Time Person of the Year

'Leaders are tested only when people don't want to follow,' Time editor Nancy Gibbs said in a statement issued Wednesday.

'For asking more of her country than most politicians would dare, for standing firm against tyranny as well as expedience and for providing steadfast moral leadership in a world where it is in short supply, Angela Merkel is TIME's Person of the Year.'

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, described by Time as a “brooding muezzin of death”, was second on the list.

Al-Baghdadi was named second on the list of seven. Time correspondent Massimo Calabresi wrote that 'the violent and the suicidal, the lawless and the fanatical' had gathered 'in cyberspace from around the world to pledge allegiance' to the ISIS leader's self-proclaimed caliphate.

He wrote: 'Whatever he does in the coming months and years, al-Baghdadi has made himself the new face of terrorism and Target No. 1 in the long struggle to defend humane values.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was named in third place amid a storm of controversy over his demand for 'a total and complete shutdown' of Muslim immigration into America.

Time's Washington Bureau Chief Michael Scherer wrote that the Republican nomination was 'within [Donald Trump’s] grasp, which means the presidency as well, which will bring, he promises, a new national Valhalla, a chance to "Make America Great Again".

Scherer added: 'He makes no apologies, even when he is wrong or people get pummeled. His words are weapons, slicing through the national consciousness…. But there is a larger question of how Trump’s tough rhetoric and policies might change the country, and the world, in ways he does not directly control.'