Acid attack on U.S. students not terror act
PARIS — Four American college students were attacked with acid Sunday at a train station in France, but French authorities so far do not think extremist views motivated the 41-year-old woman who was arrested as the alleged assailant, the local prosecutor’s office and the students’ school said.
Boston College, a private Jesuit university in Massachusetts, said in a statement Sunday that the four female students were treated at a hospital for burns after they were sprayed in the face with acid in the city of Marseille. The statement said the four all were juniors studying abroad, three of them at the college’s Paris program.
Police in France described the suspect as “disturbed” and said the attack was not thought at this point to be terror-related, according the university’s statement.
A spokeswoman for the Marseille prosecutor’s office told The Associated Press in a telephone call that the suspect did not make any extremist threats or declarations during the late morning attack at the city’s Saint Charles train station.
Captive priest freed
ILIGAN, Philippines — A Roman Catholic priest who was held hostage for months by Islamic State-inspired militants in the war-torn southern city of Marawi has been freed, the Philippine military said Sunday, as it moved closer to rooting out the remaining gunmen from their strongholds.
The Rev. Teresito Suganob was rescued late Saturday by troops who cleared a mosque that militants had been using as a defensive post, authorities said.
No information was immediately available about Mr. Suganob’s condition or that of another hostage, a teacher.
Mr. Suganob was among dozens of civilians taken hostage on May 23 as gunmen from militant groups affiliated with the Islamic State began a citywide assault on Marawi, the Philippines’ only predominantly Muslim city.
Pakistan’s close race
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Voters in the longtime stronghold of Pakistan’s ruling party signaled they were looking for change Sunday, when the main opposition candidate did unexpectedly well although losing the race to fill the parliamentary seat of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Mr. Sharif was ousted by the country’s Supreme Court in July after a legal battle over charges that he and his family had hidden their wealth in overseas real estate. His wife, Kulsoom Nawaz, hospitalized in London with lymphoma, won the race in absentia as the candidate from his Pakistan Muslim League-N party.
But after a day marred by vote-rigging charges and physical clashes at polling stations, opposition candidate Yasmin Rashid, a medical doctor from the liberal Pakistan Movement for Justice, made a surprisingly strong showing. Returns showed the candidates running neck and neck all evening, but by 10 p.m., with all 220 polling stations counted, Ms. Nawaz had pulled ahead to defeat Mr. Rashid by about 13,000 votes.
Still, many analysts said, the relatively close margin was in itself an astounding and historic upset.
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Turkey has announced an overhaul of more than 170 topics in the country’s school curriculum, including removing all direct references to evolution from high school biology classes. The upcoming changes have caused uproar, with critics calling them a reshaping of education along the conservative, Islam-oriented government’s line.