Catholic News 2
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Cocaine is probably the last thing most people think about when buying roses....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen faces two tasks when she delivers her semiannual testimony to Congress starting Tuesday:...
McLEAN, Va. (AP) -- A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction barring the Trump administration from implementing its travel ban in Virginia, adding another judicial ruling to those already in place challenging the ban's constitutionality....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former wrestling entertainment executive Linda McMahon is on track to secure Senate confirmation to be the next leader of the Small Business Administration....
SHANGHAI (AP) -- President Donald Trump is poised to receive something Tuesday that he has been trying to get from China for a decade: trademark rights to his own name. After suffering rejection after rejection in China's courts, he saw his prospects change dramatically after starting his presidential campaign....
PARIS (AP) -- American-Egyptian author Mona Eltahawy is one of many activists and human rights advocates targeted in a sweeping cyberespionage campaign blamed on Egypt's government, The Associated Press has found....
OROVILLE, Calif. (AP) -- A huge Northern California reservoir, held in place by a massive dam, has always been central to the life of the towns around it....
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian lawmakers on Tuesday mounted a fierce defense of U.S. President Donald Trump's national security adviser, who has resigned following reports that he misled White House officials about his contacts with Russia....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fired by one American commander-in-chief for insubordination, Michael Flynn has now delivered his resignation to another....
(Vatican Radio) While world attention is focused on the President Donald Trump’s first weeks in office, the U.S. government’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations is continuing its work behind the scenes to help prevent conflict and promote long term peace and development in countries around the world.Deborah Ann Maclean is acting director of the office of Partnerships and Strategic Communications for the U.S. government’s bureau of conflict and stabilization operations.Listen to her interview with Susy Hodges: She explains that it is a challenging political endeavour which works after the military and defence operations have acted to stop fighting and before the development and humanitarian agencies come into a country. Maclean describes these stabilization efforts as the ‘sweet spot’, in the middle between ending conflicts and beginning development aid programmes. She says there is a limited budget but the main resource is the peop...
(Vatican Radio) While world attention is focused on the President Donald Trump’s first weeks in office, the U.S. government’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations is continuing its work behind the scenes to help prevent conflict and promote long term peace and development in countries around the world.
Deborah Ann Maclean is acting director of the office of Partnerships and Strategic Communications for the U.S. government’s bureau of conflict and stabilization operations.
Listen to her interview with Susy Hodges:
She explains that it is a challenging political endeavour which works after the military and defence operations have acted to stop fighting and before the development and humanitarian agencies come into a country. Maclean describes these stabilization efforts as the ‘sweet spot’, in the middle between ending conflicts and beginning development aid programmes. She says there is a limited budget but the main resource is the people on the ground who can work towards ending conflicts in “as peaceful and least destructive way as possible”.
Maclean says there is “quite a good track record” on diplomacy which goes on quietly all the time and is “not something that you hear unless you ‘re listening for it”. Disagreements are OK in diplomacy, she says, but “misunderstandings are not OK” as they lead to conflict, which is what her office is working to resolve.
On the question of conflict prevention, Maclean says there are many examples, beginning with the Marshall plan in the wake of World War II. Also today, she says, her office is working in many areas where conflicts are either ongoing or contained, such as the Chad Basin in central Africa. While there are a lot of problems, she says, the region is “committed to try to resolve those conflicts and to try to end the threats from Boko Haram and other extremists”.
