HOUSING SCANDALS have scared apartment builders away from the Federal Housing Administration. In March, the month before "windfall profits" accusations began, FHA had 7,707 applications for Government-backed apartment construction; in July the number of applications had plummeted to 611.

DEPARTMENT STORES are getting ready for a showdown price war with discount houses. In St. Louis the three biggest department stores slashed prices to discount-house levels, but continued such services as free delivery and charge accounts. In Detroit and other cities department stores are also cutting prices to meet the discounters' competition. Predicted the National Retail Dry Goods Association: the price wars will spread.

A SECRET FLYING MACHINE, which Britain's Minister of Supply says may be as revolutionary as the jet engine, was successfully tested in England. The device is simply a 10-ft.-by-20-ft. platform, with two Rolls-Royce Nene engines, fuel tanks, and a bucket seat mounted on it. There are no wings, fuselage or rudder. Pilot sits over the engine and flies the platform by directing the jet blasts downward.

U.S. EXPORTERS will get help from the Government to lure new accounts. The Export-Import Bank set up a credit plan so that exporters can give foreign customers up to five years to pay for agricultural and industrial capital goods.

PACKARD hopes to beat other automakers out with a new torsion-bar-ride-control mechanism, which it believes will give it the easiest riding car in the industry. The torsion-bar mechanism operates by electricity to cut down side-sway and absorb bumps, will be installed as standard equipment on 1955 high-priced Packard lines.

COTTON CROP will be smaller than expected, may force up the price of cotton goods. The Department of Agriculture's September crop report cut the August estimate 7% (to 11,-832,000 bales), thereby sent prices of cotton futures edging up.

CYRUS EATON is negotiating with Krupp and Germany's other big steel producers to supply them with iron ore from his enormous Ungava Bay deposits near Quebec's northern coast. German technicians have already surveyed the site, are considering supplying mining equipment and building docks at a deep-water harbor less than 20 miles from the ore.

PRICE FREEZE on natural gas at the wellhead (TIME, July 26) will be reconsidered by the Federal Power Commission. Independent gas producers, brought under FPC's rate-making jurisdiction by a Supreme Court decision, claim that freezing prices without an advance hearing violated their constitutional right to due legal processes.

NORTH AMERICAN Aviation's newest Sabre jet, the F-86K, armed with four 20-mm. cannon (instead of the standard rockets) and equipped with a new all-weather fire-control system, will go to NATO air forces.

FARM SURPLUSES will soon be cut by the export program passed by Congress. President Eisenhower authorized the Agriculture Department to sell $700 million of food abroad at cut-rate prices, the Foreign Operations Administration to give away up to $300 million in surpluses to friendly nations in need.

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