Tuesday, November 24, 2009 BRUSSELS: A Belgian man diagnosed as comatose for 23 years was in fact awake and conscious the whole time, doctors have revealed.Rom Houben, 46, had no way to tell his family and doctors he could see them and hear what they were saying after waking up following a bad car accident in 1983. He spent more than two decades in excruciating isolation until a neurologist realised he was not in a coma just unable to communicate. The former engineering student and martial arts enthusiast, now 46, told German newspaper that he meditated to pass the long years trapped in his own body. He remains haunted by the moment he first woke from the accident and realised something was wrong. Mr Houbens is now in care in a hospital near Brussels and able to communicate through a computer.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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