(ANSAmed) - NEW YORK - Russian president Valdimir Putin remains ahead of his US counterpart, Barack Obama, for the second year in a row as the world's most powerful leader on the list published annually by US magazine Forbes. Obama is followed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Pope Francis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The only Italian to make the list is once again European Central Bank (ECB) governor Mario Draghi, in 8th place.

The biggest surprise this year is the entrance of Islamic State (ISIS) leader and self-proclaimed 'caliph' Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi - the US's top enemy - in 54th place. On the magazine's choice of Baghdadi, it noted that ''as the self-proclaimed caliph of a largely-theoretical pan-Islamic state, al-Baghdadi might appear to be the weakest new member of our list of the World's Most Powerful - especially if you judge by his probable life-expectancy. But in a remarkably short period of time, al-Baghdadi's ISIS fighters have seized significant portions of eastern Syria and western Iraq, commandeered the planet's attention with a series of barbaric beheadings and earned non-negligible amounts of cash, largely through black-market oil sales said to total $1 million a day.

He has gotten our attention - and also that of the people at the very top of this list". (ANSAmed)