kenya's Nobel peace laureate, Maathai, passes on

Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has died of cancer at the age of 71, her family announced Monday.
Tributes flowed in for Maathai, who died on Sunday at a Nairobi hospital while undergoing treatment, lauding her outstanding struggle against environmental degradation.
Maathai became a key figure in Kenya since founding the Green Belt Movement in 1977, staunchly campaigning for environmental conservation and good governance.
She won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her reafforestation work in Kenya, the first African woman, the first Kenyan and the first environmentalist to receive this honour.Her organisation has planted some 40 million trees across Africa.The first woman in east and central Africa to earn a doctorate, Maathai also headed the Kenya Red Cross in the 1970s.Maathai had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer in July 2010, but it was never made public.She had 3 children and a granddaughter.RIP