The prospect of ever hearing from the stuck Mars rover Spirit is fading after it failed to respond to repeated calls from Earth.

Despite the dismal outlook, NASA will make a last-ditch effort to communicate with Spirit, which fell silent a little over a year ago. If there's still no contact in the next month or so, the space agency will scale back its listening campaign for Spirit and focus on its healthy twin, Opportunity.

That Spirit has not called home suggests that something is more seriously wrong than just a power issue, said program manager John Callas at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The solar-powered rover became bogged in a sand trap in April 2009 during a routine drive. Despite efforts to wiggle free, it remained stuck and could not tilt itself toward the sun as the Martian winter approached. Without an adequate amount of energy reaching its solar panels, it went into hibernation last March.

Engineers had expected Spirit to wake up once there was maximum sunlight where it's trapped. But summer solstice in southern Mars came and went earlier this month with no response.

An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper to sell as scrap when she accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to all of neighbouring Armenia, it emerged on Wednesday.

The woman, 75, had been digging for the metal not far from the capital Tbilisi when her spade damaged the fibre-optic cable on 28 March.

As Georgia provides 90% of Armenia's internet, the woman's unwitting sabotage had catastrophic consequences. Web users in the nation of 3.2 million people were left twiddling their thumbs for up to five hours as the country's main internet providers - ArmenTel, FiberNet Communication and GNC-Alfa – were prevented from supplying their normal service. Television pictures showed reporters at a news agency in the capital Yerevan staring glumly at blank screens.

Large parts of Georgia and some areas of Azerbaijan were also affected.

"It was a 75-year-old woman who was digging for copper in the ground so that she could sell it for scrap," said a spokesman for Georgia's interior ministry said yesterday.

Dubbed "the spade-hacker" by local media, the woman – who has not been named – is being investigated on suspicion of damaging property. She faces up to three years in prison if charged and convicted.

A spokesman for Georgia's interior ministry said the woman was temporarily released "on account of her old age" but could face more questioning.

The damage was detected by a system monitoring the fibre-optic link from western Europe and a security team was immediately dispatched to the spot, where the woman was arrested. The interior ministry said she had no accomplices.

The cable is owned by the Georgian railway network. It is heavily protected, but landslides or heavy rain may have exposed it to scavengers.

Pulling up unused copper cables for scrap is a common means of making money in the former Soviet Union. Some entrepreneurs have even used tractors to wrench out hundreds of metres of cable from the former nuclear testing ground at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan.

A billboard promoting AMC’s zombie hit The Walking Dead has sparked a controversy in the UK after an advertising company posted the display on the side of a funeral home. The banner — which includes the tagline “What makes us human?” — brandishes the show’s Walking Dead title visible to the bereaved as they approach the store to make arrangements for their loved ones. Here’s what the scene looks like: