A judge in Australia has ruled that a 12-year-old girl may begin the first step in getting a sex change. That’s quite a drastic life altering decision to make for someone who hasn’t even entered puberty. How old do you have to be to get a tattoo in Australia, 5?

It was reported yesterday that during a hearing in December, the court heard that the girl from Victoria had thought of herself as a boy since the age of four. Several medical experts, including a psychiatrist, backed her application for a sex change.

The judge said that while the initial treatment was reversible, it needed to be seen as the first step in a process which, if continued, would allow the girl to live as a man.

“In my view, and on all the evidence, the treatment is in [the child’s] best interests,” the judgment said.

Further court applications will have to be made if the child wants to take the process further. Surgery to remove her womb and ovaries or construct a penis cannot be performed before the age of 18.

A 14-year-old girl in San Diego is being charged with attacking her mother with a hammer. The woman, being identified as Becky D’Aoust, sustained head injuries that doctors are predicting will be fatal.

The identity of the girl was not made public. She was taken at police headquarters on suspicion of assault and, if her mother dies, she will be moved to juvenile hall on suspicion of murder, said Rooney.

The woman’s other daughter and her husband were sleeping in the house when a loud scream woke them up. Police arrived around 9 a.m. to find the 56-year-old mother in the kitchen with head injuries.

The woman was transported to Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego.

A 5-year-old boy riding his bike with his mother tried to cross rail tracks and was struck by a train he didn’t see.

The crossing gates were down at the time, but the boy may have thought it was safe to cross because a southbound train had passed the crossing moments before the northbound train arrived, said Pesaturo.

Garbarino’s death is believed to have been accidental, but state and transit police were still investigating last night. The boy’s family could not be reached for comment.

A 16-month-old girl in Greensboro, North Carolina, fell two stories from a balcony over the weekend, and miraculously survived.

[Tiffany Robertson, the girl’s mother] remembers the moment it happened… her 16-month-old daughter was right next to her when she slipped through the railing, going after a toy.

“She hit the cement, that’s all you heard was her head hit the cement,” says Robertson. The child dropped from the second story. “It could’ve killed her, yeah it could’ve killed her.”

The fall fractured part of Cordai Dearmon’s skull but left her with no other broken bones. Robertson hopes other parents will learn from what her daughter survived. “I want them to know it could’ve happened to them, watch their kids while they are playing. ‘Cause just a little inch you look that way they could be gone any second.”

How devastating. A 2-year-old boy hiking with his parents slipped under a railing on the slide of a trail and fell to his death.

Through an interpreter, the boy’s mother told police she was holding her child’s hand while walking between him and the rail overlooking the cliff when he suddenly pulled away from her, said Charlie Peek, spokesman for the N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation, which manages the park.

The boy ran, then slipped under the rail of the boardwalk along the Skyline Trail and fell more than 100 feet to the Cliff Trail below, Peek said.

Park officials don’t recommend those trails for families with small children because of the cliffs, a caution that is spelled out on trail maps given to visitors. But many families still take children on the trail.

Strong storms ripped through the Midwest over the weekend, generating strong tornadoes that killed 6 in Iowa and a toddler in Minnesota.

A tornado touched down at about 6 p.m. Sunday in the north-central Iowa town of Parkersburg before moving 10 miles east to New Hartford, said Bret Voorhees with the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Video shot Monday in Parkersburg showed homes reduced to scattered boards.

Streets were lined with huge piles of debris that included crumpled vehicles, uprooted trees and unidentifiable material that had been part of houses 24 hours earlier.

We saw footage of some of the damage, and it was eerie how the tornado seemed to pick and choose it’s victims, with one house being completely flattened while another next door looked untouched.

Hey, never heard this one before — a dog that parents are describing as a “pit bull” attacked a 13-month-old boy in his yard.

Katie and Jake Stockman say it was a parent’s worst nightmare. “My 4 year old yelled “dog!” and I turn around and this pit bull looking thing comes up and just knocks him over. It slams his head on the concrete, looks like he kind of grabs him along the leg area.”

They say the dog appeared in their neighborhood about once every month. But it wasn’t until this week they say the dog attacked.

The mother says she scooped up her son then slammed the door, leaving the dog outside.