Madeleine Albright, 1st female US Secretary of State, dies at 85

Madeleine Albright, the first female US secretary of state, has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday. She was 85.

President Bill Clinton chose Albright as America's top diplomat in 1996, and she served in that capacity for the last four years of the Clinton administration.

At the time, she was the highest-ranking woman in the history of US government. She was not in the line of succession for the presidency, however, because she was a native of Czechoslovakia.