A court in Estonia has sentenced a Syrian refugee to 10 years' imprisonment for setting fire to his wife in front of their young daughter, as well as subjecting her to months of abuse.

On Friday, Judge Merle Parts pronounced her sentence on 20-year-old Kovan Mohammad at the Harju County Court. Mohammed, who arrived in Estonia with his family from Greece last year, had been charged with assault causing severe bodily harm, as well as physically abusing his 22-year-old wife throughout their relationship.

On March 7, wanting to teach his wife a "lesson," Mohammed used gasoline to set her alight in front of their young daughter at their apartment in the Lasnamäe district of Tallinn, local media reports. After calling an ambulance herself, the wife had to spend five months in hospital and go through six operations, as well as spending two months in a coma. Nearly 70 percent of her body was covered in burns.

Mohammed pleaded guilty to putting his wife through physical abuse, including hitting her with a wooden slat, but claimed the incident on March 7 was an accident. However, the court heard he took the time to go out and buy gasoline and also watched videos of burnings over the internet, as well as searching for the best ways to punish a woman. He was found guilty of both charges, but his lawyer Alar Neiland says he intends to appeal.

Mohammed's wife, who was released from hospital in August, has now moved into a new apartment with their child.

One of the most hyped "events" of American television, The Vietnam War, has started on the PBS network. The directors are Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Acclaimed for his documentaries on the Civil War, the Great Depression and the history of jazz, Burns says of his Vietnam films, "They will inspire our country to begin to talk and think about the Vietnam war in an entirely new way".

In a society often bereft of historical memory and in thrall to the propaganda of its "exceptionalism", Burns' "entirely new" Vietnam war is presented as "epic, historic work". Its lavish advertising campaign promotes its biggest backer, Bank of America, which in 1971 was burned down by students in Santa Barbara, California, as a symbol of the hated war in Vietnam.

Burns says he is grateful to "the entire Bank of America family" which "has long supported our country's veterans". Bank of America was a corporate prop to an invasion that killed perhaps as many as four million Vietnamese and ravaged and poisoned a once bountiful land. More than 58,000 American soldiers were killed, and around the same number are estimated to have taken their own lives.

I watched the first episode in New York. It leaves you in no doubt of its intentions right from the start. The narrator says the war "was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War misunderstandings".

So it appears as if Canada will be on the cutting edge of science-denying progressive nonsense once again, this time in Newfoundland. From the Globe and Mail:

Gender identity crusader Gemma Hickey called it a "big victory" Friday as her court challenge over non-binary birth certificates was delayed while Newfoundland and Labrador moves to legalize gender-neutral options.

"It's a proud day for Newfoundland and Labrador," Hickey said on the steps of the provincial Supreme Court building in St. John's. "We weren't the first place in Canada to do it, but second is pretty good and I feel very happy today. I feel very validated."

A lawyer for the province asked for a postponement in the unique legal challenge over Hickey's bid for gender-neutral birth certificates. Crown attorney Jessica Pynn told the court that the province wants the case put off because it plans to introduce necessary legal changes this fall. It was set over to Dec. 14.

The province said Thursday it will bring in legislation this fall allowing for a change of sex designation from female or male to non-binary. Sex information will still be collected at birth, but people 12 and older will be able to choose an 'X' on their birth certificate. Children aged 12 to 15 will still require a parent to apply on their behalf, with the child's consent also required.

The government also said it will remove the requirement for a statement from a medical professional prior to a sex-designation change for those 16 and older. Hickey said that change is particularly important because such a prerequisite "pathologizes" gender identity.

"People can decide for themselves how they choose to identify," she said.

The 2016 election was almost a year ago but apparently the Republican wave is still rolling. American voters in states across the country are still trending towards Republicans.

Big League Politics reported:

DATA: Voter Registration Trends Favor Republicans Bigly

An ongoing analysis of voter registration trends since November 2016-the election of Donald Trump-continues to show significant trends toward Republicans almost across the board. A couple of notes on the data are necessary:

1. In many cases-almost all except Arizona and Delaware-the total number of registered Democrats and Republicans both has fallen. This is normal. Secretaries of State purge voter rolls of those who have moved, died, or asked to be removed from the rolls. The baseline month is November 2016, but some states have not updated up to September. I used the most recent date in these cases. Pennsylvania's data has still not been updated from May, but I'll include it anyway.
2. New Jersey was the only state to show one party declining (the Democrats) and the other gaining (the Republicans, though only by 287 voters).
3. Unfortunately MI, WI, OH, MN, VA, GA, and TX do not register voters by party, so tracking these states is not possible. Once some of them-such as OH-have primaries, a comparison to previous primary turnout would be beneficial.

Will this continue into 2018 and 2020? There's a great chance it will.

An Eagle Scout at age 18, Kenneth Gleason graduated with honors from one of Baton Rouge's most elite high schools and enrolled at Louisiana State University. Five years later, the 23-year-old white man was jailed on charges he gunned down two black men and shot up a black family's home last week in a string of attacks that police say may have been racially motivated.

Gleason's arrest shocked and baffled relatives. Kerrie Highley, a maternal aunt who lives in Galveston, Texas, said she never heard her nephew express any racist views. "His family didn't teach him that," Highley said Wednesday. "None of us feel that way."

Gleason wore a T-shirt bearing the name of a Boys Scouts ranch in New Mexico when police officers led him in handcuffs past a bank of reporters Tuesday outside Louisiana State Police headquarters. "We were shocked to learn about the allegations against this individual. This behavior runs counter to everything for which the BSA (Boy Scouts of America) stands," said Gary Mertz, a local Scout official.

He could face a possible death sentence if he's convicted in the killings of a homeless man and a dishwasher walking to work. In each case, the killer opened fire from his car, then walked up to the victim as he lay on the ground and fired again repeatedly, police said.

He also is charged with firing gunshots into the home of a black family that lives three houses down from him and his parents. Investigators said surveillance footage and DNA on a shell casing linked him to the crimes. Authorities found a handwritten copy of an Adolf Hitler speech at Gleason's home, a law-enforcement official said.

Some Orange County residents were stunned Thursday, Sept. 21, when television programming was suddenly interrupted for about a minute with an ominous message predicting the end of the world.

Stacy Laflamme of Lake Forest said she was watching the HGTV channel via Cox Communications about 11:05 a.m. when suddenly an emergency alert flashed across her screen followed by a voice.

"Realize this, extremely violent times will come," a man's voice boomed, according to a video of the alert.

Laflamme said she was alarmed.

"It almost sounded like Hitler talking," she said. "It sounded like a radio broadcast coming through the television."

In addition to Cox, Spectrum cable customers in Orange County received the alert.

A Texan nominated by President Donald Trump for a federal judgeship could face tougher confirmation questioning from Senate Democrats later this year because of 2015 remarks on transgender children.

Jeff Mateer, a top official in the Texas Attorney General's Office, is Trump's pick for a lifetime federal judgeship. But recently released transcripts of Mateer's old speeches have sparked a controversy.

Mateer reportedly said in 2015 that transgender children were part of "Satan's plan," and claimed that legalized same-sex marriage would lead to "disgusting" forms of marriage, including bestiality and polygamy, the Texas Tribune reported.

Now the top Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committe, which will rule on Mateer's nomination, are considering kicking up a storm during his confirmation hearing. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., suggested Thursday that her party would spare no one during Mateer's hearing, the Dallas Morning News reported.

A Florida elementary school teacher's letter asking fifth-grade students to use gender-neutral pronouns in the classroom reportedly concerned some parents in the district, with one asking "what would your reaction be?"

Chloe Bressack, a math and science teacher recently hired at Canopy Oaks Elementary in Tallahassee, wrote the letter to parents as a way of introducing herself and her classroom methods, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

"One thing that you should know about me is that I use gender-neutral terms. My prefix is Mx. [pronounced Mix]," Bressack wrote in the letter. "My pronouns are 'they, them, their' instead of 'he, his, she, hers.' I know it takes some practice for it to feel natural, but students catch on pretty quickly."

Yoshua Bengio, the artificial intelligence pioneer, says the centralization of wealth, power and capability in Big Tech is "dangerous for democracy" and that the companies should be broken up.

Why it matters

Bengio is a professor at the University of Montreal and a member of the three-man "Canadian Mafia" that pioneered machine learning, the leading method used in AI. His remarks are notable because of his influence in the AI community and because he or his peers all either directly lead or consult for Big Tech's AI programs. Says Bengio: "Concentration of wealth leads to concentration of power. That's one reason why monopoly is dangerous. It's dangerous for democracy."

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday called for a crackdown on illegal immigration and the influx of violent criminal gangs into the U.S.

"We are now working with the Department of Homeland Security and [Department of Health and Human Services] to examine the unaccompanied minors issue and the exploitation of that program by gang members who come to this country as wolves in sheep clothing," Sessions said.

Sessions blasted those "taking advantage" of the Unaccompanied Alien Children program during his speech before law enforcement officials outside a federal courthouse in Boston.

The program, run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, aims to take unaccompanied minors who enter the country illegally and place them in communities that it says are in "the best interests of the child."

"This program continues to place juveniles from Central America into this gang-controlled territory. It is clearly being abused," Sessions said, saying that the MS-13 gang was using the program as a recruitment tool.