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Jonski - ostatnia ofiara powstania warszawskiego. http://lodz.gazeta.pl/lodz/1,35153,11649831,Dariusz_Jonski_ostatnia_ofiara_Powstania_Warszawskiego.html

Gazeta Wyborcza, about the biggest newspaper in Poland has an interesting approach: current online content is free, archive is paid. You can search it, get a short blurb of found articles but to access them in full, you have to purchase access to the archive, about $5/hour, or more expensive options like monthly etc.

from a local newspaper (in Polish):
http://miasta.gazeta.pl/lodz/1,35136,4830800.html

In short:
Boy not only had the device for controlling the switches but also had set of keys, manual etc.
He admitted derailing eight trams in the past.
He had been previously noted for severe anti-social and criminal acts (vandalism, an attempt of stealing a car, an attempt of setting a fire, threatening his father).
There were two cases against him for these acts in a local juvenile court in progress.

The juvenile court has decided to put him in detention ("juvenile shelter") until the final decision is taken.

----

As it has previously been noted, the tram network in Lodz is old, fairly large and was designed when nobody was concerned about such problems. Because of its bad condition some derailments were probably assigned to other causes.

Just to clarify: according to the MPK in Lodz (City Transport Company) oldest trams currently in service are 805Na's from latter 1970's. And yes, as far, as I recognize the wrecks, they're the same model.

I know nearly nothing about tram systems and their design, but AFAIR, 15 years ago all of switches, I have seen in Poland, were operated manually with something like a long, steel (or iron) rod. So, the automatic switching systems have to be fairly new or, at least, from fairly new generation.

The system in Lodz is IR-based.

You can see the picture of the crashed trams here http://miasta.gazeta.pl/lodz/51,35134,4823174.html?i=0 At the moment, total 12 people were injured due to derail accidents caused by this boy, with first 'hack' happening somewhere back in December. At first, mechanical failure was suspected, but after the second accident police was informed. In addition to infrared device, boy also had stolen access keys, which allowed him to enter both trams and the tram-company warehouse. It turned out that he was actually on board of the trams he was derailing - in front of first cars, to be able to influence the switch with remote.
There are some protections against switching the rail while tram is on top of them, but they were implemented only in few areas of the city. Reason for not putting them everywhere is that neither city nor tram company is not feeling responsible - tracks are owned by city and only leased to tram company. City on the other hand says that company gets special discounts which should be spent for maintaining the tracks...
Currently the boy is in correction institute for young criminals and he will spend there 3 months. Depending on the further development of the case and his behavior during those 3 months, court will decide about his future. This boy already had some problems in the past and he had curator/warden(?) assigned to him. He was often missing school.

I know some kids who are extremely bright, curious, and for lack of a better description, "like to experiment". (...) I actually think (and hope) this kid's imagination and curiosity somehow gets channeled rather than squashed.

A Polish article, contrary to what is written in the one to which Slashdot links, mentions that:

14 y.o. Adam had already posed educational (forming) problems before the accident; he was playing truant frequently and had a juvenile probation officer over him.

According to the same article, Adam will be put for 3 months in a juvenile hall. After that period, psychologists will issue an opinion on him and his behaviour. It will affect the court's decision on the kid's future. I don't live in Lodz myself, so I cannot do anything more then just translating articles which appear in central newspapers and portals.

PS: Also, the city's name is not Lodz - see it on Wikipedia. Slashdot should really adopt Unicode.

According to a Polish newspaper (http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/Wiadomosci/1,80273,4829593.html) he was on the tram and indeed switched it in the middle

Those astronomers are Polish! http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/1,53600,313 1417.html

IBM is expanding in Poland, hiring almost 200 people in Cracow alone, and so are
many other big name companies like Motorolla, KPMG, Lufthansa, 3M, Phillips:

http://miasta.gazeta.pl/krakow/1,35798,2689839.htm l

everyone in europe is moving to Poland, its as nice as Ireland, just as many drunks
but much cheaper, people are educated, and lots of beautifull clean land.

--
/apz, Don't kid yourself. Little is relevant, and nothing lasts forever.

Polish biggest newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, has been offering its own RSS aggregator for a few months. And they've been marketising it outside the Internet, which surprised me -- I've seen ads placed on city buses, for example.

Polish biggest newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, has been offering its own RSS aggregator for a few months. And they've been marketising it outside the Internet, which surprised me -- I've seen ads placed on city buses, for example.

There are *only* 240 000 names on that list because it's far from being completed. Leon Kieres, head of Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) estimates that completed list will count abount 1.5 MILION of names. Of course, names of spies, would-be spies and their victims, not spies alone (source: article from Gazeta Wyborcza).

Please also note that name 'spy' used in this news is a bit misleading. They were not James Bond-style spies, they were actually called 'secret collaborators' and most of them spied upon their oppositionist friends, family etc. I suppose in any post-communist their numbers were that high if not higher.

There is an article in one of polish most important newspapers, the Gazeta Wyborcza.
This article claims, that one of the forces behind Mr Marcinski's mission was polish ex-Prime Minister Professor Jerzy Buzek, currently in European Parliament.
Sadly, the same article informs us that probably Poland will accept the directive in January, under the presidency of Luxembourg. Polish diplomats are afraid that voting against the directive at this late stage would endanger polish interest in other fields, where Poland fears that other countries would act similarly, withdrawing already voiced approvals. Example of such field is the REACH package. Nonetheless Mr Jerzy Buzek and Mr Adam Gierek will try to make some amendments to the directive that would clarify that software is not patentable.
So, we won a battle, but war is probably lost anyway - we can only try to limit the scale of our defeat.
The link to the article [in Polish]
Unfortunately you don't have Polish->English option in babelfish.altavista.com

rwerp@gazeta.pl? or: rwerp@gazeta.pl?

It is worth remembering that the Concorde was not the only supersonic airliner. The Soviets built the Tupolev 144.