ALUMINUM PRICE RISE will result from Alcoa's contract settlement with 26,000 A.F.L. and C.I.O. aluminum 5-c- hourly wage increase, plus fringe benefits amounting to another 5-c- an hour.

FOREIGN-AID PLANNERS under FOA Director Harold Stassen are working overtime on three economic ideas for Southeast Asia. FOA wants to set up 1) a currency-clearing union backed by $1 billion in U.S. funds, to help settle payment accounts between Asiatic nations; 2) a U.S.-financed rice bank to store surplus rice against famine years; and 3) a series of U.S.-sponsored barter deals by which Asiatic countries can trade more of their raw materials for manufactured goods.

ROBERT R. YOUNG won an important victory in his battle over reorganization of the bankrupt Missouri Pacific Railroad. The ICC reversed itself, approved a plan that would give some value to 828,395 shares of previously worthless MoPac common stock, 49% of which is owned by Young's Alleghany Corp.

SCHULTE STORES may follow the cigar-store Indian into oblivion. General Stores Corp. will sell off its 145 D.A. Schulte cigar stores around the U.S., hopes to replace them with six super-drugstore chains in addition to the two (Chicago's Ford Hopkins and Stineway) that it now owns.

SEAGRAMS OF CANADA, which has been looking for a name-brand rum to add to its line, finally found one in the British West Indies. Seagrams bought the Myers Rum companies in Jamaica and the Bahamas, will continue to make Myers' dark Jamaican rum.

POWER NETWORK to serve Western Europe from plants in the Austrian Alps is moving from dream to planning stage. Representatives from Austria, West Germany, France and Italy are now meeting in Switzerland to work out details for hydroelectric plants, with an annual 4.7 billion kw.-h. output, to cost $570 million over a 20-year period.

NIKE MISSILE production is being stepped up fast. The Army has just signed a contract with Douglas Aircraft and Western Electric to convert a 76-acre Quartermaster Corps depot in Charlotte, N.C. into a missile factory employing 1,500 men. First production: early 1955.

LITTLE-BIG INCH pipeline, converted from oil to natural gas after World War II, will again become a petroleum carrier to the East Coast if the FPC approves. Texas Eastern Transmission Corp. wants to reconvert 1,168 miles of the line up to Moundsville, W.Va. at a cost of $13 million; to replace it, the company will build a $72 million gas line from Texas to Mississippi to join with an existing gas line to the East, thus keeping gas deliveries at 1.2 billion cu. ft. a day.

BOEING 707 jet transport is flying faster than expected, has already passed its planned 550-m.p.h. cruising speed at 42,000 ft.

TIN AGREEMENT to prevent wide price fluctuations has been signed by 20 nations, will go into effect this winter. Under the plan (opposed by the U.S., West Germany and Brazil), a world tin council will keep tin prices between 80-c- and $1.10 a lb. (current price, New York: 96-c-) by selling tin from a 25,000-ton buffer stock when it gets too high, buying when it gets too low.

ALABAMA POWER CO., having just won federal approval for its plan to take over the $100 million Coosa River hydroelectric project from the Government (TIME, June 28), has asked permission to start on still another power project. The new plan: a $30 million dam and two powerhouses on Alabama's Black Warrior River, to provide the state's industries with more water and another 89,000 kw. of electric power.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.