JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – A central Missouri teenager who confessed to strangling, cutting and stabbing a 9-year-old girl because she wanted to know how it felt to kill someone was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Alyssa Bustamante, 18, pleaded guilty in January to second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the October 2009 slaying of Elizabeth Olten in St. Martins, a small rural town west of Jefferson City.
Bustamante had been charged with first-degree murder and by pleading guilty to the lesser charges she avoided a trial and the possibility of spending her life in an adult prison with no chance of release.

Bustamante was 15 years old when she confessed to strangling Elizabeth, repeatedly stabbing her in the chest and slicing the girl’s throat. She led police to the shallow grave where she had concealed Elizabeth’s body under a blanket of leaves in the woods behind their neighborhood.
The teenager’s defense attorneys had argued for a sentence less than life in prison, saying Bustamante’s use of the antidepressant Prozac had made her more prone to violence. They said she had suffered from depression for years and once attempted suicide by overdosing on painkillers.
But prosecutors sought a longer sentence. They noted that Bustamante had dug two graves several days in advance, and that on the evening of the killing had sent her younger sister to lure Elizabeth outside with an invitation to play. Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. David Rice testified that the teenager told him “she wanted to know what it felt like” to kill someone. Prosecutors also cited journal entries in which Bustamante described the exhilaration of killing Elizabeth.
“I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they’re dead,” Bustamante wrote in her diary, which was read in court by a handwriting expert. “I don’t know how to feel atm. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the ‘ohmygawd I can’t do this’ feeling, it’s pretty enjoyable. I’m kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now…lol.”
Bustamante then headed off to a youth dance at her church while a massive search began for the missing girl.

“Early 2011″ – “The FBI contacted New Zealand Police in early 2011 with a request to assist with their investigation into the Mega Conspiracy.” said Detective Inspector Grant Wormald of OFCANZ

28-OCT-2011 – MegaUpload labelled a ‘rogue’ site by MPAA.

The MPAA has submitted a new list of “notorious websites” to the Office of the US Trade Representative, sites that are all in danger of becoming the target of planned U.S. legislation. The list contains the most-visited torrent sites including The Pirate Bay, file-hosting and linking sites such as MegaUpload, and Russia’s Facebook equivalent, VKontakte. Interestingly, file-hosting service RapidShare is absent from the filing.

09-DEC-2011 – MegaUpload releases a music video with RIAA artists endorsing MegaUpload.

MegaUpload is currently being portrayed by the MPAA and RIAA as one of the world’s leading rogue sites. But top music stars including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West disagree and are giving the site their full support in a brand new song. TorrentFreak caught up with the elusive founder of MegaUpload, Kim Dotcom, who shrugged off “this rogue nonsense” and told us he wants content owners to get paid.

10-DEC-2011 – UMG doesn’t like the video. Has it removed from YouTube.

Earlier today, Megaupload released a pop video featuring mainstream artists who endorse the cyberlocker service. News of the controversial Mega Song even trended on Twitter, but has now been removed from YouTube on copyright grounds by Universal Music. Kim Dotcom says that Megaupload owns everything in the video, and that the label has engaged in dirty tricks in an attempt to sabotage their successful viral campaign.

12-DEC-2011 – MegaUpload files suit against UMG on the grounds that UMG cannot remove the content as MegaUpload holds the copyright, not UMG.

File-hosting service Megaupload has told TorrentFreak that it will sue Universal for wrongfully taking down its content from YouTube. Universal took action Friday to remove a Megaupload-produced pop video which featured leading artists singing the cyberlocker service’s praises. The move has also prompted the company to enter the SOPA debate, with a call for like-minded people to join forces and fight for an Internet without censorship.

16-DEC-2011 – UMG says “So what? We can take down whatever we want!” and “You can’t touch us. This isn’t DMCA. We didn’t take it down because of copyright. We took it down because we can.”

A week ago today, Megaupload’s now-famous Mega Song was on its way to becoming a viral hit, only to be cut down from YouTube by a Universal Music takedown demand. Following the filing of a Megaupload lawsuit the song is back online, but Universal are standing firm. You can’t touch us on DMCA grounds, the label says in a new filing, adding it can take down any material, even if it doesn’t infringe their rights.

21-DEC-2011 – MegaUpload labelled a “rogue” site by the USTR.

The US Government has classified some of the largest websites on the Internet as examples of sites which sustain global piracy. The list released by the United States Trade Representative draws exclusively on input from rightsholders. It includes popular torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, file-hosting service Megaupload and Russia’s leading social network VKontakte.

28-DEC-2011 – MegaUpload wants an explaination from UMG.

In their 18-page response filing at the US District Court for Northern Californian earlier this month, not once did Universal Music say why they forced YouTube to remove Megaupload’s Mega Song. Since that’s what the dispute between the two companies is all about, that was a pretty strange event. In a new filing, Megaupload makes it clear that it isn’t going to be brushed aside. The cyberlocker wants answers, and it will dig deep to get them.

19-JAN-2012 – MegaUpload shut down by Feds

MegaUpload, one of the largest file-sharing sites on the Internet, has been shut down by federal prosecutors in Virginia. The site’s founder Kim Dotcom and three others were arrested by the police in New Zealand at the request of US authorities. MegaVideo, the streaming site belonging to same company, and a total of 18 domains connected to the Mega company were seized and datacenters in three countries raided.

I saw this at

The captain of the Italian cruise ship gave a slapstick explanation of how he ended up safely in a lifeboat instead of going down with his ship, saying he tripped and fell into the boat as it was being lowered into the sea, Italian media reported today.

“I had no intention of escaping,” Francesco Schettino, 52, said during his first court hearing Tuesday, according to Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper.

“I was helping some passengers put the life boat to sea. At a certain point the mechanism for lowering it, blocked. We had to force it. Suddenly the system unblocked itself and I tripped and I found myself inside the life boat with a number of passengers.”

Once in the lifeboat that was lowered into the sea, Schettino insisted to the court that it was “impossible to go back onboard.”

The captain also reportedly admitted to the court that he lied at one point when he assured officials that he had dropped anchor shortly after the Costa Concordia slammed into a rock to stabilize the luxury liner.

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However a video by the Guardia di Finanza who arrived onsite 10 minutes after the disaster clearly shows that the anchor had not been lowered. Schettino admitted Tuesday that he lied about the anchor, the newspaper reported.

The luxury cruise ship was carrying more than 4,000 passengers and crew when it struck rocks Friday evening near Giglio off the coast of Tuscany, during a close pass to shore. At least 11 people were killed in the aftermath when the ship keeled over. Nearly two dozen people are still missing, including an American couple from Minnesota.

Schettino reportedly admitted that he made mistakes that led to the crash and afterwards, but said the ship’s course, including the now-controversial close pass, had been set from the beginning. The cruise line previously said Schettino had made an unauthorized deviation from the programmed route.

Schettino, who is currently under house arrest, is under investigation for potentially causing the wreck by steering into the rocks and then abandoning the panicked passengers for a lifeboat as the ship plunged over on its side. In recorded radio transmissions released Tuesday, Schettino is heard telling Italian Port Authority officials he and other officers abandoned ship.

“And with 100 people still on board, you abandon ship? [expletive],” the Port Authority officer says in response.

Schettino appears to correct himself, saying, “I didn’t abandon any ship… because the ship turned on its side quickly and we were catapulted into the water.”

The recording goes on to show the Port Authority official repeatedly berating Schettino for not going back to the ship to coordinate rescue efforts, and at one point ordering Schettino to “get back on board for [expletive]‘s sake!”

Italians appear divided on how to view the embattled cruise captain.

Some, like Schettino’s neighbor, said he “is a hero who saved over 4,000 people,” Italy’s ANSA news outlet reported. Schettino’s wife said Tuesday her husband made some quick decisions after the initial impact that helped save passenger’s lives.

“It is for this reason that we feel the need to strongly reject any attempt to delegitimize him and ask you to understand his tragedy and personal drama,” Fabiola Russo told reporters Tuesday.

In editorials in Italian newspapers, however, Schettino was heavily criticized, one calling him the “coward captain” and another saying the incident shows the Italian national character with its greatness and “all its shortcomings.”

Online Facebook groups have reportedly emerged on either side of the argument.

via Yahoo

On December 22, Aarifa was admitted to Lahore’s CMH hospital after suffering cardiac arrest. On Thursday, doctors said there is no hope for her survival, and that her life support could be switched off ‘at any time’.

Aarifa’s father, Lt Col (Retd) Amjad Karim Randhawa told The Express Tribune that she had suffered an epileptic attack, which caused severe brain and heart damage. Randhawa said “only a miracle will allow my brilliant, genius daughter to live now”.

After the news of Aarifa’s condition emerged, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif took notice and offered economic support to the family, but they have refused to take the money.

When Aarifa, now 16, was given the title of a Microsoft professional as a young child, she visited the company’s headquarters in the US. When she met Bill Gates himself, she had two questions: Why weren’t children allowed to work for Microsoft, and why such few women worked for the organisation.

Her love for technology, however, started long before she was recognised internationally. After discovering computers for the first time at the age of five, she pestered her father for a personal computer, and after that there was no looking back.

Aarifa’s father recalled the year in which his daughter passed the test which enabled her to be declared the youngest professional certified by Microsoft in the world. “When she passed the test at age nine, everyone thought the result was wrong,” he reminisced. She wanted to make software just like Bill Gates, he added. She would say that she wanted to work for children and poor people.

Proudly, he said she came from a ‘low-profile’ family, but she would always say she wanted to study all over the world and then come back to help the people in her village. Her dreams were never for herself alone.

Aarifa’s achievements go far beyond recognition from Microsoft alone. The 16-year-old, a student of Lahore Grammar School’s Paragon campus, has represented Pakistan in various international forums. In 2005, the child prodigy received the Fatimah Jinnah Gold Medal from the government as well as the Salaam Pakistan Youth Award. In addition, she has received the president’s award for Pride of Performance, medals from IT professionals around the world, and also became a brand ambassador for PTCL in 2010.

Her talents however, are versatile. Besides excelling in the field of science and technology, Aarifa also flew a plane at the age of 10.

Aarifa’s life hangs in the balance, and while most have given up hope, her father says: “I am praying and I want everyone to pray for her”. (WITH ADDITIONAL INPUT FROM THE NEWS DESK)

A Dutch architectural firm has apologized for its design of twin skyscrapers in central Seoul which resemble the exploding World Trade Center towers in New York and have infuriated families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks.

The blueprint for the luxury apartment buildings was released last week and shows a structure which juts out at the middle to accommodate pools, restaurants, cafes and a gym.

Relatives of victims of al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States have expressed outrage, according to U.S. media reports, saying the designers have no respect for those that died and branding the design a cheap publicity stunt.

Designer MVRDV said it had not intended to create an image resembling the attacks, and it did not see the resemblance during the design process.

“We sincerely apologize to anyone whose feelings we have hurt. It was not our intention,” the company said on its website.

It did not indicate whether it would change the design….

Have you used Ticketmaster in the last 12 years? If so, you can file a claim to receive a share of a long-awaited class action settlement with Ticketmaster for charging excessive and deceptive processing fees.

The Ticketmaster settlement will resolve a class action lawsuit, entitled Curt Schlesinger, et al. v. Ticketmaster, that alleges Ticketmaster’s Order Processing Fees and UPS Expedited Delivery prices of tickets are excessive and deceptive.

The Ticketmaster class action lawsuit claims the company deceived and misled customers into believing that its Order Processing Fee was a pass-through of the amount that UPS charged Ticketmaster for that delivery when it was actually a profit generator for Ticketmaster. The Ticketmaster class action lawsuit also asserts that Ticketmaster’s UPS delivery charges are excessive and deceptive.

Ticketmaster denies any wrongdoing but has agreed to settle the case to avoid ongoing litigation.

The Ticketmaster class action settlement includes all U.S. residents who purchased tickets on Ticketmaster.com between October 21, 1999 and October 19, 2011 and paid money to Ticketmaster for an Order Processing Fee (OPF) that was not refunded. It also includes a subclass of all Class Members who paid a delivery price for expedited delivery for their tickets via UPS.

The Ticketmaster fee settlement will provide discount codes that can be used for future purchases for U.S. events from Ticketmaster.com. For each transaction you made during the Class Period, you will receive one discount code via email for a $1.50 discount, up to a maximum of 17 codes. The codes may be combined up to a maximum of two credits ($3.00).

Class Members who also fall under the UPS Subclass will also receive one UPS code for $5.00 off expedited delivery fees on purchases from Ticektmaster.com for each transaction they made using UPS delivery of their tickets during the Class Period, up to 17 transactions.

All Class Members will automatically receive these benefits from the Ticketmaster fee class action settlement via email at the addresses associated with their Ticketmaster account if the settlement is approved at the May 29, 2012 Final Approval Hearing. If you have not received a Ticketmaster Class Action Settlement email yet and believe you are a Class Member, contact the Settlement Administrator at ticketfeelitigation@gcginc.com to update your email address.

The deadline to opt out of the Ticketmaster settlement is February 16, 2012.

More information on your rights in the Ticketmaster Fee Class Action Lawsuit Settlement can be found at www.TicketFeeLitigation.com.

Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AEC) have found evidence that certain fungi possess another talent beyond their ability to decompose matter: the capacity to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring their growth.

Detailing the research in Public Library of Science ONE, AEC’s Arturo Casadevall said his interest was piqued five years ago when he read about how a robot sent into the still-highly-radioactive Chernobyl reactor had returned with samples of black, melanin-rich fungi that were growing on the ruined reactor’s walls. “I found that very interesting and began discussing with colleagues whether these fungi might be using the radiation emissions as an energy source,” explained Casadevall.

Casadevall and his co-researchers then set about performing a variety of tests using several different fungi. Two types – one that was induced to make melanin (Crytococcus neoformans) and another that naturally contains it (Wangiella dermatitidis) – were exposed to levels of ionizing radiation approximately 500 times higher than background levels.

Both of these melanin-containing species grew significantly faster than when exposed to standard background radiation.

“Just as the pigment chlorophyll converts sunlight into chemical energy that allows green plants to live and grow, our research suggests that melanin can use a different portion of the electromagnetic spectrum – ionizing radiation – to benefit the fungi containing it,” said co-researcher Ekaterina Dadachova.

Investigating further, the researchers measured the electron spin resonance signal after melanin was exposed to ionizing radiation and found that radiation interacts with melanin to alter its electron structure. This, they believe, is an essential step for capturing radiation and converting it into a different form of energy to make food. Until now, melanin’s biological role in fungi – if any – had been a mystery. Interestingly, the melanin in fungi is no different chemically from the melanin in our skin, leading Casadevall to speculate that melanin could be providing energy to skin cells.

And radiation-munching fungi could be on the menu for future space missions. “Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets,” noted Dadachova.

Hong Kong – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange blasted the mainstream media, Washington, banks and the Internet itself as he addressed journalists in Hong Kong on Monday via videolink from house arrest in England.

The Internet itself had become “the most significant surveillance machine that we have ever seen,” Assange said in reference to the amount of information people give about themselves online. (photo: Andrew Winning, Reuters) Fresh from accepting a top award for journalism from the prestigious Walkley Foundation in his native Australia on Sunday, Assange spoke to the News World Summit in Hong Kong before keeping a regular appointment with the police.

He defended his right to call himself a journalist and said WikiLeaks’ next “battle” would be to ensure that the Internet does not turn into a vast surveillance tool for governments and corporations.

“Of course I’m a goddamn journalist,” he responded with affected frustration when a moderator of the conference asked if he was a member of the profession.

He said his written record spoke for itself and argued that the only reason people kept asking him if he was a journalist was because the United States’ government wanted to silence him.

“The United States government does not want legal protection for us,” he said, referring to a US Justice Department investigation into his whistle-blower website for releasing secret diplomatic and military documents.

The former hacker criticised journalists and the mainstream media for becoming too cosy with the powerful and secretive organisations they were supposed to be holding to account.

In a 40-minute address, he also accused credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard of illegally cutting WikiLeaks off from funding under a secret deal with the White House.

“Issues that should be decided in open court are being decided in back rooms in Washington,” he said.

The Internet itself had become “the most significant surveillance machine that we have ever seen,” Assange said in reference to the amount of information people give about themselves online.

“It’s not an age of transparency at all … the amount of secret information is more than ever before,” he said, adding that information flows in but is not flowing out of governments and other powerful organisations.

“I see that really is our big battle. The technology gives and the technology takes away,” he added.

The anti-secrecy activist then help up a handwritten sign from an aide telling him to “stop” talking or he would be late for a mandatory appointment with police.

Assange, 40, is under house arrest in England pending the outcome of a Swedish extradition request over claims of rape and sexual assault made by two women. He says he is the victim of a smear campaign.

In August 2010, while searching for an officer’s stolen handgun, Harrisburg police seized tens of thousands of dollars in cash from Antoine Black’s home on Logan Street.

Black is claiming in a federal lawsuit that the cops should have left that money alone, especially since they didn’t find the missing gun in his house or charge him with a crime.
money.jpgThe Patriot-NewsAntoine Black contends that nearly $43,000 was seized and that he received only $28,980 back.

He is arguing that the seizure of the cash, which authorities unsuccessfully sought to forfeit by attempting to link it to drug dealing, violated his constitutional rights.

The 42-year-old Black also claims authorities didn’t return all the money they took after an arbitration board appointed by Dauphin County Court rebuffed the forfeiture request in March. He contends that nearly $43,000 was seized and that he received only $28,980 back.

City spokesman Robert Philbin declined to discuss Black’s U.S. Middle District Court case.

District Attorney Edward M. Marsico Jr., whose office lost the forfeiture action against Black’s money, insisted that officers had solid legal grounds to confiscate the cash.

Evidence of drug activity found in the home justified the seizure, even though criminal charges weren’t filed against Black after the August 2010 search, Marsico said.

County court records show that at the time of the search, Black was facing an unrelated drug possession charge filed by city police in connection with a June 2010 traffic stop.

Marsico said the amount of money seized from Black’s home was over-estimated initially and that the $28,980 figure is accurate. All cash that was taken was given back to Black after the arbitration ruling, he said.

In his federal suit against the city and its police, Black claims police searched his home for the police officer’s stolen gun based on incorrect information from an informant. The gun in question, plus other police gear, had been taken from the officer’s parked car.

During the search, police took $13,940 from a purse in his home and $29,000 that was in a Tastykake box on the third floor, Black claims.

Black’s lawyer in the federal suit, Robert S. Mirin, said he had not asked Black why he had so much cash in the house.

“He feels he is owed this money,” Mirin said of Black’s reason for suing. “He feels there are civil rights issues also.”

Black, who seeks more than $75,000 in damages, contends in the suit that his family was “greatly upset” by what he argues was an unjustified search and seizure.

Marsico said the money seizure was justified because cocaine residue was found in Black’s home during the failed hunt for the gun.

The forfeiture petition his office filed for the cash indicated that such residue was detected on a scale and in plastic bags in the house. Marsico said the cash itself also tested positive for drug residue.

Officers therefore had legal grounds to impound Black’s money even though the search warrant was only issued regarding a search for the stolen police pistol, Marsico said. In such cases, he said, officers can react to illegal activity they see that is not specified in a warrant.

The presence of that much cash in Black’s house would not alone have been enough to justify its seizure since it isn’t illegal to have large amounts of currency in your abode, said Wesley Oliver, an associate professor at Widener Law School’s Susquehanna Township campus.

Even drug residue on the bills wouldn’t have provided enough justification, he said, because “30 [percent] to 40 percent of the cash in America is tainted with cocaine.”

However, Oliver said the cash seizure could be justified by other evidence of illegal drug activity at the site.

Black is pursuing his federal suit while battling the criminal charges in his Dauphin County Court drug possession case.

In that case, Harrisburg police claim they pulled him over for a traffic violation and found 30 bags of crack cocaine in a car he was driving. Black is scheduled for trial in the drug case in December.

A garlanded picture of a young woman stares out into the emptiness of an abandoned house. The small building in India’s south-eastern state of Andhra Pradesh was once home to a family of four. But everything changed the evening that Laxmi Narayan found his 20-year-old daughter, Monica, on fire. Unable to cope with the grief, and the constant reminders of what happened, the family decided to move in with relatives.

Monica’s family had borrowed about 50,000 rupees ($1,100) from a microfinance company. However, unable to make the repayments, the family say they were harassed and humiliated by recovery agents from the lender. One evening last October, agents told Monica’s parents that the young woman should be sold to pay off the loan. For Monica, it was the final insult. She poured kerosene over herself and set herself alight.Narayan says he tried desperately to save her. The scars on his face and hands are a permanent reminder of his failure to do so.

Microcredit, in which small loans are typically given to the very poor – mostly women – to help them generate their own incomes, was once hailed as the solution to global poverty. Yet for many of the rural poor, such schemes have become more like a death trap, including in Andhra Pradesh where micro financing was tied to at least 80 suicides in the state last year.

The problem for many in rural areas is that they are ill-serviced by mainstream banks, and even when big banks are present, many find the application process too challenging.But while microfinance schemes were meant to offer hope to the poor, they have frequently been the source of exploitation, with some institutions charging interest rates as high as 50 percent. It’s stories like that of Monica that have put microfinance under the spotlight in India – and created the worst ever crisis of confidence in the industry.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. The United Nations declared 2005 the international year of microcredit. In 2006, Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At the time, Yunus said boldly that microcredit had the potential to create a world in which poverty could only be seen in a museum.

But less than half a decade later, microfinance is fighting for survival. In Andhra Pradesh, known as a hub of micro credit, debt repayments from the state’s about 8 million micro-borrowers have dropped to around 20 percent following a government crackdown in response to the large number of suicides.

The microfinance crisis is reminiscent of the 2008 subprime mortgage meltdown in the United States, where companies handed out easy loans to higher risk homebuyers who suddenly found they couldn’t repay their debts when house prices crashed.

* Parents say it’s better for Thomas to have sex change before he is adult

The lesbian parents of an 11-year-old boy who is undergoing the process of becoming a girl last night defended the decision, claiming it was better for a child to have a sex change when young.

Thomas Lobel, who now calls himself Tammy, is undergoing controversial hormone blocking treatment in Berkeley, California to stop him going through puberty as a boy.

But Pauline Moreno and Debra Lobel warn that children with gender identity disorder forced to postpone transitioning could face a higher risk of suicide.

The mothers say that one of the first things Thomas told them when he learned sign language aged three – because of a speech impediment – was, ‘I am a girl’.

At age seven, after threatening genital mutilation on himself, psychiatrists diagnosed Thomas with gender identity disorder. By the age of eight, he began transitioning.

This summer, he started taking hormone-blocking drugs, which will stop him from experiencing puberty.

The hormone-suppressant, implanted in his upper left arm, will postpone the 11-year-old developing broad shoulders, deep voice and facial hair.

The couple faced intense criticism from friends and family as a result, Ms Moreno told MailOnline.

‘Everybody was angry with us. “How could you be doing this? You might be ruining his whole life!”

Citing a statistic from the Youth Suicide Prevention Program, Ms Moreno noted over 50 per cent of transgender youth will have had at least one suicide attempt by their 20th birthday.

And ignoring their son’s incessant pleas, she said, simply was not worth the risk.

‘What is so frightening to me is that you would be willing to say “no” just because you don’t like it – even though your child could lose their life?’

Her son’s adolescent transition, she hopes, will help him have a less conflicted adulthood.

‘The whole idea now is let’s stop creating a third (gender) that is neither one thing or the other, so we transitioned her,’ said Ms Moreno.

‘The protocol now is to transition these children as soon as you can make a diagnosis, because otherwise they end up being not one thing or the other… because they experienced puberty.’

Ms Moreno recalled the first step of Thomas’ transition to becoming female by letting him pick his own clothes.

He favoured headbands to baseball hats and picked out bras and dresses to start wearing when given choice in clothing to wear. And the change in his personality, Ms Moreno says, was instant.

‘He was in his own world just completely detached and that was a problem we always had was getting Thomas to participate in life,’ she said. ‘What we saw emerge when Tammy was allowed to be Tammy is, “Whoa!”… It was an immediate transformation. She was so giggly and she was now interacting she was now making it a point to defend herself.’

The diagnosis has been hard to accept for Tammy’s parents.

The couple were married in 1990 by a rabbi and have two older sons and grandchildren. But they insist their sexuality has nothing to do with it.

‘It was odd to us,’ she said. ‘Even though she has lesbians as parents, this is all new to us in every possible way. We know what it’s like to feel different – we’ve got that one. But to feel like you’re not in the right body was just something we could not put our heads around.’

Fortunately, the family has a vast support system. The couple credits Tammy’s teachers and officials at Children’s Learning Center in Alameda, California, and their religious community, for being open-minded about their son’s decision.

‘We live in the Bay area where lots of alternative lifestyles are in place… and we belong to a religious community that was incredibly supportive. They make it a point when we’re in synagogue to come over and tell Tammy, “Oh, you look so pretty today,’ Ms Moreno said, adding, ‘There’s never going to be enough gratitude for them.’

His parents say the hormone treatment will give him time to figure out if he wants to fully transition to being female or go through puberty as a boy.

If he chooses to stop taking the drugs, he will undergo natural male puberty at a later stage and his future fertility would not be impacted.

Should their son decide to transition to an adult female, he can take female hormones as well, which would raise his voice, allow him to grow breasts and develop other feminine physical characteristics.

San Francisco, right by Berkeley, is one of four cities in the United States with a hospital that has a program for transgender children.

The University of California San Francisco is home to the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health.

Children are seen at length by mental health professionals and then treated by pediatric endocrinologists.

Others cities with youth programs are Boston, Seattle and Los Angeles.

Until Wednesday night.

It’s hard to describe just how epic the Red Sox’ collapse was — something on the order of Mr. Buckner’s play multiplied by itself two or three times over. Numbers and graphics may do the most adequate job.

This is a chart, from FanGraphs.com, showing the Red Sox’ probability of winning their game against the Orioles on Wednesday night. According to FanGraphs, it peaked at 95.3 percent, when the Orioles had two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the ninth inning.

That’s probably an underestimate, in fact. FanGraphs tracks these numbers on a play-by-play basis, but not a pitch-by-pitch basis, and the Orioles’ Chris Davis was down to his final strike. Moreover, the Red Sox had Jonathan Papelbon on the mound, one of baseball’s most unhittable pitchers. A more realistic estimate might have been that the Orioles had about a 2 percent chance of coming back at that point. (By comparison, the Red Sox’ chances of winning Game 6 of the 1986 World Series had peaked at about 99 percent.)

And that is only part of the story. More unlikely still was the Rays’ comeback against the Yankees, without which the Red Sox would have had an opportunity to redeem themselves in a one-game playoff. Trailing 7-0 in the 8th inning, the Rays’ winning chances were all the way down to 0.3 percent — about 300-to-1 against — before they scored 6 runs in the bottom of the inning.

Although the rally revived the Rays, giving them about a 15 percent chance of winning, they were in nearly as much trouble in the 9th, after Ben Zobrist and Casey Kotchman made outs to start the inning, bringing their odds back down to 4.2 percent, according to FanGraphs.

This, however, also understates the magnitude of the Rays’ accomplishment. Like Chris Davis in Baltimore, the Rays’ Dan Johnson had two strikes against him. Granted, he wasn’t facing Jonathan Papelbon (or Mariano Rivera, whom the Yankees held out of the game). But Johnson was hitting just .108 on the season — and had just 1 hit in 45 at bats with a two-strike count. A 2 percent chance of a comeback at that point would be a generous estimate.

But Johnson poked Cory Wade’s pitch around the fair side of the right field foul pole, tying the score. Then in the 12th inning, Evan Longoria hit a home run that was virtually its mirror image, but this one to left field, winning the game for the Rays just moments after the Red Sox had lost theirs.

The following is not mathematically rigorous, since the events of yesterday evening were contingent upon one another in various ways. But just for fun, let’s put all of them together in sequence:

•The Red Sox had just a 0.3 percent chance of failing to make the playoffs on Sept. 3.

•The Rays had just a 0.3 percent chance of coming back after trailing 7-0 with two innings to play.
•The Red Sox had only about a 2 percent chance of losing their game against Baltimore, when the Orioles were down to their last strike.
•The Rays had about a 2 percent chance of winning in the bottom of the 9th, with Johnson also down to his last strike.
Multiply those four probabilities together, and you get a combined probability of about one chance in 278 million of all these events coming together in quite this way.

When confronted with numbers like these, you have to start to ask a few questions, statistical and existential.

The statistics that Web sites like FanGraphs use, for instance, usually assume that that outcome of each game or at-bat is independent of the next one. They don’t account for things like streaks or clutch hitting, above and beyond what arises naturally from random chance.

That’s probably a good assumption under most circumstances. There are volumes of literature suggesting that the notion of clutch performance is vastly overrated in baseball and in most other sports — and that what we think of as streaks are usually just tricks that random numbers are playing upon us.

But perhaps there is an exception once in a while — I’ll spare you the lecture about Bayes’ theorem — and this may have been one of them.

There is some evidence, for instance, that the Red Sox’ pitchers may have “choked” in key situations during the final few weeks of the season to a degree that withstands some statistical scrutiny. Their bullpen, also, was extremely fatigued, as their starters averaged only 4.2 innings per start in September.

One should also have the license in situations like these to turn to various divine and karmatic explanations. I have a couple of these.

First, perhaps the baseball that unfolded on Wednesday evening — which also featured a dramatic and season-ending collapse by the Atlanta Braves — was God’s way of telling Bud Selig that baseball ought not add an extra wild card, which would have rendered yesterday’s games relatively meaningless.

The second explanation involves Mr. Buckner.

On Sept. 4, the day after the Red Sox’ playoff probability peaked, H.B.O. aired an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” The show is the brainchild of Larry David, the creator of Seinfeld.

In the episode, “Mister Softee”, Mr. Buckner was featured prominently. Jeered by Red Sox fans everywhere he went, he dropped a baseball autographed by Mookie Wilson out a window. But he restored his reputation after catching a baby dropped from a burning building.

Since the Red Sox’ curse already seemed to have been lifted after 2004, Mr. Buckner’s redemption was superfluous: a case of two 180-degree rotations turning the Red Sox’ karma all the way back around. From the day that the episode aired, the Red Sox went 6-18.

The program was fiction, of course. But you couldn’t have scripted what happened last night. And Mr. David is a Yankees fan.