A WOMAN died on Friday in northern Egypt at the age of 137, according to local authorities, thus laying claim to having been the world’s longest-living person. Amina Hassabo, who died in a village in the Daquahliya governate in the Nile delta was born in 1864, according to government services. According to the Al-Wafd daily, she saw a doctor just once in her life, complaining merely of being hard of hearing. Hassabo would therefore easily pass the age record held, according to the Guinness Book of Records, by Jeanne Calment of France, who died in 1997 at the 122. There are frequent claims of record-breaking age survival, which remain hard to verify, given the difficulty in tracing birth records. The Egyptian deceased was born just one year after Ismail Pasha came to power in Egypt, before inaugurating the Suez canal in 1869 with the Empress Eugenie (wife of Napoleon III), the Emperor of Austria and the crown prince of Prussia. – AFP