Syria’s Assad sweeps ‘non-election’: US

(Damascus) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has won a new seven-year term with nearly 90 percent of the vote but Washington said the “non-election” changed nothing and activists said it would spell only more war. Tens of thousands took to the streets in government-held areas even before the results were announced, waving portraits of Assad and the official Syrian flag.
Celebratory gunfire erupted in the capital and in loyalist areas across Syria. At least 10 people were killed as the bullets fell back to earth, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
In opposition-held areas where no election was held on Tuesday, activists reacted with the Arab Spring slogan of 2011 that has been the rally cry of their uprising “The people want the fall of the regime.”