Legislators in the US state of Vermont approved a "death-with-dignity" bill Monday enabling terminally ill patients to take their own lives with lethal medication requested from their doctors. The liberal-minded rural New England state becomes the third in the nation, after Oregon and Washington, to allow doctor-assisted suicide -- but the first to do so by legislative process rather than a voter-initiated referendum.

WINNIPEG - A Manitoba woman won her battle Thursday for the right to die on her own terms, with the help of a doctor, before she could be completely consumed by a disease that was robbing her of control over her body. Susan Griffiths, 72, died peacefully with some family members by her side at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, a friend confirmed. Switzerland is the only country that allows physician-assisted suicide for non-residents. Griffiths did not go quietly, though. She went public with her story in the hope that Canada may change its laws.

A Frenchwoman who has admitted drowning two of her own new-born children and storing the corpses in her freezer has been imprisoned and placed on suicide watch, judicial sources said Wednesday. The 32-year-old, identified as Ms C., has been in custody since Sunday, when the babies' bodies were discovered by police who had been called by her partner to their home in the town of Amberieu in eastern France.

Mexican forensic expert Alejandro Hernandez dips dry, yellowish cadavers in a see-through bath, hoping his technique to rehydrate mummified bodies will solve murders in crime-infested Ciudad Juarez. The city bordering Texas has endured drug-related violence and a wave of murders of women in recent years, with bodies dumped anywhere and drying up quickly in the desert climate, complicating the task of identifying victims and their cause of death.