World IN BRIEF : FRANCE : Fierce Storm Leaves at Least 13 Dead

A fierce storm with winds gusting to 104 m.p.h. battered northern France, killing at least 13 people and forcing a Pan Am jetliner to abort a takeoff after howling winds tore a six-foot gash in one of the wings, authorities said. At Chartres in the Loire region, the winds ripped a dozen copper strips from the roof of the city’s 12th-Century Gothic Notre Dame de Chartres cathedral, leaving two huge holes over the nave. Nine of the dead were in the Paris region, most of them victims of falling trees and flying debris. A 50-year-old man in Finistere was blown to his death while repairing a television antenna on his roof.