World Leaders

- Afghanistan is an Islamic republic headed by President Hamid Karzai
- He emerged as a resistance leader under Taliban rule and worked to undermine the regime.
- He is well versed in several languages, including his native Peshto, Persian, Hindi, French and English.
-Several times in 2001, Karzai warned the United States that the Taliban were connected with al Qaeda and that there was a plot for an imminent attack on the United States, but his warnings went unheeded.

- Brazil is a federal republic headed by President Dilma Rousseff
- She opposed Brazil’s military dictatorship of the 1960s and ‘70s, and served three years in prison, where she was repeatedly tortured.

-She has been divorced twice -She has a degree in economics, and now rules the country with the eighth-biggest economy in the world.-She underwent chemotherapy for lymphoma in 2009, and is now in remission.

 

- China is a communist state, ruled by President Xi Jinping

- Xi Jinping is the son of revolutionary veteran Xi Zhongxun, one of the Communist Party's founding fathers.
-He married folk singer Peng Liyuan, who also holds the rank of army general, in 1987. To many in China, Ms. Peng was the better-known half of the couple before Xi Jinping became leader of the Communist Party.
-The couple have a daughter named Xi Mingze, who is studying at Harvard University in the US.
- France is a Republic headed by Francois Hollande
- Hollande has no previous experience in a national government position
- The mother of his four children is Segolene Royal, with whom he shared a 30- year relationship, then divorced
- He was born in 1954 in the city of Rouen to an extreme- Right physician father and progressive social worker mother
-Germany is a federal republic headed by President Joachim Gauck and Chancellor Angela Markel
- She has been Chancellor since November 2005
- Merkel Graduated from the University of Leipzig in 1978 with a degree in physics and physical chemistry; earned a PhD in quantum chemistry
-Merkel has earned the top spot on the FORBES list of Most Powerful Women In The World for eight of the past 10 years.
- India is a federal republic headed by Pranab Mukherjee
- He taught political science at the Vidiyanagar College , and worked as a journalist before entering politics
- Mukherjee was rated as one of the best finance ministers of the world in 1984 and was adjudged the best parliamentarian in 1997
- Iran is a theocratic republic, ruled by supreme leader Ali Hoseini-Khamenei, and President Hasan Fereidun Ruhani
- In 1963, he took part in street protests against the U.S.- backed Shah of Iran. After the uprising was quashed, Khamenei was exiled. He was imprisoned multiple times and, in 1975, was internally exiled to a remote region in southeastern Iran
- Mexico - Enrique Pena Pieto

-He was the eldest of four siblings in a middle-class family; his father, Gilberto Enrique Peña del Mazo, was an engineer for the electric company and his mother, María del Socorro Nieto, a schoolteacher.

-Reports that he fathered two children in extramarital affairs while his wife Monica raised the couple’s 3 children, plus the investigation into the sudden death of his wife at home in 2007, have prompted many to call him the Teflon candidate because trouble seems to slide off him. -Two years later he announced his engagement to soap opera actor Angelica Rivera.  Rivera became his wife in a star-studded wedding ceremony two years ago and is now the first lady of Mexico.