Dmitry Medvedev

Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev born (14 September 1965) is the third and current President of the Russian Federation. He won the presidential election held on 2 March 2008 with 71.25% of the popular vote, and was inaugurated on 7 May 2008.
Medvedev was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government on 14 November 2005. Formerly Vladimir Putin's Chief of Presidential Staff, he was also the Chairman of Gazprom's board of directors, a post he had held for the second time since the year 2000. Medvedev's candidacy was backed by then President Vladimir Putin.
On 10 December 2007, he was informally endorsed as a candidate for the forthcoming presidential elections by the largest Russian political party, United Russia and several pro-presidential parties, and officially endorsed by United Russia on 17 December 2007. A technocrat and political appointee, Medvedev had never held elective office before 2008. As President, Medvedev has made economic modernisation one of his top agendas.

Early Life:

Dmitry Medvedev in 1967 at the approximate age of 2.

Dmitry Medvedev was born on 14 September 1965 in Leningrad, Soviet Union. His father, Anatoly Afanasyevich Medvedev (November 1926 — 2004), was an expert in chemical processing and taught at the Leningrad State Institute of Technology. Dmitry's mother, Yulia Veniaminovna Medvedeva (née Shaposhnikova, born 21 November 1939) had studied languages at Voronezh University and taught Russian at Herzen State Pedagogical University. Later she would also work as a tour guide at Pavlovsk Palace. The Medvedevs lived in a 40 m² apartment at 6 Bela Kun Street in the Kupchino district of Leningrad. Dmitry was his parents' only child. The Medvedevs were regarded as a fairly typical Soviet intelligentsia family of the time.
As a child, Medvedev was bookish and studious, described by his first grade teacher Vera Smirnova as a "dreadful why-asker". After school, he would only spend a short while playing with his friends before hurrying home to work with his assignments. At the third grade he studied the ten-volume Small Soviet Encyclopedia belonging to his father. In the second and third grades, he was very interested in dinosaurs and memorized all of Earth's geologic development periods, from the Archean up to the Cenozoic. In the fourth and fifth grades, he got interested in chemistry, enjoying conducting experiments; after that, he picked up sports, practicing three or four times a week. In the seventh grade, he became romantically involved with Svetlana Linnik, his future wife, who was studying at the same school on a parallel class. The romance negatively affected Medvedev's school performance. Medvedev calls the school's final exams in 1982 a "tough period when I had to mobilize my abilities to the utmost for the first time in my life."
Student Year and Academic Career:

In the autumn of 1982, the 17-year old Medvedev enrolled at the Leningrad State University in order to study law. Although he also considered studying linguistics, Medvedev later said he never regretted his choice, finding his chosen subject increasingly fascinating as his studies progressed, and said he was lucky "to have chosen a field that genuinely interested me and that was really my thing". Fellow students described Medvedev as a correct and diplomatic person, who in debates presented his arguments firmly but without offending his opponent. During his student years, Medvedev was a fan of the English rock bands Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. He was also fond of sports and participated in academic competitions in rowing and weight-lifting.
He graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987 (together with Ilya Yeliseyev, Anton Ivanov, Nikolay Vinnichenko and Konstantin Chuychenko, who later became his associates). After graduating, Medvedev considered joining the prosecutor’s office and becoming an investigator; however, he took an opportunity to pursue graduate studies as the civil law chair, Medvedev's specialisation, decided to accept three budget-funded post-graduate students to work later at the chair itself. In 1990, Medvedev defended his dissertation, titled "Problems of realisation of civil juridical personality of state enterprise" and received his Candidate of Sciences degree in private law.
Anatoly Sobchak, a major democratic politician of the 1980s and 1990s, was one of Medvedev's professors at the university. In 1988, Medvedev joined Sobchak's team of democrats and served as the de facto head of Sobchak's successful campaign for a seat in the new Soviet parliament, the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR.
After Sobchak's election campaign finished, Medvedev continued his academic career, getting a position of docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint Petersburg State University. There, he taught civil and roman law until 1999. According to one student, Medvedev was a popular teacher, "strict but not harsh". During his tenure, Medvedev co-wrote a popular three-volume civil law textbook which over the years has sold a million copies. Medvedev also worked at a small law consultancy firm which he had founded with his friends Ilya Yeliseyev and Anton Ivanov, to supplement his academic salary

Personal Life:

Medvedev is married and has a son named Ilya (born 1995). His wife, Svetlana Vladimirovna Medvedeva, was both his childhood friend and school sweetheart. They married several years after their graduation from secondary school in 1982.

Dmitry Medvedev and his wife Svetlana Medvedeva.

Medvedev is a devoted fan of English hard rock, listing Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, and Deep Purple as his favorite bands. He is a collector of their original vinyl records and has previously said that he has collected all of the recordings of Deep Purple. As a youth, he was making copies of their records, although these bands were then on the official state-issued blacklist. In February 2008, Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov attended a Deep Purple concert in Moscow together.
During a visit to Serbia, Medvedev received the Order of St. Sava for "his contribution to the unity of the world Orthodoxy and his love to the Serbian people", it is the highest award of the Serbian Orthodox church.
Despite a busy schedule, Medvedev always reserves an hour each morning and again each evening to swim and weight trains. He swims 1,500 meters (approximately one mile), twice a day. He also jogs, plays chess, and practices yoga. Among his hobbies are reading the works of Mikhail Bulgakov and he is also a fan of the Harry Potter books after asking JK Rowling for her autograph when they met during the G-20 London Summit in April 2009. He is also a fan of football and follows his hometown professional football team, FC Zenit Saint Petersburg. And since he has been living in Moscow he supports PFC CSKA Moscow as well.
Medvedev is an avid amateur photographer. In January 2010, one of his photographs was sold at a charity auction for 51 million rubles (US$1,750,000), making it one of the most expensive ever sold.
Medvedev keeps an aquarium in his office and cares for his fish himself. Medvedev owns a Neva Masquerade male cat named Dorofei. Dorofei used to fight with a cat belonging to Mikhail Gorbachev—who was Medvedev's neighbor—so the Medvedevs had to have Dorofei neutered.
Medvedev's reported 2007 annual income is $80,000, and he reported approximately the same amount as bank savings. Medvedev's wife reported no savings or income. They live in an upscale apartment house "Zolotye Klyuchi" in Moscow.
On the Runet, Medvedev is sometimes associated with the Medved meme, linked to padonki slang, which resulted in many ironical and satirical writings and cartoons that blend Medvedev with a bear. (The word medved means "bear" in Russian and the surname "Medvedev" is a patronymic which means "bear's"). Medvedev is familiar with this phenomenon and takes no offence, stating that the web meme has the right to exist.
Medvedev is competent in English, but due in part to protocol, he only speaks Russian in interviews

Presifdential Candidates:

Following his appointment as First Deputy Prime Minister, many political observers began to regard Medvedev as a potential candidate for the 2008 presidential elections, although Western observers widely believed Medvedev was too liberal and too pro-Western for Putin to endorse him as a candidate. Instead, Western observers expected the candidate to arise from the ranks of the so-called siloviki, security and military officials many of whom were appointed to high positions during Putin's presidency. The silovik Sergey Ivanov and the administrator-specialist Viktor Zubkov were seen as the strongest candidates. In opinion polls which asked Russians to pick their favourite successor to Putin from a list of candidates not containing Putin himself, Medvedev often came out first, beating Ivanov and Zubkov as well as the opposition candidates.
Many observers were surprised when on 10 December 2007, President Putin announced that Medvedev was his preferred successor. The announcement was staged on TV with four parties suggesting Medvedev's candidature to Putin, and Putin then giving his endorsement. The four pro-Kremlin parties were United Russia, Fair Russia, Agrarian Party of Russia and Civilian Power. United Russia held its party congress on 17 December 2007 where by secret ballot of the delegates, Medvedev was officially endorsed as their candidate in the 2008 presidential election. He formally registered his candidacy with the Central Election Commission on 20 December 2007 and said he would step down as chairman of Gazprom, since under the current laws, the president is not permitted to hold another post. His registration was formally accepted as valid by the Russian Central Election Commission on 21 January 2008. Describing his reasons for endorsing Medvedev, Putin said:

I am confident that he will be a good president and an effective manager. But besides other things, there is this personal chemistry: I trust him. I just trust him.

—Vladimir Putin

Personal Appointments:

On 8 May 2008, Dmitry Medvedev appointed Vladimir Putin Prime Minister of Russia as he had promised during his election campaign. The nomination was approved by the State Duma with a clear majority of 392–56, with only communist deputees voting against.
On 12 May 2008, Putin proposed the list of names for his new cabinet, which Medvedev approved. Most of the personnel remained unchanged from the times of Putin's presidency, but there were a couple of high-profile changes. Minister of Justice Vladimir Ustinov was replaced by Aleksandr Konovalov; Minister of Energy Viktor Khristenko was replaced with Sergei Shmatko; Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman was replaced with Igor Shchegolev and Vitaliy Mutko received the newly created position of Minister of Sports, Tourism and Youth policy. In the presidential administration, Medvedev replaced Sergei Sobyanin with Sergei Naryshkin as the head of the administration. Furthermore, the head of the Federal Security Service Nikolai Patrushev was replaced with Alexander Bortnikov.

All About Osama Bin Laden

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of al-Qaeda, the organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. He was a member of the wealthy Saudi bin Laden family and an ethnic Kindite.
Bin Laden was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation's lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. From 2001 to 2011 bin Laden was a major target of the War on Terror, which has resulted in a total of between 80,000 and 1.2 million civilian deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia between 2001 and 2007.
Bin Laden managed to remain in hiding during 3 U.S. presidential administrations. In April of 2011, United States President Barack Obama's was given intelligence about his seclusion at a private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. On April 29, 2011, the president authorized a raid that was ultimately carried out by members of the U.S. Navy SEALs in the early morning of May 2, 2011. The firefight that ensued resulted in fatal gunshot wounds to bin Laden's head and chest. Information found during the SEALs' intelligence sweeps of the compound is believed to have provided further intelligence about al-Qaeda. Shortly after his death, bin Laden's body was transported out to sea for burial, thus ending a manhunt that lasted nearly 12 years.
On May 6, 2011, al-Qaeda acknowledged his death and concurrently vowed to retaliate.

Name:
There is no universally accepted standard for transliterating Arabic words and Arabic names into English; bin Laden's name was most frequently rendered "Osama bin Laden". The FBI and CIA, as well as other U.S. governmental agencies, have used either "Usama bin Laden" or "Usama bin Ladin", both of which may be abbreviated as "UBL". Less common renderings include "Ussamah bin Ladin" and, in the French-language media, "Oussama ben Laden". Other spellings include "Binladen" or, as used by his family in the West, "Binladin". The decapitalization of bin is based on the convention of leaving short prepositions and articles uncapitalized in surnames; however, bin means "son" and is not a preposition or article. The spellings with o and e come from a Persian-influenced pronunciation also used in Afghanistan, where bin Laden spent many years.
The Arabic linguistic convention would be to refer to him as "Osama" or "Osama bin Laden", not "bin Laden" alone, as "bin Laden" is a patronymic, not a surname in the Western manner. In its expanded form, it means "Osama, son of Mohammed, son of Awad, son of Laden". According to bin Laden's son Omar bin Laden, the family's hereditary surname is "al-Qahtani" (Arabic: ‎القحطاني‎, āl-Qaḥṭānī), but bin Laden's father Mohammed bin Laden never officially registered the name.
Osama bin Laden had also assumed the kunyah Abū ʿAbdāllāh ("father of Abdallah"). His admirers have referred to him by several nicknames, including the "Prince" or "Emir" (al-Amīr), the "Sheik" (aš-Šayḫ), "Sheik al-Mujahid" (al-Muǧāhid Šayḫ), "Hajj", the "Lion" or "Lion Sheik", and the "Director".


Childhood, education and personal life:

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a son of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a wealthy businessman with close ties to the Saudi royal family, and Mohammed bin Laden's tenth wife, Hamida al-Attas (then called Alia Ghanem). In a 1998 interview, Osama gave his birth date as March 10, 1957.
Osama's parents divorced soon after he was born; Osama's mother then remarried Mohammed al-Attas. The couple had four children, and Osama lived in the new household with three half-brothers and one half-sister.
Osama was raised as a devout Wahhabi Muslim. From 1968 to 1976, he attended the élite secular Al-Thager Model School. He studied economics and business administration at King Abdulaziz University. Some reports suggest he earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979, or a degree in public administration in 1981. One source described him as "hard working",; another said he left university during his third year without completing a college degree. At university, Osama's main interest was religion, where he was involved in both "interpreting the Quran and jihad" and charitable work. Other interests included writing poetry; reading, with the works of Field Marshal Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle said to be among his favorites; black stallions; and football, in which he enjoyed playing at centre forward and followed the fortunes of Arsenal F.C..
In 1974, at the age of 17, Osama married Najwa Ghanem at Latakia; Najwa divorced him in 2001 before the attacks. He married five other women: Khadijah Sharif (1983), who divorced him in the 1990s; Khairiah Sabar (1985), whose fate is unknown; Siham Sabar (1987), whose fate is also unknown; an unknown wife with whom his marriage was immediately annulled; and Amal al-Sadah (2000). Through these women bin Laden fathered between 20 and 26 children. Many of bin Laden's children fled to Iran following the September 11 attacks and as of 2010 Iranian authorities reportedly continued to control their movement.
Bin Laden's father Mohammed was killed in 1967 in an airplane crash in Saudi Arabia when his American pilot misjudged a landing. Osama's eldest half-brother, Salem bin Laden, the subsequent head of the bin Laden family, was killed in 1988 near San Antonio, Texas in the United States, when he accidentally flew a plane into power lines.
The FBI described Osama as an adult as tall and thin, between 6 ft. 4 in and 6 ft. 6 in. (193– 198 cm) in height and weighing about 165 pounds (75 kg). Interviewer Lawrence Wright, on the other hand, described him as quite slender, but not particularly tall. Osama had an olive complexion and was left-handed, usually walking with a cane. He wore a plain white turban and he had stopped wearing the traditional Saudi male headdress. Bin Laden was described as soft-spoken and mild mannered in demeanor.

Militant activity:

After leaving college in 1979, bin Laden arrived to Pakistan and joined Abdullah Azzam to take part in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. During Operation Cyclone from 1979 to 1989, the United States provided financial aid and weapons to the mujahideen leaders through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Bin Laden met and built relations with Hamid Gul, who was a three star general in the Pakistani army and head of the ISI agency. Although the United States provided the money and weapons, the training of militant groups was entirely done by the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI.
By 1984, bin Laden and Azzam established Maktab al-Khidamat, which funneled money, arms and fighters from around the Arab world into Afghanistan. Through al-Khadamat, bin Laden's inherited family fortune paid for air tickets and accommodation, paid for paperwork with Pakistani authorities and provided other such services for the jihadi fighters. Bin Laden established camps inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan and used it to train volunteer fighters against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. It was during his time in Pakistan that he began wearing camouflage-print jackets and carrying a Russian-made assault rifle.

Early attacks and aid for attacks:

It is believed that the first bombing attack involving bin Laden was the December 29, 1992 bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden in which two people were killed.
It was after this bombing that al-Qaeda was reported to have developed its justification for the killing of innocent people. According to a fatwa issued by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the killing of someone standing near the enemy is justified because any innocent bystander will find their proper reward in death, going to Jannah (Paradise) if they were good Muslims and to Jahannam (hell) if they were bad or non-believers. The fatwa was issued to al-Qaeda members but not the general public.
In the 1990s bin Laden's al-Qaeda assisted jihadis financially and sometimes militarily in Algeria, Egypt and Afghanistan. In 1992 or 1993 bin Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, with $40,000 to Algeria to aid the Islamists and urge war rather than negotiation with the government. Their advice was heeded but the war that followed killed 150,000–200,000 Algerians and ended with Islamist surrender to the government.
Bin Laden funded the Luxor massacre of November 17, 1997, which killed 62 civilians, but outraged the Egyptian public. In mid-1997, the Northern Alliance threatened to overrun Jalalabad, causing bin Laden to abandon his Nazim Jihad compound and move his operations to Tarnak Farms in the south.
Another successful attack was carried out in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan. Bin Laden helped cement his alliance with the Taliban by sending several hundreds of Afghan Arab fighters along to help the Taliban kill between five and six thousand Hazaras overrunning the city.
In February 1998, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri co-signed a fatwa in the name of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders which declared the killing of North Americans and their allies an "individual duty for every Muslim" to "liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] and the holy mosque [in Mecca] from their grip". At the public announcement of the fatwa bin Laden announced that North Americans are "very easy targets". He told the attending journalists, "You will see the results of this in a very short time."
In December 1998, the Director of Central Intelligence Counterterrorist Center reported to President Bill Clinton that al-Qaeda was preparing for attacks in the United States of America, including the training of personnel to hijack aircraft.
Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri organized an al-Qaeda congress on June 24, 1998.
The 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings were a series of attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the major East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. The attacks were linked to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, brought Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to the attention of the United States public for the first time, and resulted in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation placing bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted list.
At the end of 2000, Richard Clarke revealed that Islamic militants headed by bin Laden had planned a triple attack on January 3, 2000 which would have included bombings in Jordan of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman and tourists at Mount Nebo and a site on the Jordan River, the sinking of the destroyer USS The Sullivans in Yemen, as well as an attack on a target within the United States. The plan was foiled by the arrest of the Jordanian terrorist cell, the sinking of the explosive-filled skiff intended to target the destroyer, and the arrest of Ahmed Ressam.

September 11 attacks:

"God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the towers, but after the situation became unbearable—and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon—I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed—when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way: to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women."
– Osama bin Laden, 2004

After repeated denials, in 2004, Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The attacks involved the hijacking of four commercial passenger aircraft, the subsequent destruction of those planes and the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, severe damage to The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the deaths of 2,974 people and the nineteen hijackers.In response to the attacks, the United States launched a War on Terror to depose the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and capture al-Qaeda operatives, and several countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation to preclude future attacks. The CIA's Special Activities Division was given the lead in tracking down and killing or capturing bin Laden.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has stated that classified evidence linking al-Qaeda and bin Laden to the attacks of September 11 is clear and irrefutable. The UK Government reached a similar conclusion regarding al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's culpability for the September 11, 2001 attacks, although the government report notes that the evidence presented is not necessarily sufficient for a prosecutable case.
Bin Laden initially denied involvement in the attacks. On September 16, 2001, bin Laden read a statement later broadcast by Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel denying responsibility for the attack.
In a videotape recovered by U.S. forces in November 2001 in Jalalabad, bin Laden was seen discussing the attack with Khaled al-Harbi in a way that indicates foreknowledge. The tape was broadcast on various news networks on December 13, 2001. The merits of this translation have been disputed. Arabist Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini stated: "This translation is very problematic. At the most important places where it is held to prove the guilt of bin Laden, it is not identical with the Arabic."
In the 2004 Osama bin Laden video, bin Laden abandoned his denials without retracting past statements. In it he stated he had personally directed the nineteen hijackers. In the 18-minute tape, played on Al-Jazeera, four days before the American presidential election, bin Laden accused U.S. President George W. Bush of negligence on the hijacking of the planes on September 11.
According to the tapes, bin Laden claimed he was inspired to destroy the World Trade Center after watching the destruction of towers in Lebanon by Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War.
In two other tapes aired by Al Jazeera in 2006, Osama bin Laden announces,

I am the one in charge of the nineteen brothers [...] I was responsible for entrusting the nineteen brothers [...] with the raids [5 minute audiotape broadcast May 23, 2006],

and is seen with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, as well as two of the 9/11 hijackers, Hamza al-Ghamdi and Wail al-Shehri, as they make preparations for the attacks (videotape broadcast September 7, 2006)




Originally Posted Here

Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa; 28 January 1955) is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier.
Before his presidency, he was leader of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). Under Jacques Chirac's presidency he served as Minister of the Interior in Jean-Pierre Raffarin's (UMP) first two governments (from May 2002 to March 2004), then was appointed Minister of Finances in Raffarin's last government (March 2004 to May 2005) and again Minister of the Interior in Dominique de Villepin's government (2005–2007).
Sarkozy was also president of the General council of the Hauts-de-Seine department from 2004 to 2007 and mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of France from 1983 to 2002. He was Minister of the Budget in the government of Édouard Balladur (RPR, predecessor of the UMP) during François Mitterrand's last term.
Sarkozy is known for wanting to revitalize the French economy. He has pledged to revive the work ethic, promote new initiatives and fight intolerance. In foreign affairs he has promised a strengthening of the entente cordiale with the United Kingdom and closer cooperation with the United States. He married singer-songwriter Carla Bruni on 2 February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris.

Personal life

Family background

Sarkozy is a Frenchman of mixed national and ethnic ancestry. He is the son of Pál István Ernő Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa, a Hungarian aristocrat and Andrée Jeanne "Dadu" Mallah (b. Paris, 12 October 1925), who is of French Catholic and Greek Jewish origin. They were married at Saint-François-de-Sales, Paris XVII, on 8 February 1950 and divorced in 1959.

Early life

During Sarkozy's childhood, his father allegedly refused to give his wife's family any financial help, even though he had founded his own advertising agency and had become wealthy. The family lived in a small mansion owned by Sarkozy's grandfather, Benedict Mallah, in the 17th Arrondissement of Paris. The family later moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of the Île-de-France région immediately west of the 17th Arrondissement just outside of Paris. According to Sarkozy, his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an influence on him than his father, whom he rarely saw. Sarkozy was, accordingly, raised Catholic.
Sarkozy said that being abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today. He also has said that, in his early years, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthier and taller classmates. "What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood", he said later.

Education

Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a state-funded public middle and high school in Paris's 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième. His family then sent him to the Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau, a private Catholic school in the 17th arrondissement, where he was reportedly a mediocre student, but where he nonetheless obtained his baccalauréat in 1973. He enrolled at the Université Paris X Nanterre, where he graduated with an MA in Private law, and later with a DEA degree in Business law. Paris X Nanterre had been the starting place for the May '68 student movement and was still a stronghold of leftist students. Described as a quiet student, Sarkozy soon joined the right-wing student organization, in which he was very active. He completed his military service as a part time Air Force cleaner. After graduating, he entered the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, better known as Sciences Po, (1979–1981) but failed to graduate due to an insufficient command of the English language. After passing the bar, he became a lawyer specializing in business and family law, and was one of Silvio Berlusconi's top French advocates.

Marriages

Sarkozy married his first wife, Marie-Dominique Culioli, on 23 September 1982; her father was a pharmacist from Vico (a village north of Ajaccio, Corsica). They had two sons, Pierre (born in 1985), now a hip-hop producer, and Jean (born in 1986) now a regional councillor in the city of Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Sarkozy's best man was the prominent right-wing politician Charles Pasqua, later to become a political opponent. Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, although they had already been separated for several years.

Personal wealth

Sarkozy declared to the Constitutional Council a net worth of €2 million, most of the assets being in the form of life insurance policies As the French President, one of his first actions was to give himself a raise: his yearly salary went from €101,000 to €240,000 (to match his European/French peers). He is also entitled to a mayoral pension as a former mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine. He also receives a yearly council pension as a former member of the council of the Hauts-de-Seine department.

Political career

President of the French Republic : Since 2007.
Governmental functions
Minister of Budget and government's spokesman : 1993–1995.
Minister of Communication and government's spokesman : 1994–1995.
Minister of State, minister of Interior, of the Internal Security and Local Freedoms : 2002–2004.
Minister of State, minister of Economy, Finance and Industry : March–November 2004 (resignation).
Minister of State, minister of Interior and Planning : 2005–2007 (resignation).
Electoral mandates
National Assembly of France
Member of the National Assembly of France for Hauts-de-Seine (6th constituency) : 1988–1993 (became minister in 1993) / 1995–2002 (became minister in 2002) / March-June 2005 (became minister in June 2005). Elected in 1988, reelected in 1993, 1995, 1997, 2002, 2005.
Regional Council
Regional councillor of Île-de-France : 1983–1988 (Resignation). Elected in 1986.
General Council
President of the General Council of Hauts-de-Seine : 2004–2007 (Resignation, became President of the French Republic in 2007).
Vice-president of the General Council of Hauts-de-Seine : 1986–1988 (Resignation).
General councillor of Hauts-de-Seine : 1985–1988 / 2004–2007 (Resignation, became President of the French Republic in 2007).
Municipal Council
Mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine : 1983–2002 (Resignation). Reelected in 1989, 1995, and 2001.
Municipal councillor of Neuilly-sur-Seine : 1977–2004 (Resignation). Reelected in 1983, 1989, 1995, and 2001.
Political functions
President of the Union for a Popular Movement : 2004–2007 (resignation, became President of the French Republic in 2007). Elected in 2004.
President of the Rally for the Republic : April–October 1999.
General secretary of the Rally for the Republic : 1998-1999.
Deputy general secretary of the Rally for the Republic : 1992-1993.