Kofi Annan of Ghana, whose popular and influential reign as secretary general of the United Nations was marred by White House anger at his opposition to the American invasion of Iraq in the early 2000s, died Aug. 18 at a hospital in Bern, Switzerland. He was 80. The death was announced by the Annan family and the Kofi Annan Foundation. The cause was not immediately disclosed. Current U.N. Secretary General António Guterres called Mr. Annan “a guiding force for good,” and added: “He provided people everywhere with a space for dialogue, a place for problem-solving and a path to a better world.” Mr. Annan, who pronounced his last name ANN-un to rhyme with “cannon,” shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize with the international body he led from 1997 to 2006. He owed his original triumph and his later turmoil to tense relations with the United States, but in some ways, he was an accidental secretary general...

For the first time, the United States is at the door of the International Monetary Fund as a borrower. Few people prophesied this when the Fund was founded at the United Nations Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. But obviously times have changed. The United States which had huge supplies of gold in the early postwar period, has found its supplies dwindling. That is why President Kennedy told Congress Thursday that the United States has been authorized to draw up to $500 million worth of currencies from the Fund this year. This transaction is a classic example of how a nation uses the Fund when it has a balance of payments problem. That's what the Fund is for, and other countries have been using it for years. The United States has a balance of payments problem because it sends more dollars overseas than it takes in...

Negroes have less chance than whites to get a high-paying job in the North, but most employers and unions deny this stems from racial discrimination. Negro leaders generally contend it does. In Chicago, for example, they say that hardly anyone downtown hires Negroes as office workers, store clerks, or skilled craftsmen. "The Loop of Chicago looks like a snowstorm at 5 o'clock," says Hamp McKinney of the Urban League of Chicago, "with only here and there a little brown speck in it." But employers and unions say that situations like this are not caused by racial discrimination. They say there are not enough qualified Negroes to fill the jobs available. Negro charges of job discrimination have flamed into one of the most searing problems in the North, where almost half of America's 19 million Negroes live...

President Kennedy has promised no more than sympathy to those bargaining for the release of 1113 Bay of Pigs prisoners. But the evidence is clear that he has given more. Official statements in Washington maintain that the committee now negotiating with Fidel Castro in Cuba for the release of the prisoners is a private one, supported by private funds. But the prisoners, if they are released, will owe their freedom in large measure to the U.S. government. It is doubtful that the private committee could complete a deal of such magnitude without active support of the Kennedy Administration