Mark Memmott

After a dip to No. 4 last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is back at No. 1 on Forbes magazine's annual "World's Most Powerful Women" list.

Merkel's four-year run atop the rankings was broken last year by Michelle Obama. But this year, by Forbes' reasoning, the first lady came in at No. 8.

Guns. Cars. Artwork. Statues.

And an album full of photos of former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Odd as that may sound, what appears to be something of a keepsake about Rice — who Moammar Gadhafi once referred to as "my darling black African woman" and of whom he said, "I love her very much" — was found by opposition fighters as they searched and ransacked the Libyan leader's compound in Tripoli.

Shares in Bank of America jumped nearly 25 percent in"premarket trading" this morning after it was reported that billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett is buying a $5 billion stake in the company, The Wall Street Journal's MarketBeat blog writes.

"Former Vice President Dick Cheney says in a new memoir that he urged President George W. Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007," The New York Times reports this morning.

The number of people filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose by 5,000 last week from the week before, to 417,000, the Employment and Training Administration just reported.

Though the number of claims remained well above the level normally associated with a healthy economy, one factor was temporary. According to Reuters, "Verizon workers filed 8,500 claims for jobless benefits last week, after submitting 12,500 applications the previous week."