Sally Jacobsen | AP correspondent, 70

NEW YORK - Sally Jacobsen, a widely experienced Associated Press correspondent who became the first woman to serve as the news service's international editor, overseeing with a cool, steady hand coverage of wars, terrorism, and a daily stream of history-making events, has died at the age of 70.

Ms. Jacobsen, who retired in 2015 to Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., died Thursday night from a recurrence of cancer that first struck her six years ago, said her husband, Patrick Oster, a retired Bloomberg News managing editor.

Her 39-year career took her from the precincts of financial power as a Washington economics correspondent, to the earthquake-ravaged barrios of Mexico City, to the councils of NATO in Brussels, and then to the pressure-packed job at New York headquarters of leading AP's scores of international correspondents through the years of 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

A native of Gunnison, Colorado, Ms. Jacobsen was a graduate of Iowa State University and Cornell University, where she received a master's degree in economics. She joined the AP in its Baltimore bureau in 1976, and in 1979 transferred to the wire service's Washington staff as an economics correspondent, in the days of energy crisis, double-digit inflation and rising U.S. unemployment.

Besides her journalist-novelist husband Oster, Ms. Jacobsen is survived by their son, Alex. She also would have wanted a mention of their beloved Airedale terriers, Tazz and Gemma, Oster said. - AP