Trump and Ed Sheeran featured among TIME's 100 Most Influential People

Magazine's annual list of most influential people in the world this year contains a few surprises

Riz Ahmed
London-born Riz Ahmed was listed as one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People

Time magazine has published its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world – and this year's line-up includes a few surprises, along with the inevitable appearance of Donald Trump.

The magazine has five different cover stars. Featuring on the different versions are actor Viola Davis, musician John Legend, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, philanthropist Melinda Gates and British actor Riz Ahmed.

The list, compiled every year since 1999, divides names into categories: pioneers, artists, titans, leaders and icons – and each has an accompanying text written by a different celebrated person.

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British musician Ed Sheeran makes the Artists list and is written about by Taylor Swift, the US recording artist with whom he has toured.

The nominees are united, says the magazine's Nancy Gibbs, by either great power or "great force, in the power of their inventions, the scale of their ambitions [or] the genius of their solutions to problems that no one before them could solve".

Among them, are:

Ivanka Trump

Donald Trump is, of course, on the list – and perhaps it is no surprise that his daughter Ivanka also features. She is "the nation's First Daughter" after all, according to Wendi Murdoch, the ex-wife of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's, who has written about Ivanka for TIME.

Murdoch says she is "deeply impressed" by Ivanka's "courage to leave behind life as she knew it and move her young family to Washington".

Riz Ahmed

Anyone who has taken their eye off the career of Wembley-born rapper and actor Ahmed since his days in British independent films might be surprised to find him on the list.

But Ahmed is a major star in the US now, with roles in TV series The Night Of, The OA and Girls. He was also in the latest Jason Bourne movie. Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda cites Ahmed's "heroic efforts" raising funds for Syrian refugees and "advocating representation in the House of Commons".

Pope Francis

Listed in the leaders section, the pontiff is praised for having spoken out on the "need to welcome refugees amid a global crisis" and for insisting that the Catholic church he leads must not be "self-referential" but must instead go "out of itself to the margins of society to be with those who suffer".

Gavin Grimm

At 17, Grimm is the youngest person on the list. A transgender high school student in Virginia, Grimm sued the school board for the right to use the male toilet. His case is still not resolved but it has focused national and international attention on the issue, making Grimm the "new face of the transgender movement", says Metro Weekly.

Janet Yellen

The first woman to head the US Federal Reserve, the 70-year-old is certainly the world's most powerful central banker and – according to professor Joseph Stiglitz, writing for TIME – arguably holds "the most important and powerful economic position in the world".

She wields her huge power "deftly, with a sure but steady hand", says Stiglitz who suggests Yellen has, "more than perhaps any other central banker, brought a sensitivity to the key issue of the day, inequality".

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