- As Gas leak in coal mine in central China kills 18 miners
Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron has decisively won the French presidential election, defeating far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.
Mr Macron won by 66.06% to 33.94% to become, at 39, the country’s youngest president.
Mr Macron will also become the first president from outside the two traditional main parties since the modern republic’s foundation in 1958.
He said that a new page was being turned in French history.
“I want it to be a page of hope and renewed trust,” he said.
Mr Macron said he had heard “the rage, anxiety and doubt that a lot of you have expressed” and vowed to spend his five years in office “fighting the forces of division that undermine France”.
He said he would “guarantee the unity of the nation and… defend and protect Europe.”
Mr Macron’s supporters gathered in their thousands to celebrate outside the Louvre museum in central Paris and their new president later joined them.
In his speech to the crowd, he said: “Tonight you won, France won. Everyone told us it was impossible, but they don’t know France.”
But he repeated a number of times that the task facing him and the country was enormous.
He said: “We have the strength, the energy and the will – and we will not give in to fear.”
In the meantime, a gas leak in a coal mine in central China has killed 18 people, local authorities said Monday.
The leak happened on Sunday morning when miners were working in the shaft of the mine in Youxian county in Hunan province, according to a statement from the propaganda department of the Communist Party committee of Zhuzhou city, which administers the area.
Rescuers managed to bring to safety 37 miners who are receiving hospital treatment, it said.
The official Xinhua News Agency said that police had detained unspecified people pending an investigation.
China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal. Its mining industry has long been one of the world’s deadliest, with hundreds of deaths annually, even as China has tried to improve standards by shutting older, smaller mines.
BBC with additional report from Abc News
