THE HOTEL chain Marriott recently announced that it will cease selling "adult content"i.e., pornographyin its newer hotels. Anyone who knows a bit about the hotel business might find this move a bit confusing. After all, porn is still a moneymaker for chains like Marriott, which by some estimates was earning $175 per room, per year in smut peddling alone. But there does seem to be a method to Marriott's madness. Politico's Ben Smith explains that Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a presumptive candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, recently left the Marriott board. The chain's owners are "longtime Romney supporters," Smith notes. And social conservatives, apparently, hit Mr Romney hard on the porn "issue" during the ex-governor's 2008 campaign for the GOP nomination. (One critic called Mr Romney a "major pornographer.") So in some sense, Mr Smith argues, Marriott appears to be doing Mr R...

IT IS only a paragraph long, but the leaders of the European Union fought over it for hours. The words in the conclusions (PDF) of the European summit on February 4th hide the deep cracks that have been re-opened within the EU over how to restore the euro zone after the year-long sovereign-debt crisis Building on the new economic governance framework, heads of state or government will take further steps to achieve a new quality of economic policy coordination in the euro area to improve competitiveness, thereby leading to a higher degree of convergence, without undermining the single market. Non-euro members will be invited to participate in the coordination. This is a long-winded reference to the competitiveness pact that France and Germany had wanted to unveil at the summit. The idea is for leaders of the euro zone to agree to co-ordinate and align their economic policies more deeply in sensitive areas like wages, pensions and taxation. The declared aim is to encourage "con...

CATHERINE Ashton has been given a difficult mission: go to Egypt to tell Hosni Mubaraks regime to begin political reforms immediately. Events in Cairo continue to push Baroness Ashton into the limelight. If ever there was a moment to raise her game as the EUs foreign-policy chief, as I suggested she should do in my column this week, this is it. She got a roasting in the European parliament on Wednesday for being too invisible, too late and too timid. Vous tes une rsistante de la vingt-cinquime heure, said the leader of the European greens, Daniel Cohn-Bendit. (You are a resister of the 25th hour", in other words, a Johnny-come-lately in supporting the protesters). To be fair, Baroness Ashton has stopped issuing communiqus and has started speaking more frequently in person, including to TV cameras. By her own admission, though, she will not step an inch beyond the agreed line. Im not somebody who can go out and give my personal view, she told MEPs, I speak for the European...

MICE are coming to an airport near you. An Israeli start-up company, BioExplorers, has harnessed the rodents' olfactory abilities to develop an explosive-detecting system that could have applications in the aviation industry. The New Scientist explains how the machine would work: Along one side of an archway [in a device similar to a full-body scanner], a detection unit contains three concealed cartridges, each of which houses eight mice. During their 4-hour shifts in the detector, the mice mill about in a common area in each cartridge as air is passed over people paused in the archway and through the cartridge. When the mice sniff traces of any of eight key explosives in the air, they are conditioned to avoid the scent and flee to a side chamber, triggering an alarm. To avoid false positives, more than one mouse must enter the room at the same time. Mice are even better than dogs at this, apparently, thanks to a greater quantity of "olfactory receptor genes". BioExplore...

HERE'S something I hadn't known: first, that some people consider the use of anyways to mark an ill-educated boob (I'd have just thought it casual). Second, according to Gabe at Motivated Grammar , that anyways is an "adverbial genitive", and so in this form is grammatically equivalent to sometimes and always. I'd never thought about how that s got there, but now I see that that genitive s is just a grammatical sibling of the possessive 's in Mary's house. Why did always become mandatory, sometimes become two-way ("sometime" for the adjective, as in "a sometime grammar pundit", and "sometimes" for the adverb, as in "I pontificate on grammar sometimes"), and anyway become a prescriptivist shibboleth? Gabe doesn't know, and I don't either, but there are the facts. The linguistic fact is that there's nothing wrong with anyways, but the sociological suggestion is that you should use anyways only in the co...

A RELIABLE filler-item for newspapers the world over is the sponsored survey. You know the sort of thing: articles headed "Children who eat breakfast cereal do better in school", which reveal in the final paragraph that the "new research" was paid for by a cereal-maker. These stories are annoying not just because they are lazy journalism, but because so often they muddle up cause and effect. I am perfectly willing to believe that children do better at school, on average, if they begin their day with a proper breakfast sitting at a table with a spoon, bowl and glass of milk, compared to some desperate child who has to hunt for a packet of Monster Munch in the cupboard to start the day, because the rest of the family is still asleep. But what you are picking up there is not, I suspect, primarily a story of the nutritional superiority of cornflakes over crisps. By the same token, I am sure that you could conduct surveys that show better school performance for children ...

THE World Trade Organisation (WTO) has decided that Boeing received illegal subsidies from the American government to help with its development of the 787 Dreamliner. Two correspondents discuss the disputes that are keeping the WTO, Boeing and Airbus busy, and many trial lawyers happy.

FOR many commentators, Wednesday's prime minister's question time brought final proof that the government is in trouble over its proposal to privatise England's state-owned woods and forests. Many detected a whiff of panic, if not an imminent about-turn, when David Cameron said he was "listening to all the arguments in this case." They further opined that the government's agonies were rooted in the unusual importance of trees and woods to the British psyche. An editorial in the Times this morning declared: In Britain's conception of itself, as Tory image-makers so recently knew, the myth of the wooded island looms large. William Shakespeare put his fairies in the forests. It was forestry that sheltered Robin Hood from tyranny. Oaks built our navies, which sailed the globe. I respectfully disagree, twice. I knew the government was in real trouble on Tuesday, when the Daily Telegraph's revered "Matt" drew a front page pocket cartoon of Winnie ...

DANIEL BELL, who died on January 25th, aged 91 (my column this week looks back on his life and works ), was always sensitive to being called a neocon. He cut his intellectual teeth with future neocons at "Alcove No. 1", at City College . He was a close friend of Irving Kristol, the godfather of neoconservatism, and even founded the Public Interest with him. But he always remained, as he described himself, "a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics and a conservative in culture". Here is a letter he sent to us when we bracketed him a little too closely with Kristol. SIR - Your obituary of Irving Kristol (September 26th) aligned me with his effort to transform conservatism from a dour to a modern outlook. I was never part of such an effort. I co-founded the Public Interest with Kristol. In our opening statement of intent there was not a word about conservatism; instead we focused on our effort to discuss public policy and to make whatever knowledge we have, p...

JUDGING from the votes they have cast with their bottoms, China's business travellers need little persuading of the merits of high-speed rail. Since the high-speed link between Wuhan and Guangzhou opened in December 2009, for instance, over 20m have chosen the zippier trains, while the number of competing daily flights between Guangzhou and Changsha (on the route to Wuhan) has dropped from over 11 to three. Yet whether plans to double high-speed coverage by 2020 are an unmitigated good thing for China, which already has more high-speed rail than any other country, is a different question. It is one that decision-makers have largely sidestepped thanks to the peculiarities of China's political system. But of late debate has spilled over into the public realm. Detractors complain that high-speed rail is too expensive for the Zhang in the street. Migrant labourers, 230m of whom are expected to make the journey home during Spring Festival, are not in enough of a hurry to pay a premi...

WE ARE all rightly fixated on the politics of what is going on in Egypt at the moment. But it is worth sparing a thought for the economics, too. If Russians in 1917 wanted "peace, bread and land" and ended up with totalitarianism, gulags and collective farms, Egyptians, particularly young Egyptians, want jobs. Egypt's youth-unemployment rate is currently about 25%. That is clearly a depressing number, but even more depressing is that it is not out of line with rates across the region, and beyond. Lebanon's youth-unemployment rate is 21%, Tunisia's is 30% and, outside the Arab world, Britain's is 20% and Spain's is 40%. Policymakers would be well advised to think about how we're going to promote job-intensive growth, even as they try to calculate the gigantic geopolitical consequences of the Egyptian eathquake.

LIKE many people, I have been glued to Al Jazeera for the past few days. It's breathless and biased, to be sure, with a tendency to inflate numbers and play down risks, but it is much better than the alternatives. With the notable exception of Fareed Zakaria's programme, CNN is a shadow of its former self, and the BBC, which justifies its poll tax, in part, on the grounds that it provides superlative news coverage, is more interested in what Egypt means for British holidaymakers, bless them, than for geopolitics. Given that Egypt is likely to produce a cascade of troubles in the Middle East, Al Jazeera has now become essential viewing. Pity the competition is so bad.

YOU leave Britain for just three days and what happens? Turn on the TV and you find that Britain is going to be part of an " Islamic caliphate ". This is on the US's "most-watched cable news network". There is no mention of this at home butperhaps my wife is trying not to worry me. I am surprised the FTSE 100 and sterling haven't taken more of a hit. Mind you, it's not the strangest theory I've ever heard.Once I had aletter from a reader warning me of an international Swedish conspiracy to control the world (sounds like a good idea; the world would be a much nicer place). But those were innocent days when people who wrote letters in green ink don't get to host TV shows.

WE HAVE read plenty about Greece's dismal public finances and risible public book-keeping. But if the country is to have any chance of recovering in the long-term it needs to rethink its approach to entrepreneurialism, which is one of the most hostile in the world. A New York Times article makes this point forcefully by telling the story of one entrepreneur's brave attempt to establish a soft-drinks business in his home country: DEMETRI POLITOPOULOS says he has suffered countless indignities in his 12-year battle to build a microbrewery and wrest a sliver of the Greek beer market from the Dutch colossus, Heineken. His tires have been slashed and his products vandalized by unknown parties, he says, and his brewery has received threatening phone calls. And he says he has had to endure regular tauntsyou left Manhattan to start up a beer factory in northern Greece?not to mention the pain of losing 5.3 million euros. Bad as all that has been, nothing prepared him for this realit...

A PRESS RELEASE I saw today suggested that 74% of 1,000 business travellers polled consider children the most annoying thing about business-class travel. The idea that, having paid top dollar for better seating and food, their comfort should be compromised by fidgeting, chatting and even crying youngsters is enough to make some flyers blanche. Is this a problem that needs a solution? If so, one answer is adults-only services; another is adults-only sections of regular services. Carriers operating Boeing 747s could, for instance, easily reserve the upper-floor business-class seats for adults, keeping the mewlers and the pukers downstairs with hoi polloi. But while all travellers would agree with the appeal of a quiet flight, it's a big step to ban certain passengers from certain parts of a plane. I'd rather sit next to a well-behaved five-year-old than an adult with bad body odour, but I don't think smelly people should be herded to the back of the plane. Easier, I think, f...

A COMFORTABLE airport lounge can be a godsend for anyone stuck in transit, especially those delayed by the snowstorms that have been sweeping across the top of North America lately. As David Lytle of Frommers.com told USA Today, "For frequent fliers, lounges offer sanity and some semblance of the comforts of home." Unfortunately, most travellers in North America don't come across a great one very often, according to a top-ten ranking from Frommer's . Many travellers spend upward of $400 a year for access to a club lounge, but the only Canadian destinations on the Frommer's listthe two Porter Airlines lounges at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airportare notable because they allow passengers in for free. That's right: free. Passengers can also access free Wi-Fi, iMac computers, food and drink. Such amenities let "the little guy feel a bit more important," says Jason Clampet, Frommer's senior online editor. (Gulliver's not sure passengers will be too...

I COULDN'T quite believe it when I heard about this tweet , via al-Jazeera television: Farrah3m Protest signs in #tahrir in Arabic, English, French and EVEN hebrew #jan25 #egypt And a search on Twitter revealed another : iyad_elbaghdadi Joke of the day: Egypt state TV says that "demonstrators are shouting slogans in English and Hebrew". #Egypt #Jan25 #Tahrir #Spin Really? Stranded Israeli tourists joining the protests? Egyptian government provocateurs trying to undermine the demonstrations? Neither, it emerges. An al-Jazeera journalist, Gregg Carlstrom, had taken this picture of a young Egyptian protester,of which he tweeted : glcarlstrom One guy in Tahrir had a "get out Mubarak" sign in Hebrew. "A message for Netanyahu," he said. It's actually Arabic, "azouk Mubarak", written in Hebrew characters.Now that's what I call killing two birds with one stone.

THERE have been some odd things going on in the markets over the last two weeks. The euro has staged a remarkable recovery, hitting $1.3760 as I write. presumably because fears about the sovereign debt crisis are receding. That looks very premature. Could it be a dollar decline, rather than euro strength? After all, even the pound has hit $1.60, despite all Britain's economic problems. But that explanation looks unlikely given the recent weakness of gold, which has usually moved in the opposite direction to the dollar; many people see it as an alternative currency. Perhaps the answer is that traders are simply unwinding their early 2011 positions, when they came into the year short the euro and long gold. Another puzzle is why risky assets aren't taking more fright that Brent crude is at $100 a barrel, a factor that has been bad news for the economy and markets in the past. Meanwhile, the wind outside my NY hotel room makes it sound like King Lear and my plans to investigate ...

INCENTIVES, economists tend to say at the drop of a hat, are everything. Well, clearly the officials at Homeland Security don't hang out with economists much. If they did they might have learnt an easy lesson about incentives from a beagle I met on a recent trip through Newark airport. My luggage was delayed, ostensibly by a stuck door on a truck that was to have ferried it from the plane to the arrivals hall. What would have been a tiresome 30 minutes turned into a fascinating lesson in incentives in action. The beagle, a wise seven-year-old with a long nose, had the job of sniffing out contraband for his handler, a customs official, as the two roamed the luggage-collection area. The beagle would sit next to a suspicious-smelling bag, wag his tail, look excited and then look to his handler for praise. She would mark the bag for inspection by officials at the exit, give him a treat from a bag on her belt, and then move on. You can figure out where this lesson is going. With the dog...