Photojournalism
Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism that employs images in order to tell a news story. It is now understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term refers to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography by complying with a rigid ethical framework which demands that the work be both honest and impartial whilst telling the story in journalistic terms. Photojournalists create pictures that contribute to the news media, help communities connect with one other. Photojournalists must be well informed and knowledgeable about events happening right outside their door, they deliver news in a creative format, not only informative, but entertaining. Timeliness The images have meaning in the context of a published record of events. Objectivity The situation implied by the images is a fair and accurate representation of the events they depict in both content and tone. Narrative The images combine with other news elements to make facts relatable to audiences.
Like a writer, a photojournalist is a reporter, but he or she must make decisions and carry photographic equipment while exposed to significant obstacles. The practice of illustrating news stories with photographs was made possible by printing and photography innovations that occurred in the mid 19th century. Although early illustrations had appeared in newspapers, such as an illustration of the funeral of Lord Horatio Nelson in The Times, the first weekly illustrated newspaper was the Illustrated London News, first printed in 1842; the illustrations were printed with the use of engravings. The first photograph to be used in illustration of a newspaper story was a depiction of barricades in Paris during the June Days uprising taken on 25 June 1848. During the Crimean War, the ILN pioneered the birth of early photojournalism by printing pictures of the war, taken by Roger Fenton. Fenton was the first official war photographer and his work included documenting the effects of the war on the troops, panoramas of the landscapes where the battles took place, model representations of the action, portraits of commanders, which laid the groundwork for modern photojournalism.
Other photographers of the war included Carol Szathmari. The American Civil War photographs of Mathew Brady were engraved before publication in Harper's Weekly. Disaster, including train wrecks and city fires, was a popular subject for illustrated newspapers in the early days; the printing of images in newspapers remained an isolated occurrence in this period. Photos were used to enhance the text rather than to act as a medium of information in its own right; this began to change with the work of one of the pioneers of photojournalism, John Thomson, in the late 1870s. In collaboration with the radical journalist Adolphe Smith, he began publishing a monthly magazine, Street Life in London, from 1876 to 1877; the project documented in photographs and text, the lives of the street people of London and established social documentary photography as a form of photojournalism. Instead of the images acting as a supplement to the text, he pioneered the use of printed photographs as the predominant medium for the imparting of information combining photography with the printed word.
On March 4, 1880, The Daily Graphic published the first halftone reproduction of a news photograph. In March 1886, when General George Crook received word that the Apache leader Geronimo would negotiate surrender terms, photographer C. S. Fly attached himself to the military column. During the three days of negotiations, Fly took about 15 exposures on 8 by 10 inches glass negatives, his photos of Geronimo and the other free Apaches, taken on March 25 and 26, are the only known photographs taken of American Indians while still at war with the United States. Fly coolly posed his subjects, asking them to move and turn their heads and faces, to improve his composition; the popular publication Harper's Weekly published six of his images in their April 1886 issue. In 1887, flash powder was invented, enabling journalists such as Jacob Riis to photograph informal subjects indoors, which led to the landmark work How the Other Half Lives. By 1897, it became possible to reproduce halftone photographs on printing presses running at full speed.
In France, agencies such as Rol and Chusseau-Flaviens syndicated photographs from around the world to meet the need for timely new illustration. Despite these innovations, limitations remained, many of the sensational newspaper and magazine stories in the period from 1897 to 1927 were illustrated with engravings. In 1921, the wirephoto made it possible to transmit pictures as as news itself could travel; the "Golden Age of Photojournalism" is considered to be the 1930s through the 1950s. It was made possible by the development of the compact commercial 35mm Leica camera in 1925, the first flash bulbs between 1927 and 1930, which allowed the journalist true flexibility in taking pictures. A new style of magazine and newspaper appeared; the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung was the first to pioneer the format of the illustrated news magazine. Beginning in 1901, it began to print photographs inside a revolutionary innovation. In the su
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was an energy accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima Prefecture, initiated by the tsunami following the Tōhoku earthquake on 11 March 2011. After the earthquake, the active reactors automatically shut down their sustained fission reactions. However, the ensuing tsunami disabled the emergency generators that would have provided power to control and operate the pumps necessary to cool the reactors; the insufficient cooling led to three nuclear meltdowns, hydrogen-air explosions, the release of radioactive material in Units 1, 2 and 3 from 12 to 15 March. Loss of cooling raised concerns over the loaded spent fuel pool of Reactor 4, which increased in temperature on 15 March due to the decay heat from the freshly added spent fuel rods but did not boil down to exposure. On 5 July 2012, the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission found that the causes of the accident had been foreseeable, that the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, had failed to meet basic safety requirements such as risk assessment, preparing for containing collateral damage, developing evacuation plans.
On 12 October 2012, TEPCO admitted for the first time that it had failed to take necessary measures for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants. The Fukushima disaster was the most significant nuclear incident since the 26 April 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the second disaster to be given the Level 7 event classification of the International Nuclear Event Scale; as of September 2018, one cancer fatality was the subject of a financial settlement, to the family of a former station workman. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation and World Health Organization report that there will be no increase in miscarriages, stillbirths or physical and mental disorders in babies born after the accident. Controversially, an estimated 1,600 deaths are believed to have occurred in the elderly, who had earlier lived in nursing homes, due to the resultant poor ad hoc evacuation conditions. There is an ongoing intensive Fukushima disaster cleanup program to both decontaminate affected areas and decommission the plant, which the plant management estimate will take some 30 or 40 years.
A frozen soil barrier has been constructed in an attempt to prevent further contamination of seeping groundwater, slowing down the amount of contaminated water, collected. TEPCO estimates that the barrier is reducing water flows by about 95 tonnes a day compared to 2016; the water collected is treated and all radioactive elements are removed, except for tritium. In February 2017, TEPCO released images taken inside Reactor 2 by a remote-controlled camera that show there is a 2-meter wide hole in the metal grating under the pressure vessel in the reactor's primary containment vessel, which could have been caused by fuel escaping the pressure vessel, indicating a meltdown/melt-through had occurred, through this layer of containment. Radiation levels of about 210 Sv per hour were subsequently detected inside the Unit 2 containment vessel; these values are in the context of undamaged spent fuel which has typical values of 270 Sv/h, after 10 years of cold shutdown, with no shielding. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant comprised six separate boiling water reactors designed by General Electric and maintained by the Tokyo Electric Power Company.
At the time of the Tōhoku earthquake on 11 March 2011, Reactors 4, 5, 6 were shut down in preparation for re-fueling. However, their spent fuel pools still required cooling. After the earthquake, the electricity-producing Reactors 1, 2, 3 automatically shut down their sustained fission reactions by inserting control rods in a legally-mandated safety procedure referred to as a SCRAM, which ends the reactors' normal running conditions; as the reactors were unable to generate power to run their own coolant pumps, emergency diesel generators came online, as designed, to power electronics and coolant systems. These operated nominally until the tsunami destroyed the generators for Reactors 1–5; the two generators cooling Reactor 6 were undamaged and were sufficient to be pressed into service to cool the neighboring Reactor 5 along with their own reactor, averting the overheating issues the other reactors suffered. The largest tsunami wave was 13 meters high and hit 50 minutes after the initial earthquake, overwhelming the plant's seawall, 10 m high.
The moment of impact was recorded by a camera. Water flooded the low-lying rooms in which the emergency generators were housed; the flooded diesel generators failed soon afterwards, resulting in a loss of power to the critical coolant water pumps. These pumps were needed to continuously circulate coolant water through the Generation II reactors for several days to keep the fuel rods from melting, as the fuel rods continued to generate decay heat after the SCRAM event; the fuel rods would become hot enough to melt during the fuel decay time period if an adequate heat sink was not available. After the secondary emergency pumps ran out, one day after the tsunami on 12 March, the water pumps stopped and the reactors began to overheat; as workers struggled to supply power to the reactors' coolant systems and restore power to their control rooms, a number of hydrogen-air chemical explosions occurred, the first in Unit 1 on 12 March, the last in Unit 4, on 15 March. It is estimated that the hot zirconium fuel cladding-water reaction in Reactors 1–3 produced 800 to 1000 kilograms of hydrogen gas each
Jean-Luc Mélenchon
Jean-Luc Antoine Pierre Mélenchon, is a French politician that has served as a member of the National Assembly since 2017. After joining the Socialist Party in 1976, he was successively elected municipal councillor of Massy, general council or of the Essonne departement and Senator of the same department, he served as Minister for Vocational Education between 2000 and 2002, under Minister of National Education Jack Lang, in the cohabitation government of Lionel Jospin. He was part of the left-wing of the Socialist Party until the Reims Congress of 2008, at the outcome of which he left that party to found the Left Party with Marc Dolez, a member of the National Assembly, he served as the president of the party, as its co-president until August 2014. As leader of the Left Party, he joined the electoral coalition of the Left Front before the 2009 European elections, was elected as a member of the European Parliament in the South-West constituency, he was the candidate of that coalition in the 2012 presidential election, in which he came in fourth, receiving 11.1% of the first-round votes.
He founded the movement La France Insoumise in February 2016. He stood as a candidate in the 2017 presidential election "outside the frame of political parties", again coming in fourth, with 19.58% of the first-round votes. In June 2017 he became a member of the National Assembly for La France Insoumise after the following 2017 French legislative election, receiving 59.85% in the 4th constituency of the Bouches-du-Rhône department located in the city of Marseille. Jean-Luc Mélenchon was born in Morocco, his father, was a postmaster of Spanish descent, his mother, Jeanine Bayona, was a primary school teacher of Spanish and Sicilian descent. He grew up in Morocco, until his family moved to France in 1962. Mélenchon was educated at the public school Lycée Pierre-Corneille in the city of Rouen, Normandy. With a degree in philosophy from the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon, having gained the CAPES, he became a teacher before entering politics. Jean-Luc Mélenchon left Besançon to enter professional life in Lons-le-Saunier, joined the Socialist Party in September 1976.
He soon assumed local and departmental responsibilities, developed a federal newspaper that fought for a union between PS and the French Communist Party. It was at this time that the latter broke the agreements of the union of the left on a joint program of government, he came to the attention of Claude Germon, mayor of Massy and member of the executive office of the PS responsible for the business section. Without stable work after his application was rejected at the Croix du Jura newspaper, he was hired by Claude Germon to become his private secretary, he became one of the leading Mitterrandist leaders of the Essonne federation, which led him to the position of first secretary of this federation at the Valence Congress in 1981. He positioned himself both against the "Second left" of Michel Rocard and the "Centre of socialist studies and education" of Jean-Pierre Chevènement, he was elected senator during the senatorials of 1986. At the Reims Congress, in September 2008, the political current "Trait d'union", created after the victory of the "No" in the French European Constitution referendum of 2005, Mélenchon made a new contribution.
On the eve of the filing of the motions, an agreement was reached between the seven contributions of the left wing of the PS, Jean-Luc Mélenchon was one of the signatories of the motion C entitled "A world of advance", led by Benoît Hamon. He described this gathering as a "historic event": For the first time, this motion brought together all the sensibilities of the left wing of the PS, with emblematic personalities like Gérard Filoche, Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, Paul Quilès. On 6 November 2008, the Socialist militants voted to decide between 6 motions; the motion supported by Ségolène Royal led with about 29% of the votes cast, while the one led by Benoît Hamon came in fourth with 18.5%. For Jean-Luc Mélenchon, it is a victory of the outgoing majority, which carries 80% of the votes and, among them, the motion advocating the alliance in the center. Believing themselves too far from this trend to the point that it would not be useful to take part in the congress, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marc Dolez announced on 7 November their decision, "by fidelity to their commitments", for their independence of action, to leave the Socialist Party, to create a new movement "without concession facing the right".
They announced "the construction of a new left-wing party" called the "Left Party", called for "the constitution of a left-wing front for the European elections". On 18 November, in a meeting with the French Communist Party, the two parties announced their alliance in the form of a "partnership", within the framework of a "left front for another democratic and social Europe, against the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon and the current European Treaties"; the launch meeting of the Left Party is held on 29 November in Saint-Ouen, in the presence of Die Linke's co-chairman, Oskar Lafontaine. Mélenchon was the candidate representing the Left Front in the 2012 French presidential election, he took fourth place and achieved 11.10% of the vote, trailing behind François Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy, M
Left Front (France)
The Left Front was a French electoral alliance and a political movement created for the 2009 European elections by the French Communist Party and the Left Party when a left-wing minority faction decided to leave the Socialist Party, the Unitarian Left, a group which left the New Anticapitalist Party. The alliance was subsequently extended for the 2010 regional elections and the 2012 presidential election and the subsequent parliamentary election. In 2012, its constituent parties were, in addition to the two aforementioned parties, the Unitarian Left, the Federation for a Social and Ecological Alternative and Socialism, Convergences and Alternative, the Anticapitalist Left, the Workers' Communist Party of France and The Alternatives; the Left Front was born as an electoral coalition between the French Communist Party and the Left Party for the 2009 European elections. The PCF's support had declined in years prior to the formation of the Left Front, it hit a historic low in the 2007 presidential election, in which the PCF candidate, national secretary Marie-George Buffet, won 707,268 votes The Left Party was founded in 2008 by Socialist Party senator Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a longtime leader of the PS' left-wing.
Mélenchon, followed by PS deputy Marc Dolez quit the PS in the wake of the Reims Congress, criticizing the PS' alleged shift towards economic liberalism. The PCF's strategy since 2003 had been to reach out to social movements, trade unions, left-wing activists, the plethora of small left-wing parties to the left of the PS Olivier Besancenot's New Anticapitalist Party. In October 2008, again at the PCF's XXXIV Congress in December 2008, the PCF issued a call for the creation of a "civic and progressive front"; the PCF's call was intended for parties such as the PG, but the NPA or Jean-Pierre Chevènement's Citizen and Republican Movement. Although Besancenot was not receptive to participation in the new PCF-PG alliance, a significant dissenting minority within the NPA, led by Christian Picquet's Unitarian Left, supported such a common list and split from the NPA to join the new Left Front. Negotiations with Chevènement's MRC failed, but a pro-alliance minority split from the MRC to create Republic and Socialism and endorse the Left Front.
The Federation for a Social and Ecological Alternative, The Alternatives and the far-left Workers' Struggle rejected partaking in the alliance. Out of the seven constituencies in which the FG nominated lists, three were led by members of the PCF, three by members of the PG, while one was led by someone unaffiliated with either party; the lists included PCF members, PG members and figures from social movements or political associations. East: Hélène Franco Île-de-France: Patrick Le Hyaric Massif Central: Marie-France Beaufils North-West: Jacky Hénin Overseas: The Left Front supported the Alliance of the Overseas list led by Élie Hoarau South-East: Marie-Christine Vergiat, former leader of the Ligue des droits de l'homme South-West: Jean-Luc Mélenchon West: Jacques Généreux For the European elections, the Left Front proposed: to ban market-based layoffs for companies which make profits a European minimum wage equal to 60% of the average salaries in each EU country a minimum wage at €1,700 per month in France a maximum wage at €360,000 per year and which cannot be more than 20 times the minimum wage in that company to protect and improve public services to fight for new rights for workers and the unemployed the right to a full retirement at 60 to abandon the Treaty of Lisbon The Left Front and the Alliance of the Overseas won a combined 1,115,021 votes, improving by 0.59% on the PCF's 2004 result.
In all, they elected 5 MEPs. 2 of them were members of the PCF, one from the PG, one independent and one from the Reunionese Communist Party. East: 3.89% Île-de-France: 6.32% Massif Central: 8.07% North-West: 6.84% Overseas: 21.01% South-East: 5.90% South-West: 8.15% West: 4.58% Nationally, the FG performed better than Besancenot's NPA, which obtained 840,833 votes and no seats. While the PCF's Marie-George Buffet appraised the result as "satisfying" and called on the continuation and expansion of the FG, the PG lamented the left's disunity by noting that a common list with the NPA could have won over 11% and up to 12 seats. All components of the FG pronounced themselves in favour of a continuation and expansion of the alliance for the 2010 regional elections, with the intention of attracting other left-wing parties; the PCF, PG, GU announced, in a joint statement, their intention to create a permanent liaison committee for the FG, build a shared platform with the goal of entrenching the FG as a political force.
Negotiations with the NPA, once again, failed. The NPA demanded no alliances with the PS in the runoff and rejected participation in any PS-led regional executive, whereas the PCF supported second round alliances with the PS; the FG ran autonomous and independent lists in the first round in 17 out of 22 regions in metropolitan France and Corsica. In 5 regions however, PCF members voted against the formation of autonomous lists and opted to back the P
Sevran
Sevran is a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 16.2 km from the center of Paris. Sevran is located northeast of the Boulevard Périphérique; as of 2013 the origins of over half of its resident are from outside France. The largest ethnic backgrounds within the foreign origins are from sub-Saharan Africa and Morocco. In 2013 The Economist stated that Sevran was one of the poorest areas of the Paris Metropolitan Area; as of 2013 36% of the residents are considered to be below the poverty line. The national average is 12%. About 75% of Sevran's residents live in subsidized housing; the article cites research that says "somebody called Mohamed, Ali or Kamel is four times more to be unemployed than somebody named Philippe or Alain." Sevran is home to an important music and dance school, the Espace François Mauriac known as the conservatoire de Sevran. Many important French and international musicians have taught there, including Claude Ballif, Allain Gaussin and Vincent Decleire.
The French famous rapper Kaaris is from Sevran, born to parents from Côte d'Ivoire. Women are unofficially banned from public spaces by men in some areas of Sevran and will not receive service in bars or cafés. Authorities turn a blind eye. Sevran is served by two stations on Paris RER line B: Sevran -- Sevran -- Beaudottes. Schools: 15 public preschools: 16 public primary schools: 1 private preschool: École maternelle Sainte-Agnès/École élémentaire Sainte-Agnès Junior high schools: Collège Evariste Galois, Collège Georges Brassens, Collège Paul Painlevé, Collège La Pléïade Senior high school/sixth-form college: Lycée Blaise Cendrars Communes of the Seine-Saint-Denis department INSEE Official website
Environmental movement
The environmental movement including conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of resources and stewardship of the environment through changes in public policy and individual behavior. In its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology and human rights; the environmental movement is an international movement, represented by a range of organizations, from the large to grassroots and varies from country to country. Due to its large membership and strong beliefs, speculative nature, the environmental movement is not always united in its goals; the movement encompasses some other movements with a more specific focus, such as the climate movement. At its broadest, the movement includes private citizens, religious devotees, scientists, nonprofit organizations and individual advocates. Early interest in the environment was a feature of the Romantic movement in the early 19th century.
The poet William Wordsworth had travelled extensively in the Lake District and wrote that it is a "sort of national property in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy". The origins of the environmental movement lay in the response to increasing levels of smoke pollution in the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution; the emergence of great factories and the concomitant immense growth in coal consumption gave rise to an unprecedented level of air pollution in industrial centers. Under increasing political pressure from the urban middle-class, the first large-scale, modern environmental laws came in the form of Britain's Alkali Acts, passed in 1863, to regulate the deleterious air pollution given off by the Leblanc process, used to produce soda ash; the modern conservation movement was first manifested in the forests of India, with the practical application of scientific conservation principles. The conservation ethic that began to evolve included three core principles: that the human activity damaged the environment, that there was a civic duty to maintain the environment for future generations, that scientific, empirically based methods should be applied to ensure this duty was carried out.
Sir James Ranald Martin was prominent in promoting this ideology, publishing many medico-topographical reports that demonstrated the scale of damage wrought through large-scale deforestation and desiccation, lobbying extensively for the institutionalization of forest conservation activities in British India through the establishment of Forest Departments. The Madras Board of Revenue started local conservation efforts in 1842, headed by Alexander Gibson, a professional botanist who systematically adopted a forest conservation program based on scientific principles; this was the first case of state management of forests in the world. The government under Governor-General Lord Dalhousie introduced the first permanent and large-scale forest conservation program in the world in 1855, a model that soon spread to other colonies, as well the United States. In 1860, the Department banned the use shifting cultivation. Dr. Hugh Cleghorn's 1861 manual, The forests and gardens of South India, became the definitive work on the subject and was used by forest assistants in the subcontinent.
Sir Dietrich Brandis joined the British service in 1856 as superintendent of the teak forests of Pegu division in eastern Burma. During that time Burma's teak forests were controlled by militant Karen tribals, he introduced the "taungya" system, in which Karen villagers provided labour for clearing and weeding teak plantations. He helped establish research and training institutions; the Imperial Forestry School at Dehradun was founded by him. The late 19th century saw the formation of the first wildlife conservation societies; the zoologist Alfred Newton published a series of investigations into the Desirability of establishing a'Close-time' for the preservation of indigenous animals between 1872 and 1903. His advocacy for legislation to protect animals from hunting during the mating season led to the formation of the Plumage League in 1889; the society acted as a protest group campaigning against the use of great crested grebe and kittiwake skins and feathers in fur clothing. The Society attracted growing support from the suburban middle-classes, influenced the passage of the Sea Birds Preservation Act in 1869 as the first nature protection law in the world.
For most of the century from 1850 to 1950, the primary environmental cause was the mitigation of air pollution. The Coal Smoke Abatement Society was formed in 1898 making it one of the oldest environmental NGOs, it was founded by artist Sir William Blake Richmond, frustrated with the pall cast by coal smoke. Although there were earlier pieces of legislation, the Public Health Act 1875 required all furnaces and fireplaces to consume their own smoke. Systematic and general efforts on behalf of the environment only began in the late 19th century. Starting with the formation of the Commons Preservation Society in 1865, the movement championed rural preservation against the encroachments of industrialisation. Robert Hunter, solicitor for the society, worked with Hardwicke Rawnsley, Octavia Hill, and
2012 French presidential election
A presidential election was held in France on 22 April 2012, with a second round run-off held on 6 May to elect the President of France. The incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy was running for a second successive and, under the terms of the constitution, final term in the election; the first round ended with the selection of François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy as second round participants, as neither of them received a majority of votes cast in the first round. Hollande won the runoff with 51.64% of the vote to Sarkozy's 48.36%. The presidential election was followed by a legislative election in June. More than 46 million people were eligible to vote. François Hollande received 51.64% of the votes, while Nicolas Sarkozy secured 48.36% of the votes in the second round. Sarkozy became the first one-term president since Valéry Giscard d'Estaing lost to François Mitterrand in 1981; the 2011 French Socialist Party presidential primary was the first open primary, jointly held by the French Socialist Party and Radical Party of the Left for selecting their candidate for the 2012 presidential election.
Voters had to sign a pledge to the values of the Left to be eligible. The filing deadline for primary nomination papers was fixed on 13 July 2011 and six candidates competed in the first round of the vote. On election day, 9 October 2011, no candidate won at least 50% of the vote therefore the two candidates with the most votes contested a runoff election on 16 October 2011: François Hollande won the primary, defeating Martine Aubry; the idea for holding an open primary to choose the Socialist Party candidate was suggested in 2008 by the left-leaning think tank Terra Nova. Europe Écologie–The Greens held a primary to choose its candidate; the vote was open of the Independent Ecological Movement. There were four candidates; the first round was held on 29 June 2011. Eva Joly, a member of EELV and a former examining magistrate, obtained 49.75% of the vote, ahead of independent candidate and environmental campaigner Nicolas Hulot. The other two candidates, Henri Stoll and Stéphane Lhomme, obtained 5.02% and 4.44% respectively.
The second round was held on 12 July, with Eva Joly obtaining 13,223 votes to Hulot's 9,399. In order to qualify for the first round of voting, a candidate had to collect the signatures of at least five hundred elected representatives among a total of more than 47,000; the number of signatures per candidate is not released, but five hundred signatories for each candidate are chosen randomly and their names are published. Ten candidates qualified in 2012: The official campaign began on 20 March, but in the wake of the shooting at the Ozar Hatorah day school in Toulouse the two leading candidates and Sarkozy, suspended their campaigns. Although Jean-Luc Mélenchon argued that to continue with the campaign was "an act of moral and intellectual resistance." In some parts of the media, Sarkozy and Le Pen were criticised for misusing the Midi-Pyrénées shootings as campaign fodder against "radical Islam."The following is a brief overview of the campaign adapted from information in Le Monde. François Hollande, the candidate of the Socialist Party and the Radical Party of the Left, topped the opinion polls throughout the campaign.
He emphasised his promise to be a "normal" president, in contrast to Nicolas Sarkozy's sometimes controversial presidential style. He aimed to resorb France's national debt by 2017, notably by cancelling tax cuts for the wealthy and tax exemptions introduced by President Sarkozy. Income tax would be raised to 75% for incomes beyond one million euros. Homosexual couples would have the right to adopt. Residents without European Union passports would be given the right to vote in local elections after five years of legal residency. On housing, he has promised to regulate rises in rent. Hollande won the election, finishing first on the first balloting of ten candidates in April with 28.63% of the vote, again finishing first on the runoff ballot between himself and Sarkozy with 51.64% against Sarkozy's 48.36%. Nicolas Sarkozy, the incumbent president and candidate of the Union for a Popular Movement, was aiming for a second and last term in office, he was second in opinion polls throughout the campaign, behind François Hollande.
His reforms during his first term included a reform of universities, of the retirement age. He argued. Sarkozy's campaign pledges for his potential second term are described by Le Monde as "anchored on the right", he has promised to reduce legal immigration by 50%.
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