In one of the world’s great food capitals, where almost every conceivable cuisine is available, a shortage of butter over the past two years has left supermarket shelves bare, while many bakers have been forced to resort to margarine. Japan tightly limits butter imports, and its graying farmers have failed lately to make enough to serve a nation that loves bread and cake along with rice and miso soup.
Imagine erasing the two largest airports in Texas — more than 11,000 flights a week. That’s one way to think about the biggest change for travelers over the past four years. Airlines flew 11,475 fewer domestic flights the third week of July this year compared with the same week in 2011, according to a comparison of schedules. That’s about 7% of all flights, and roughly as many as fly each week from the big Dallas and Houston hubs. Communities from Milwaukee and Cleveland in the Midwest to Memphis, Tenn., and Newport News, Va., in the South complain they no longer have enough air service. The Justice Department is investigating whether airlines colluded to shrink flight schedules in unison so they could boost prices.
New York City hotels have long been known as the most expensive in the U.S., but that’s changing as a glut of new properties open their doors and drive prices down. Among the top 25 markets, including Atlanta, San Francisco and Orlando, New York was the only city to experience a decrease in the average daily room rate – a standard measure of hotel performance, according to hotel research firm STR, which released industry second-quarter results compared with the same period last year.
Much more is highlighted in A Look Around the Nation and the World.
