TIME CLOCK

FHA INTEREST RATES on U.S.-insured mortgages may soon be raised to 5 1/4% from 5%. FHA also intends to lower mortgage down payments later this year (to $300 from $700 on a $10,000 house), limit discounts on FHA-backed mortgages to 2 1/2% of par value.

U.S. FARM EXPORTS jumped 35% to record $4.7 billion in fiscal 1957. Government-subsidized cotton exports hit 7,700,000 bales v. 2,200,000 bales in 1956; wheat shipments rose to 535 million bu. from 340 million bu. Agriculture Department expects foreign sales boom to level off in current fiscal year because of bumper cotton, wheat crops abroad, new import controls in some dollar-short countries.

ANTITRUST STUDY is stirring up a storm for sporting-goods industry. Justice Department suspects collusive pricing and division of markets and products, is quietly going back as far as 1931 to look at records of some 80 sporting-goods makers, five retail and manufacturing associations.

NUCLEAR-POWER race will be greatly influenced by big 150,000 kw. reactor in southern Italy. World Bank, which is expected to help finance Italian project, will ask seven internationally known atom experts to choose best system. Result may largely decide whether other countries will buy Britain's gas-cooled natural-uranium reactors or liquid-cooled enriched-uranium plants, which the U.S. is anxious to export.

BRIGHT RED SKYSCRAPER will be built in midtown Manhattan on site of Carnegie Hall. Real-Estate Man Louis J. Glickman, who bought Carnegie Hall for $5,000,000, will raze famed music center, start construction in 1959 of $22 million 44-story office tower to be faced with red-porcelain-covered steel panels.

TROUBLED MINING INDUSTRY will soon drop into deeper hole because U.S. Government will stop stockpiling lead, zinc. With zinc prices down to 10-c- a lb. v. 13 1/2-c- three months ago, Southwest's Eagle-Picher Co. will lay off 1,100 workers by closing its lead and zinc mines in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas. Other big mine shutdowns are on their way in New Jersey, Nevada, California.

SKYWAY TRAFFIC JAM will be eased under new CAB plan to prevent armed forces from declaring vast areas of sky off-limits to any but military flights, thus crowding commercial planes into narrower lanes and causing costly flight delays. Board figures alloting more space for commercial flights will also create wider, safer buffer space between military and civilian areas.

HOWARD HUGHES is also target of trustbusters. Justice Department charged that his Hughes Tool Co. divided world markets to prevent import into U.S. of German-made oil and gas well-drilling equipment that would compete with him. Suit says that since 1950 Hughes has illegally pooled patents and consulted on prices with West Germany's Alfred Wirth & Co.

WORLD'S SHIPBUILDERS will set peacetime record this year. Major maritime nations (excluding U.S.S.R., Red China) are now working on some 1,700 ships totaling 8,778,000 gross tons--up 20% from same period last year--and have additional orders for 24 million tons of new vessels, nearly two-thirds of them tankers. Front-running Japan launched 503,000 tons of shipping in June quarter, but British builders are ahead in shipping under construction, with 2,000,0000 tons v. 1,500,000 tons for Japan.

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