Briefly

SYRIA

Assad wins 4th term with 95 percent of vote

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad won a fourth term in office with 95.1 percent of the votes in an election that will extend his governance over a country ruined by a 10-year civil war. Head of parliament Hammouda Sabbagh announced the results at a news conference on Thursday, saying voter turnout was around 78 percent, with more than 14 million Syrians taking part. The win delivers Assad, 55, seven more years in power. In Damascus, rallies with thousands of people waving Syrian flags and holding pictures of Assad while singing and dancing took place all day on Thursday in celebration of the presidential election.

RWANDA

Macron acknowledges French genocide role

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday recognized his country's role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, as the two countries seek to turn the page on decades of diplomatic tensions over the bloodshed. While Macron did not formally apologize, he highlighted how France had backed the genocidal Hutu regime of the time, ignored warnings of impending massacres and joined the world in abandoning some 800,000 mostly Tutsi Rwandans to a grisly fate.

Agencies Via Xinhua