A summer afternoon at the Reichstag. Soft Berlin light filters down through the great glass dome, past tourists ascending the spiral ramp, and into the main hall of parliament. Half the members' seats are empty. At the lectern, a short, slightly hunched figure in a fuchsia jacket, black slacks, and a helmet of no-color hair is reading a speech from a binder. Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and the world’s most powerful woman, is making every effort not to be interesting.
The New Yorker: The astonishing rise of Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world.
Combo of a file picture (L) taken in 1989 in the northern Polish city of Bachotek shows Angela Merkel and her husband Joachim Sauer, the husband during summer school at a university for chemistry students, and a picture taken 16 March 2007 the presidential palace in Warsaw, taken when German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her husband met Polish President Lech Kaczynski.
