Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General, dead at age 80

(CNN) – Kofi Annan, the first black African to lead the United Nations, has died at age 80.

• By Laura Smith-Spark, Richard Roth and Joe Sterling, CNN

He served as Secretary-General at a time when worries about the Cold War were replaced by threats of global terrorism, and his efforts to combat those threats and secure a more peaceful world brought him the…

Annan, who was born in Ghana in 1938, served as the seventh UN Secretary-General, from 1997 to 2006, and was the first to rise from within the ranks of the United Nations staff.

He had also been a…