History Readings

“The American culture is so in love with athletics that even though many people know the right thing to do, they can’t do it.”

the growth in educational spending trails far behind that of athletic spending — especially at community colleges and Division II and III institutions.

“Increasingly, institutions of higher education have lost their focus on the academic activities at the core of their mission,” the association said in its report. “The spending priority accorded to competitive athletics too easily diverts the focus of our institutions from teaching and learning to scandal and excess.”

The fastest growth in athletic spending was at Division III schools without football programs, where median inflation-adjusted spending for each student-athlete more than doubled from 2004 to 2012.

Even colleges without powerhouse sports programs, she said, are racing to build their athletic programs as a recruitment tool.

“My hypothesis, and it’s not yet fully proven, is that these are mostly schools that are very tuition-dependent, and they’re spending more on sports to recruit more students,” Ms. Thornton said. “But I think it’s ludicrous.”

Faculty salaries increased 2.4 percent last year, on average, while top administrators received large raises.

“Much of the new growth in the segment is coming from younger consumers who seek foods that fit an overall lifestyle, be it for health reasons or personal ethics,” Mr. Loucks wrote. “They are not just seeking foods that mimic meat. Instead they specifically want vegetarian foods with distinctive flavors and visible, recognizable ingredients.”

“Not that long ago, electrical cars were considered nonperformers, and when Prius came out, a lot of people didn’t think there was a market for it,” said Yves Potvin, founder and chief executive of Gardein Protein International, which makes the Gardein line of meatless products. “Now people are willing to pay $70,000 for a Tesla, and more than one million Prius cars are sold each year.”

Mr. Brown is most proud of Beyond Meat’s “chicken breast” products, which are sold in strips that look like real chicken and can be pulled into shreds for chicken salad. “That was kind of the holy grail,” he said.

“It has to be just as good as, just as convenient as and maybe even cheaper than ground beef or chicken,” Mr. Brown said. “Our business is to create something better than meat; otherwise we are not going to move the needle.”

The Social Progress Index is a brainchild of Michael E. Porter, the eminent Harvard business professor who earlier helped develop the Global Competitiveness Report. Porter is a Republican whose work, until now, has focused on economic metrics.“This is kind of a journey for me,” Porter told me. He said that he became increasingly aware that social factors support economic growth: tax policy and regulations affect economic prospects, but so do schooling, health and a society’s inclusiveness.

Porter and a team of experts spent two years developing this index, based on a vast amount of data reflecting suicide, property rights, school attendance, attitudes toward immigrants and minorities, opportunity for women, religious freedom, nutrition, electrification and much more.

Many who back proposed Republican cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and public services believe that such trims would boost America’s competitiveness. Looking at this report, it seems that the opposite is true.

Canada came in seventh, the best among the nations in the G-7. Germany is 12th, Britain 13th and Japan 14th.

Over all, the United States’ economy outperformed France’s between 1975 and 2006. But 99 percent of the French population actually enjoyed more gains in that period than 99 percent of the American population. Exclude the top 1 percent, and the average French citizen did better than the average American. This lack of shared prosperity and opportunity has stunted our social progress.

“We waited three days, from March 29 until April 1, to give American diplomacy a chance and to give the Israelis a chance,” Mr. Shtayyeh said.

“We do not want to use this right against anybody or to confront anybody,” he said as he signed the membership applications live on Palestinian television. “We don’t want to collide with the U.S. administration. We want a good relationship with Washington because it helped us and exerted huge efforts. But because we did not find ways for a solution, this becomes our right.”

American officials, while rattled, said the Palestinians appeared to be using leverage against Israel rather than trying to scuttle the negotiations.

The United States voted against the Palestinians’ 2012 bid in the United Nations General Assembly, and it blocked a similar effort in 2011 at the Security Council, arguing that negotiations with Israel were the only path to peace and statehood.

While the Palestinians’ pursuit of the international route is widely viewed as a poison pill for the peace talks, Mr. Abbas and Mr. Kerry held out hope on Tuesday night that they could still be salvaged. The agencies Mr. Abbas moved to join include the Geneva and Vienna Conventions and those dealing with women’s and children’s rights.

While Middle East analysts widely praised Mr. Kerry’s determination, many thought he was on a fool’s errand. He long ago abandoned his original goal of achieving a final-status agreement within nine months, and in recent weeks he even de-emphasized his proposed framework of core principles for a deal, focusing instead on merely extending the timetable.

In addition, Israel would promise to “show restraint” in settlement construction, according to an official involved in the negotiations, by not starting new government housing projects in the West Bank. Projects underway would be allowed to continue, the official said, and East Jerusalem would not be included.

"I was wrong," he said. "I acted on my emotions."

Yanukovych did not answer several questions about whether he would support Russia — which has deployed tens of thousands of troops near the Ukrainian border — moving into Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians, the justification Putin used to take Crimea.Continue reading the main story Why movie streaming sites so fail to satisfy Also in Tech » Apple's war on Samsung has Google in crossfire At Mozilla, a chief's support of gay marriage ban causes conflict Continue reading the main story Advertisement (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

“As a result of these reforms,” Mr. Golts added, “Russia now has absolute superiority over any country in the post-Soviet space.”

Since the start of 2012, salaries for most military personnel have roughly tripled, to between $700 and $1,150 a month for privates and sergeants — a respectable amount in Russian terms. The Kremlin has also expanded housing and education benefits.

At his direction, a comprehensive, multiagency military strategy was developed for the first time, with ambitious goals that included bringing all units to permanent combat readiness and upgrading weapons systems.

It was a sharp contrast to the brief war with Georgia in 2008, when Russia overwhelmed its much smaller foe on a tiny patch of ground, but also revealed the sorry state of its own forces — problems that stretched back to the two military campaigns in Chechnya.

Palestinians, in turn, would agree not to join more than 60 United Nations and other agencies, including the International Criminal Court, suspending an effort that has been vigorously opposed by both Israel and Washington.

“On principle, the leadership rejects the idea of extending the talks, basically because no progress has been made — on the contrary, things got worse,” Mr. Shehada said on Voice of Palestine radio. “However, if the U.S. promises and the Israelis reassure that the negotiations need a limited amount of time to achieve progress, then the leadership may be more lenient. But there must be a complete halt to the settlements, and more prisoners must be released.”

While Mr. Netanyahu could win significant political cover with a preholiday homecoming for Mr. Pollard, who was granted Israeli citizenship while in prison, his coalition is deeply divided over the Palestinian question. Several ministers have vowed to vote against any release of imprisoned Israeli citizens.

“We have to ask ourselves, have the Palestinians become addicted to Israeli incentives?” Mr. Oren said in a radio interview.

The issue of foreign extremists using London as a base is particularly sensitive here. In the days surrounding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the intelligence agencies of some other European countries derisively labeled the British capital Londonistan — a reference to the ease with which Islamic militants were able to operate there.

Since Mr. Morsi was overthrown, jihadists operating mostly in the northern Sinai have carried out hundreds of bombings, assassinations and at least one attack using a rocket-propelled grenade.

The British inquiry followed behind-the-scenes pressure from Egypt and Saudi Arabia for Britain to outlaw the organization — but an official said the aim of the inquiry was “not about establishing evidence to proscribe” the group. Mr. Morsi, along with hundreds of his followers, is facing trial in Egypt on an array of charges.Last month, when Saudi Arabia branded the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, the group’s response came in a statement from its London office, which said it was surprised and distressed by the Saudi decree.

As Kiev attempted to further consolidate its control domestically, Moscow delivered yet another blow to the fledgling government on Tuesday as Gazprom, the Russian state gas giant, said it would raise the price of natural gas sold in Ukraine by more than 40 percent.

Alexei Miller, the head of Gazprom, said that Russia would revoke a discount on gas prices granted as part of a financial lifeline granted to Mr. Yanukovych in December, raising the price to $385.50 per thousand cubic meters from $268.50 per thousand cubic meters.

Faction and ethnicity have long been divisive in Afghanistan — so much so that the country has not held a census in decades, for fear that shifting demographics could disrupt the balance of power.

According to the last census in 1979, Pashtuns are the largest group, followed by Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks. The south and east are almost entirely Pashtun, the ethnicity that has largely ruled Afghanistan for hundreds of years. The north is home to a wide array of ethnicities, including Tajiks, Uzbeks and at least some Hazaras, who are more concentrated in the center of the country.

Philippines invited reporters on board the government vessel that was sent to resupply the Sierra Madre, a rusted warship that has been grounded on the reef since 1999.

The Global Times, a Chinese state-run newspaper with nationalist views, said in an editorial on Monday that the “small and weak” Philippines had become the vanguard force of “provoking China.” It warned that China had the ability to force Filipino soldiers off the reef at any time, “like taking thieves away.”

The German statement characterized the troop movement as described by Mr. Putin as “the partial withdrawal of Russian troops ordered from the eastern border of Ukraine.”

The Kremlin’s statement describing the same telephone conversation made no mention of any troop withdrawals. It said only that the leaders “discussed various aspects of the situation in Ukraine, including the possibility for international involvement in restoring stability” and that the pair had also talked about constitutional overhaul in Ukraine and another troubled region of Eastern Europe, the separatist Transnistria region of Moldova.

“This vote, as much on a local level as on the national level, is a defeat for the government and the majority,” Mr. Ayrault said in an uncharacteristically frank statement on Sunday. “I think we have not done enough to explain that the recovery efforts undertaken since 2012 were essential for the future of our country.”

In the elections on Sunday, the Socialist Party lost 155 cities to parties on the

right, including traditional bastions like Limoges, which the left had held since 1912, and several other midsize cities.

Voter abstention, at close to 40 percent, reached the highest rate on record. Opinion polling suggested a broad rejection of the French ruling elite, which is increasingly viewed as detached from the concerns of the population it governs.

One bright spot for the Socialist Party was in Paris, where its candidate, Anne Hidalgo, was elected the first female mayor.

speedy return to economic prosperity and reinforced social protections. But he quickly lowered his ambitions and said he had underestimated the dire state of France’s public finances. More recently, he was unable to make good on a pledge to stop the rise in unemployment by the end of 2013.

Mr. Ayrault, the outgoing prime minister, was viewed by voters and commentators alike as a bit bland and lacking energy. By contrast, Mr. Valls is intense and sometimes fiery. There has been little indication, however, that the change in leadership will be much more than cosmetic, and most policies are expected to remain the same, with the exception of the future tax cuts announced Monday. Other members of the new government have yet to be announced.

Most notably, Arab states have long insisted on the resolution of the Palestinians’ dispute with Israel before any wider peace initiative could be taken up.

“The U.S. and the regional allies cannot find a solution to Syria, stabilize Egypt and halt the Iranian threat without the other,” Mr. al-Otaiba said. “There is simply no way around working together to resolve these issues.”

For instance, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates share comparable views on the rise and fall of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. They all were far more comfortable with the government of President Hosni Mubarak, and were dismayed at what they viewed as an abandonment of Mr. Mubarak by the United States in the face of the initial Tahrir Square uprising.

The Egyptian-Israeli “peace treaty and its architecture is part of the overarching strategy of the ruling elite in Egypt,” a senior Israeli military official said on Monday, though he noted that the treaty is still not popular with much of the Egyptian public, the military government is “committed to that for many good reasons.”

Another thing potentially bringing Israel and Gulf states together is their intensifying criticism of American foreign policy.