World's most powerful women

Hillary Clinton is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama.
She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001.

Angela Merkel is the first female Chancellor of Germany. In 2007, she became the second woman to chair the G8, after Margaret Thatcher.
She played a central role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon and the Berlin Declaration. In domestic policy, health care reform and problems concerning future energy development have thus far been major issues of her tenure.

Dilma Vana Rousseff is the president of Brazil. She is the first woman to hold the office. Prior to that, in 2005, she was also the first woman to become Chief of Staff of Brazil, appointed by then President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In 2005, a political crisis triggered by a corruption scandal led to the resignation of Chief of Staff José Dirceu. Rousseff took over the post, remaining in office until March 31, 2010, when she left in order to run for President. She was elected in a run-off on 31 October 2010.

 Indra Nooyi is the chairman and chief executive officer of PepsiCo. Nooyi joined PepsiCo in 1994 and was named president and CFO in 2001.
Nooyi has directed the company's global strategy for more than a decade and led PepsiCo's restructuring. In 2007 she became the fifth CEO in PepsiCo's 44-year history.

Sheryl Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook. Prior to Facebook, Sheryl was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google.














 

US:Time for India, China to revisit their position on Syria

The Obama Administration has urged both India and China to "revisit their position" on Syria even as US intensified its international campaign against the authoritarian regime. "We are certainly speaking to them (India and China) in New York," State Department spokesperson Victoria Nulandtold, referring to the talks being held in this regard at the UN headquarters in New York.

"We are speaking to them in Capitals. I think our message publicly has been clear. The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton said in her interview that she thought it was time for India and China to revisit their position. So those conversations continue," Nuland said, but did not elaborate what kind of conversations the US was holding with these two countries.

She said there were countries that were still trading oil and gas with Syria and countries that have not renounced their willingness to send arms to Syria.

"So we are working to strengthen that coalition and continue to ensure that the message from the international community has teeth. Nobody is satisfied with the situation in Syria. It's abhorrent and repulsive, and our efforts will continue," Nuland said.

she added, and frankly, we continue to believe that the UN Security Council ought to more strongly condemn the violence than it has. We are working on more sanction measures, and we will continue to do so."

Hillary Clinton calls on countries to sanction Syria

US wants nations with close economic links to Bashar al-Assad's regime to follow it to sanction Syria's oil and gas industry
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has called on other nations with closer economic links to Syria to join it in sanctions on Bashar al-Assad's regime.

She said Washington had been "very clear" in its statements about Assad's loss of legitimacy but the "real trick" was to convince "the Europeans and the Arabs and the Chinese and the Indians and others" to do more.

"We're going to sanction and we have been upping the sanctions. We're going to continue to do so," she said. "But we want others to follow, because Syria was not one of our major economic partners."

Clinton said it was necessary to sanction Syria's oil and gas industry.

A security crackdown has been ongoing in Syria since the start of Ramadan 11 days ago. Security forces killed at least 10 more people on Thursday as the raids and repression continued.

Mass demonstrations are expected across the country on Friday – the "day of not kneeling". A Facebook group, the Syrian Revolution 2011, said in a defiant message: "We only kneel before God."