Development

Yesterday, Secretary Clinton's husband, Bill, officially assumed his new job, U.N. envoy to Haiti, a position that pays $1 per year. He will lead a $350 million project to help the Caribbean country get back on its feet after being devastated by storms last year.

Secretary Clinton and the former U.S. president have a special place in their hearts for Haiti, having made a visit there as newlyweds. Regarding U.S. support for the country, Bill Clinton said in jest at a news conference at U.N. headquarters, "The secretary of state has been going to Haiti about as long as I have. … I assume I won't have to say much." (As for any conflict of interest arising from Bill's envoy position, the White House and State Department gave their OK to it.)

(The photo above shows Bill Clinton with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the news conference yesterday.)

Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Secretary Clinton has no public appointments on her official schedule today, but that doesn't mean she isn't busy.

It appears that Clinton will be making a trip to Haiti on Thursday en route to this weekend's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. Additionally, she'll be leading the U.S. delegation tomorrow at a donors conference on Haiti, to be held in Washington. The Miami Herald reports that the U.S. government is expected to announce $50 million in aid to Haiti, which was ravaged by storms last year.

Haitian President René Préval was the first head of state who Clinton met with after she became secretary of state. (In the photo above, the two of them meet Feb. 5 at the State Department.) And just last month, husband Bill visited Haiti with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, where they attended a food distribution event. In fact, Bill Clinton, whose Clinton Global Initiative has been involved with aid projects in Haiti, is expected to attend tomorrow's donors conference. (Will we see photos of Hillary and Bill together?)

Photo: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Once again, Secretary Clinton is headed abroad. This time to The Hague, in the Netherlands, to attend a conference about Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Her official schedule:

ON FOREIGN TRAVEL

Meanwhile, husband Bill was in Colombia this weekend, attending the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank (and apparently enjoying watermelon and bananas while he was at it).

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton poses with traditional Colombian fruit vendors in the framework of the 50th Inter-American Development Bank annual meeting on March 28 in Medellín, Colombia. The March 28 assembly was on the international economic crisis and its impact in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Hillary Clinton gave a televised speech today to a meeting in Madrid of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, in which she explicitly linked reducing hunger and improving national security.

In a video address to the Madrid meeting, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington was "committed" to working with other nations to meet the goal of halving the number of people worldwide living in poverty and hunger by 2015. "Governments and nations are more likely to become unstable when their populations are hungry and underfed," she said. "We are committed to building a new partnership among donor states, developing nations, UN agencies, NGOs, the private sector and others to better coordinate policies to achieve the Millennium Development Goals," she added.

Are you starting to sense a theme (and a growing distance with Bush administration policies)? The Obama administration is convinced that trying to make the world a better place will make it also a safer place, whereas the Bush administration was concerned with making us (and sometimes us alone) safer and thus better off. It should be interesting to see who is more right -- though I have some ideas.