."

"You turn on the lights, and it was just amazing," says Jon Heifetz, a Juneau, Alaska-based NOAA scientist who saw it first hand in a two-person sub in 2002.. "Every single inch of rock was covered with colorful corals and sponges."

The discovery prompted a ban on bottom-scraping trawl harvests in 2006 in the Aleutians and parts of the Gulf of Alaska.

More recent discoveries include two potential new species of "walking" or "swimming" sea anemones, a new type of kelp that scientists have named "golden V" because of its color and shape, and several new types of bottom-dwelling fish. Watch and listen to a 2003 sub dive here.

In other oceans news, APRN interviews an expert on the growing acidity of the globe's oceans and its potential effect on coral and sea life.

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Coast Guard in the Arctic: If only we knew what our mission was. A series of summer exercises called Salliq will take the U.S. Coast Guard into the Arctic where they'll assess what work they need to do, reports the Kodiak Daily Mirror.

Lt. Cmdr. Michelle Webber will run one exercise that takes 36 Coastguardsmen, some 25-foot boats and a few HH-65 Dolphin helicopters to Barrow and a C-130 to Nome.

They'll be testing communications gear. "We're not sure if some of the satellite systems will work up there because of the orbit of the satellites," Webber said. "We'll be (in Barrow) just shy of three weeks."

Then from Aug. 16-19, the Coast Guard will take its maritime safety and security team to Prudhoe Bay for an exercise to practice handling situations, such as boats in the Arctic protesting oil drilling.

In other Coast Guard news, KMXT catches up with Kodiak resident and former commander of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley as he begins his new tour of duty in the Middle East. Matthew Bell will oversee U.S. Coast Guard forces that protect two offshore oil-drilling platforms in the Persian Gulf that generate much of Iraq's domestic revenue.

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Second polar bear killed by safety officials in Iceland. ABCNews.net reports that Icelandic authorities came under so much criticism when they killed a polar bear two weeks ago that they were determined to capture this second animal when it was spotted Monday. Instead, when police has spotted the bear and it started running, they shot it.

"It was a security problem," spokesman Bengt Holst said.

Polar bears are rare sightings on Iceland, since they have to swim hundreds of kilometers through icy waters to reach the island from their natural habitat. Environmentalists say these two events give credence to concern for the bears and their vanishing sea ice habitat.

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Susan Lindauer seeks NYC trial in Iraqi spy case. Alaskans will remember John Lindauer as a former legislator and one-time Republican nominee for governor in 1998. His daughter, who grew up here, was arrested in 2004 in Maryland on charges she had acted as an agent for Iraq.

The Associated Press reports that she wants a trial to prove she was operating under the supervision of U.S. authorities. But first she'll have to get a judge to let her challenge psychologists' findings that she suffers from "delusions of grandeur and paranoia" and is unfit for trial.

Now 44, she could get 25 years in prison if convicted.

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The Kenai Mountains-Turnagain Arm area may become home to the first "national heritage area" run by the U.S. Forest Service. APRN reports that the National Park Service oversees the other 40 similar heritage areas around the country, but because this potential new one sits within Chugach National Forest, the forest service could have jurisdiction.

Before taking it on, the forest service wants to do one more feasibility study on how the unit fits in with other nearby heritage and scenic designations like the Iditarod Trail and the scenic Seward Highway.

During testimony Tuesday before the Senate national parks subcommittee, Sen. Lisa Murkowski questioned the need for another study and urged speedy action. The designation is supported locally as a tourism enhancement.

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In other news of interest to Alaskans:

< Juneau hears pitch to turn its trash into energy (Juneau Empire)

< SEARHC wins Wellness Workplace award (indiancountry.com)

< Alaska inspires folk rock ensemble Port O'Brien (Crawdaddy)

< Young and Parnell spar over gasoline tax (Fairbanks Daily News Miner)

< Kodiak set-net family markets its salmon in California (Kodiak Daily Mirror)

< Palin to sign two bills on the Kenai Peninsula today (Peninsula Clarion)

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