French elections under threat of voter apathy

PARIS -- The top contenders in today's presidential contest in France have plenty to worry about. A record number of candidates and widespread voter apathy are threatening the prospects of rivals Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac.

Polls have predicted that Jospin and Chirac would be the top finishers in the election's first round on Sunday. But both candidates may find they need to cut distasteful deals with political foes in order to win the second round of the presidential race on May 5.

Extremists have also gained ground amid the voter apathy and one could emerge as a surprise power broker. Among them are Arlette Laguiller of the hard left Worker's Struggle and Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right, National Front.

At least 13 dead after school in Peru collapses

LIMA, Peru -- A university preparatory school collapsed in a southern Peruvian city, killing at least 13 people and injuring as many as 30, officials said Saturday.

Firefighters continued searching the rubble of the three-story building for more victims of Friday's collapse in the city of Puno, about 500 miles southeast of Lima.

Puno fire chief Rolando Benavente said Saturday that rescuers expect to find more victims in the rubble.

"The first thing I felt were the windows crashing down," 17-year-old survivor Mariana Ortega told reporters at a nearby hospital were she was treated for wounds.

"I only saved myself because I was near the door," she said.

At least some victims were students in their late teens preparing to enter universities.

Historian unearths 17th century book on women

LONDON -- A historian in northern England says he has found a 370-year-old book proclaiming that women are better than men, a volume he calls an early voice for women's empowerment.

Alan Davies, heritage officer in Wigan, outside Manchester, said he found the 182-page book under a pile of papers in a town hall vault, where he had been hunting for something else. The book, called "Womans Worth," carries the subtitle "A treatise proveinge by sundrie reasons that woemen do excell men."

No author's name is given. Davies said the antiquated spellings and writing style and the binding appeared to date the book to the 1630s or '40s.

Britain's oldest man dies at age 109

LONDON -- Britain's oldest man, a member of the country's increasingly exclusive club of people who have lived during three centuries, has died at the age of 109, his caregivers said Friday.

Fred Moore died April 14 at the home for the elderly where he lived in New Milton, Hampshire, in southern England.

A spokesman for the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed that Moore, born Nov. 21, 1892, had been the oldest man in Britain and said it was not clear who would be the new holder of the title.

-- From wire reports