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Israel

After Seven Years In Coma, Ariel Sharon Shows "Degree Of Consciousness"

REUTERS,

BEERSHEBA - Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has been in a coma for seven years, has surprised doctors by showing brain activity and a "certain degree of consciousness" for the first time since his debilitating stroke.

The extent of the 84-year-old's response is still limited as he cannot move any muscle, though he had his eyes open during a visual exam using family pictures. The equipment also detected signs of his brain responding to his son Gilad’s voice, Reuters reported.

Sharon had displayed no sign of brain activity since his Jan 2006 stroke that upended Israeli politics in the midst of an election campaign, after the former hawkish general had vowed to begin pulling Israel out of the West Bank.

Alon Friedman, neurological director at Israel’s Soroka Medical center in Beersheba stated that the exams, which began Thursday, were “encouraging,” but added that “the chances of him getting out of bed are very, very slim,” reported Reuters.

Haaretz noted that the doctors hope that the extensive monitoring of Sharon can be used in research on the different degrees of consciousness of those in long-term vegetative states.

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Ariel Sharon in 2004, Wikipedia

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Society

Big Brother For The People: India's CCTV Strategy For Cracking Down On Police Abuse

"There is nothing fashionable about installing so many cameras in and outside one’s house," says a lawyer from a Muslim community. And yet, doing this has helped members of the community prove unfair police action against them.

A woman is walking in the distance while a person holds a military-style gun close up

Survellance and tight security at the Lal Chowk area in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India on October 4, 2022

Sukanya Shantha

MUMBAI — When sleuths of the National Investigating Agency suddenly descended on human rights defender and school teacher Abdul Wahid Shaikh’s house on October 11, he knew exactly what he needed to do next.

He had been monitoring the three CCTVs that are installed on the front and the rear of his house — a chawl in Vikhroli, a densely populated area in suburban Mumbai. The cameras told him that a group of men and women — some dressed in Mumbai police’s uniform and a few in civil clothes — had converged outside his house. Some of them were armed and few others with batons were aggressively banging at the door asking him to immediately let them in.

This was not the first time that the police had landed at his place at 5 am.

When the policemen discovered the CCTV cameras outside his house, they began hitting it with their batons, destroying one of them mounted right over the door. This action was captured by the adjacent CCTV camera. Shaikh, holed up in his house with his wife and two children, kept pleading with the police to stop destroying his property and simply show them an official notice.

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