Oldest Malaysian dies

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s oldest woman has died at the age of 113, a news report said on Saturday. Lim Khoo Chai died peacefully in her sleep at a hospital in northern Malaysia on Friday, The Star newspaper reported. “We didn’t expect her to go so soon,” her granddaughter Chin Suan Choo, 28, was quoted as saying. “All of us thought she was going to live for at least another 10 years.” Lim was born on July 5, 1891. — AP

16 held in Citibank scam

PUNE: Police have arrested 16 people in western India for allegedly cheating four Citibank customers out of nearly $350,000, a police officer said on Saturday. Three former Citibank employees at a call centre in the western city of Pune and 13 associates were charged with misusing financial data and illegally withdrawing money from the accounts of the New York-based customers, said Sanjay Jadhav, an assistant commissioner of police. — AP

40,000 evacuated

JAKARTA: More than 40,000 people living beneath the volcanic shadow of Mount Talang in western Indonesia have been evacuated as it continued spewing hot ash on Saturday, officials said. Around 43,100 residents from seven subdistricts had fled the slopes of the 2,572 metres volcano on Sumatra island since it began spewing ashes on Tuesday, said Mas Ace Purbawinata of the Vulcanology Office. — AFP

Mom drowns five kids, self

NEW DELHI: A 28-year-old housewife drowned herself and five children after a dispute with her husband over his plans to sell their farm in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, officials said on Saturday. Sundari Devi jumped into a well with her four daughters aged three-10 years and seven-month-old son late on Friday in Sikar district, the United News of India said. — AFP

Shell explodes, 2 killed

BANGKOK: Two people, including a 13-year-old boy, were killed in southern Thailand on Saturday when an artillery shell they had stolen exploded as they tried to extract the bronze inside, police said. Nuson Siwlim, 30, and teenager Chawapong Dejthongdam were killed and another boy injured in the Sadao district of Songkhla province after the boys stole M-79 shells from a border patrol police base where live-fire exercises are conducted, a local officer said.

— AFP