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The wildfires burning in southwest Oregon showed little signs of slowing Thursday morning, bringing declining air quality and evacuations.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown declared a statewide wildfire emergency to make Oregon National Guard (ONG) troops and resources available. Fire teams are battling more than 100 wildfires from Crater Lake to the South Coast.
https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2018/07/19/southern-oregon-wildfires-evacuations-wimer-grants-pass-applegate-valley-hendrix-fire-grave-creek/800682002/


Brett Kavanaugh Is Polling Like Robert Bork And Harriet Miers
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/brett-kavanaugh-is-polling-like-robert-bork-and-harriet-miers/


Staff at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) organized for a new office desk to air out in a remote warehouse for a week so that former agency head Scott Pruitt wouldn’t have to breathe in any traces of the carcinogenic chemical formaldehyde from his furniture, emails obtained by Politico have revealed.
At the same time, Pruitt was refusing to more strictly regulate the chemical, despite sitting on a report that said it’s putting Americans at risk of leukemia and throat cancer.
Last month it emerged key figures in the EPA were suppressing an agency report, completed just before Donald Trump took office, that found that a majority of Americans inhale unacceptably high levels of formaldehyde vapor in the course of daily life, which puts them at risk of developing cancer of the blood, throat and nose. According to Politico, a trade group representing the businesses could face new regulations if the study were released had frequent access to EPA officials and successfully pressured them to refrain from publishing the report.
While EPA officials went to such lengths to ensure Pruitt’s safety, they have done nothing to regulate levels of formaldehyde, and continue to delay the report’s release. In states that don’t have specific regulations, it is still used in compressed wood, adhesives and other materials.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/19/scott-pruitt-formaldehyde-report


More than 400,000 people could be living in “modern slavery” in the US, a condition of servitude broadly defined in a new study as forced and state-imposed labor, sexual servitude and forced marriage.
The report estimates most victims of modern slavery live in Asia. North Korea has the highest prevalence of modern slavery globally, with one in 10 of the population, or 2.6 million people, victims of modern slavery.
A third, or 15 million, of victims of modern slavery enter through forced marriage, an issue that disproportionately affects women and girls. “Overall, the cultural practice of forced marriage places women at greater risk of exploitation, and the potential subjection to a life of servitude, financial bondage and sexual exploitation that comes with modern slavery,” the report said.
The report also argues the US figures are in themselves deceptive because the US exacerbates the global slavery problem by importing products, including laptops, computers, mobile phones, garments, fish, cocoa and timber, at risk of being produced through forced labor.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/19/us-modern-slavery-report-global-slavery-index