• The 89-year-old, from Sussex, said she couldn't keep up with modern life
• She claimed new technology had ruined face-to-face human relationships
• She was neither terminally ill nor disabled, but ended life at Swiss clinic
• Case is likely to stoke ongoing debate over the right to die

A retired art teacher committed suicide at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland after she grew weary of the pace of modern life and how technology was changing society.

The 89-year-old felt that her failing health, as well as her belief that people were becoming 'robots' attached to their gadgets, gave her little reason to live.

The woman, who wanted to be known only as Anne, had suffered from worsening health in recent years, but was neither terminally ill nor disabled.

Her case will stoke the ongoing debate over balancing a right to die against the dangers that vulnerable people could be exploited.

A Republican U.S. senator added his voice Wednesday to critics of a federal cattle roundup fought by a Nevada rancher who claims longstanding grazing rights on remote public rangeland about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas

Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada said he told new U.S. Bureau of Land Management chief Neil Kornze in Washington, D.C., that law-abiding Nevadans shouldn't be penalized by an "overreaching" agency.

Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval pointed earlier to what he called "an atmosphere of intimidation," resulting from the roundup and said he believed constitutional rights were being trampled.

Heller said he heard from local officials, residents and the Nevada Cattlemen's Association and remained "extremely concerned about the size of this closure and disruptions with access to roads, water and electrical infrastructure."

The federal government has shut down a scenic but windswept area about half the size of the state of Delaware to round up about 900 cattle it says are trespassing.

Tensions are growing as people in the community of Bunkerville are trying to stop federal agents from taking cattle off of public land.

During a Wednesday's night town meeting, community members came out in force to support rancher Cliven Bundy. They gave him a standing ovation when he got up to speak.

"I love you people. And I love this land, and I love freedom and liberty," Bundy told the crowd.

"I want to tell you and thank you for being brave enough to stand up for me, for my freedom, for my liberties and my land," Overton area resident Kelly Houston said.

"I openly, publicly and personally say: I stand with the Bundys," Overton area resident Laura Bledsoe said.

Resident not only showed support for the Bundy family, they also condemned the federal government for what they called heavy-handed tactics.

When the French clock off at 6pm, they really mean it A new labour agreement in France means that employees must ignore their bosses' work emails once they are out of the office and relaxing at home - even on their smartphones

Just in case you weren't jealous enough of the French already, what with their effortless style, lovely accents and collective will to calorie control, they have now just made it illegal to work after 6pm.

Well, sort of. Après noticing that the ability of bosses to invade their employees' home lives via smartphone at any heure of the day or night was enabling real work hours to extend further and further beyond the 35-hour week the country famously introduced in 1999, workers' unions have been fighting back. Now employers' federations and unions have signed a new, legally binding labour agreement that will require staff to switch off their phones after 6pm.

Unions representing private sector workers and state employees in Greece launched a 24-hour nationwide general strike on Wednesday against the austerity measures put through by the government.

Called by Greece's umbrella unions ADEDY and GSEE, the industrial action disrupted trains and ferries, as well as public services. Hospitals were operating on skeleton staff and pharmacies were scheduled to close for the day. Teachers, prison staff and court employees were also participating in the strike.

Thousands of protesters marched through central Athens in the planned demonstrations. Police said at least 6,000 people participated, carrying banners and chanting anti-austerity slogans in the initial demonstration from central Klafthmonos Square to the Greek parliament. Hundreds more held another rally at Omonoia Square, called by Communist-affiliated labor union PAME.

The Greek labor unions said that they are seeking an end to the painful policies imposed by successive governments to secure international bailout loans after Greece came close to bankruptcy in 2010.

New labour laws in France now make it illegal for workers in the digital and consultancy sectors - including the French offices of Google, Facebook, Deloitte and PwC - to respond to work emails after 6pm. Staff will be ordered to switch off their professional phones, and companies must ensure that their employees come under no pressure to look at work-related emails or documents on their tablets or computers.

France's strict labour laws saw Apple fined for making staff in France work nightslast year, as the law forbids shifts between 9pm and 6am unless the work plays an important role in the economy or is socially useful. Its 35-hour week, introduced in 1999, has come under threat from the increasingly widespread use of smartphones.

Chairman of the General Confederation of Managers, Michel de la Force, said: "We must also measure digital working time. We can admit extra work in exceptional circumstances but we must always come back to what is normal, which is to unplug, to stop being permanently at work."

Sometimes the news is just so drearily awful that you have to sit back and almost appreciate the pure comedy induced by it.

Take this item from Washington, Iowa, where the local police have recently acquired an MRAP vehicle (short for Mine Resistance Ambush Protected) through a Defense Department program that donates excess vehicles originally produced for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to local police departments across the United States, including other Iowa towns such as Mason City and Storm Lake.

The MRAP weighs an impressive 49,000 pounds, stands 10-feet tall, and possesses a whopping six-wheel drive. Originally designed to resist landmines and IEDs, it sure seems like the MRAP will come in handy for the notorious war zone otherwise known as Washington County, Iowa.

If you're having a bad day, I highly recommend watching a video produced by the Des Moines Register in which Washington police officials try to justify the possession of a vehicle it clearly has no use for. The excuses range from school shootings (which are an actual concern but an MRAP seems like overkill) to a terrorist attack happening in central Iowa (because if there's any place that seems ripe for a high-profile terrorist attack it's Washington, Iowa, population 7,000).

I mean if the police were realistic, they could come up with actual reasons to use their MRAP/machine of doom. Drunken high-school house parties could be broken up by ramming the MRAP into the side of the building. Clearly, people who have been trying to curtail underage drinking have not seriously considered the serious deterrents to slamming down a few Hamms in your parents' house caused by a soulless war machine demolishing your kitchen.

Well-known physicist Michio Kaku and other members of the American Physical Society asked Congress to appropriate $100 million to harden the country's electrical grid against solar flares. As shown below, such an event is actually the most likely Armageddon-type event faced by humanity.

Congress refused.

Kaku explains that a solar flare like the one that hit the U.S. in 1859 would - in the current era of nuclear power and electric refrigeration - cause widespread destruction and chaos.

Not only could such a flare bring on hundreds of Fukushima-type accidents, but it could well cause food riots globally.

Kaku explains that relief came in for people hit by disasters like Katrina or Sandy from the "outside". But a large solar flare could knock out a lot of the power nationwide. So - as people's food spoils due to lack of refrigeration - emergency workers from other areas would be too preoccupied with their own local crisis to help. There would, in short, be no "cavalry" to the rescue in much of the country.

In fact, NASA scientists are predicting that a solar storm will knock out most of the electrical power grid in many countries worldwide, perhaps for months. See this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

Nevada's governor is criticizing a federal cattle roundup and what he calls "intimidation" in a dispute with a rancher who claims longstanding grazing rights on open range outside Las Vegas.

Federal Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service officials didn't immediately respond Wednesday to Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval's call for the BLM to "reconsider its approach."

Sandoval says he's most offended that federal officials have tried to corral people protesting the roundup into a "First Amendment area."

Federal officials say 277 cows have been rounded up since Saturday from a 1,200-square-mile area that it has closed to the public for the operation about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

For 20 years, a tough-as-leather Nevada rancher and the federal government have been locked in a bitter range war over cattle grazing rights.

This weekend the confrontation got worse, when the feds hired contract cowboys to start seizing Cliven Bundy's cattle, which have been grazing on public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The government officials brought a show of force that included dozens of armed agents in SUVs and helicopters.

Bundy, 67, who has been a rancher all his life, accuses BLM of stampeding over on his rights.