Our picksWorsening wildfires; surveillance tech exports; dentistry & bioterrorism response, and more

FBI: Ohio man arrested in Toledo synagogue plot, said he was inspired by Pittsburgh shooting (Gregory Korte, USA Today)
A 21-year-old Ohio man accused of planning to attack a Toledo synagogue told undercover FBI agents that he was inspired both by Islamist propaganda and the suspect in the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre that killed 11 people, authorities said Monday.
The murderous plot is the second to be thwarted in Ohio, according to federal prosecutors, who on Monday detailed a separate, unrelated large-scale scheme in which a 23-year-old woman was charged with stockpiling bomb materials and planning a mass killing at a Toledo bar.

Wildfires will only get worse in the southeast because of climate change, report says (Mark Pace, Chattanooga Times Free Press)
More than 300 experts took part in the 1,600-plus-page report, ranging from 13 government agencies, universities, climate scientists and other experts. It is the first such report under the Trump administration and fourth overall. The report is mandated by law.

Emergency services agency dispatchers use tech, situational awareness to help in emergencies (Calley Hair, The Columbian)
“This is a really odd workplace. I’ll be sitting there having a conversation with someone, and one seat away, someone’s doing CPR,” Gaylord said. “It goes on all day long, right? It’s a little weird when new people come in and see that, because they’re like, ‘Oh my God, there’s a life-and-death situation going on right now!’

As exports of surveillance tech rise, freer countries face a choice (Justin Sherman, Defense One)
How far will societies pursue security along paths paved by dictators?

Google will shut down Google+ four months early after second data leak (Nick Statt and Russell Brandom, The Verge)
The underloved social network will now close in April

‘Glimmer of hope’ for Great Barrier Reef as study shows tolerance to climate change (Nick Visser, Huff Post)
Last year’s oceanic heat wave wasn’t as destructive as one the year before, scientists said.

Judge orders Justice, State departments to reopen narrow inquiry into handling of Clinton email records lawsuit (Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post)
A U.S. judge ordered the Justice and State departments Thursday to reopen an inquiry into whether Hillary Clinton used a private email server while secretary of state to deliberately evade public records laws and to answer whether the agencies acted in bad faith by not telling a court for months that they had asked in mid-2014 for missing emails to be returned.
The order risks reopening partisan wounds that have barely healed since Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 presidential bid, but in issuing the order Thursday, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act required it.
In a narrow but sharply worded 10-page opinion, Lamberth wrote that despite the government’s claimed presumption of transparency, “faced with one of the gravest modern offenses to government openness, [the Obama administration’s] State and Justice departments fell far short” of the law’s requirements in a lawsuit for documents.

The Huawei arrest: How it likely happened and what comes next (Steven Arigg Koh, Just Security)
Canada’s recent arrest of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, has abruptly revived fears of a trade war between the United States and China. Indeed, this single arrest has potentially thwarted recent G-20 diplomacy between the world’s two largest economies. The case thus dramatically exemplifies “foreign affairs prosecutions,” or U.S. criminal cases involving a foreign country. Cases such as these—often involving fugitive apprehension abroad—are characterized by prosecutorial decisions with foreign policy ramifications. But should they be treated as foreign policy cases, where the executive branch gets special deference? Or as federal criminal prosecutions subject to strict and searching judicial scrutiny? This post asks how the arrest happened and why recognizing this case as a foreign affairs prosecution clarifies what comes next.

The role of dental professionals in bioterrorism response (Global Biodefense)
As dental professionals are an integral part of the healthcare community, they should be educated regarding the medical and oral manifestations of the diseases that result from a bioterrorist attack or pandemic event.