News stories by Matthew Berger, page 6

The ongoing drive to purge derogatory American Indian nicknames and mascots from U.S. sports and schools took a minor hit Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined, without comment, to hear an appeal challenging the trademark protecting the name of the National Football League's Washington Redskins.

As wheat rust threatened crops in the 1950s, a global effort to breed resistant wheat varieties led to 117 million hectares of cropland being protected from the deadly fungi and ensured the food security of 60 to 120 million rural households.

The momentum that U.S. climate change legislation has picked up in recent weeks will not be enough to get it through prior to the Copenhagen climate talks that kick off Dec. 7. It has also come at a steep price for those most committed to seeing such legislation pass.

After two years of work, 20 former presidents of Latin American countries have issued policy recommendations that they hope 'will greatly improve the lives and social mobility of Latin America's poor, will produce a new dynamic for economic growth, and will strengthen Latin America's still-fragile democratic institutions'.

As a delegation of European Union leaders descends on Washington Tuesday, a new report argues that 'European governments prefer to fetishise transatlantic relations, valuing closeness and harmony as ends in themselves, and seeking influence with Washington through various strategies of seduction or ingratiation'.

Following months of dithering on the part of the U.S., a delegation from the U.S. State Department brokered a deal Thursday between the ousted and interim governments of Honduras.

As the effort to achieve universal health coverage within the U.S. crawls forward in Washington, a new report by a coalition of global health organisations details how the U.S. can 'help lead the world to universal access to comprehensive health care in developing countries'.

The story began almost 40 years ago, but when filmmaker Joe Berlinger 'saw villagers eating canned tuna fish because the fish in their rivers were too contaminated to eat, [he] knew [he] had to do something'.

As debate continues in Washington over what its next steps should be in Afghanistan and as the total of NATO-led coalition deaths in the country approaches 70 for the fourth straight month, a new survey says Afghans are slightly more optimistic about the future of their country than in years past.

While negotiations stall between the ousted and de facto governments of Honduras on the issue of whether former president Manuel Zelaya will be reinstated prior to the country's elections next month, an increasingly relevant question is whether the international community would be willing to recognise the results of elections that occur under the unelected, interim government's watch.