Afghanistan / Hamid Karzai

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 / Dilma Rousseff

 

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 / Xi Jinping

 

 

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 / Francois Hollande

 

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 Ségolène Royal, with whom he shared a 30-year relationship.
• He was born in 1954 in the city of Rouen to an extreme-right physician father and progressive social worker mother. 

Germany / Joachim Gauck, Angela Merkel 

 

Germany is a federal republic headed by

President Joachim Gauck and Chancellor Angela Merkel

Graduated from University of Leipzig in 1978 with a degree in physics and physical chemistry; earned a PhD in quantum chemistry from the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin in 1986

Has been Chancellor since November 2005

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 / Pranab Mukherjee

India is a federal republic headed by

President 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.

He had a conflict with Rajiv Gandhi (who took over as Prime Minister from his mother Indira after she was assassinated in 1984) and started his own party – Rashtriya Samajwadi Congress.

 

 Iran / Khamenei and Ruhani

 

Iran is a theocratic republic, ruled by Supreme Leader Ali Hoseini-Khamenei, and President Hasan Fereidun Ruhani

• In 1963, took part in street protests against the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran. After the uprising was quashed, Khamenei was exiled. Khamenei was imprisoned multiple times and, in 1975, was internally exiled to a remote region in southeastern Iran.

• Was elected President of Iran in 1981 and re-elected in 1985.  Became Iran’s Supreme Leader in 1989.

 

Mr Rouhani has held several parliamentary posts, including deputy speaker and has also served on the Supreme National Security Council.

Was just elected President of Iran - June 2013

He has been openly critical of the outgoing president, saying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "careless, uncalculated and unstudied remarks" have cost the country dearly.

Israel / Peres and Netanyahu

 Israel is a parliamentary democracy,
headed by President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu

Shimon Peres was born in Belarus. To escape the persecution of Jews there, the family fled to Palestine in 1934.

When Arab forces launched their attack on the new state of Israel in 1948, Peres was given the chief responsibility for securing military equipment for Israel from abroad.

Later he organized Israel's nuclear program and is regarded as the father of Israel's atomic bomb.

As Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres was in charge of the Israeli negotiations during peace talks with the Palestinians.  In the autumn of 1994 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with his own Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Mexico / Enrique Pena Nieto

Mexico is a federal republic

 

headed by President Enrique Pena Nieto

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 actress Angelica Rivera.  Rivera became his wife in a star-studded wedding ceremony two years ago and is now the first lady of Mexico.

 

Saudi Arabia / Abdallah

Saudi Arabia is a kingdom ruled by

Abdallah bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud,

who is both King and Prime Minister

 

He has fathered 22 children, the youngest when he was 79.

He is worth approximately 21 billion dollars.

He was appointed commander of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, a post he was still holding when he became king.

In November 2007, King Abdullah visited Pope Benedict in the Apostolic Palace. He is the first Saudi monarch to visit the Pope.  In March 2008, he called for a “brotherly and sincere dialogue between believers from all religions.”

In 2011 he granted women the right to vote and run in future municipal elections, the biggest change in a decade for women in a puritanical kingdom that practices strict separation of the sexes, including banning women from driving (the only country in the world with such a ban).
United Kingdom / Cameron and the Queen

The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and Commonwealth realm,

ruled by Prime Minister David Cameron and Queen Elizabeth II

• At the age of seven, the young Cameron was packed off to Heatherdown, a highly exclusive preparatory school, which counted Princes Edward and Andrew among its pupils. Then, following in the family tradition, came Eton, Britain’s top private school.
• His first child, Ivan, who was born profoundly disabled and needed round the clock care, died in February 2009.
• The experience of caring for Ivan and witnessing at first hand the dedication of NHS hospital staff, is said by friends to have broadened Mr Cameron's horizons. He had, friends say, led an almost charmed life to that point.
• Cameron is the youngest Prime Minister (43 when he took office) in over 200 years.
• Elizabeth became queen on February 6, 1952, and was crowned on June 2, 1953.  Her reign has lasted 60 years - and counting.

 

Venezuela / Maduro
Venezuela is a federal republic headed by President Nicolas Maduro Moros

Nicolás Maduro Moros worked as a bus driver before becoming politically active in the early 1990s.

Maduro was introduced to Hugo Chávez in 1992, after Chávez and other disenchanted members of the military were imprisoned for an attempted coup and Maduro began campaigning for  Chávez's release. (Chávez was released in 1994 and won election to the presidency four years later.)

After President Chávez won a third term in October 2012, he selected Maduro to serve as vice president. Maduro worked alongside the outspoken president, serving as one of his closest advisers as well as a loyal spokesman, until Chávez's death at 58 on March 5, 2013, from cancer.