Small Bits of News

Schoolboy hacker derails Poland's tram network
A 14-year-old boy who hacked into a Polish tram system used it like "a giant train set", causing chaos and derailing four vehicles. The 14-year-old, adapted a television remote control so it could change track points in the city of Lodz. Twelve people were injured in one derailment, and the boy is suspected of having been involved in several similar incidents.
The teenager, who was not named by police, told them he had changed the points for a prank. Miroslaw Micor, a spokesman for Lodz police, said: "He studied the trams and the tracks for a long time and then built a device that looked like a TV remote control and used it to maneuver the trams and the tracks. He had converted the television control into a device capable of controlling all the junctions on the line.

Lucky man escape death as train rolls over him while sleeping
An Australian man had a miracle escape when a train rolled over him as he slept between railway tracks. The 20-year-old was having a snooze on the sleepers between the tracks when the train approached him in the early hours of Thursday morning at Port Augusta, in South Australia State.
The driver spotted the man and tried to brake but the locomotive could not halt in time. The train rolled over the man, who was lying in a slight dip, leaving him relatively unscathed, police said. Local reports said he was believed to be drunk and train operator Freightlink said he was lucky to be alive. "It was probably lucky he was lying in such a way that the train actually went over him, rather than across him," Freightlink general manager Tony Aldridge said adding it was "not the best place" to take a nap.