MINSK: A woman believed to be the oldest in the world celebrated her 116th birthday on May 5 in the former Soviet republic of Belarus. “I’ll drink to my own health with pleasure,” said Hanna Barysevich, a former farm worker who lives in a house outside the Belarusian

capital Minsk. “I’m tired of living already, but God still hasn’t collected me,” she said with a smile. Barysevich was born on May 5, 1888, in the village of Buda, 37 miles east of Minsk, according to her passport. Her parents were poor, landless peasants. “From my early childhood I didn’t know anything but physical labor,” said Barysevich, who never learned to read or write.