TIME CLOCK

IRAN is moving closer to settlement of its oil problem. Famed Oilman Torkild ("Cap") Richer (TIME, April 20) has been hired as Iran's official adviser on oil matters and is expected to work out a deal between Iran and Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. that will permit a combine of oil companies to market Iran's oil.

JOHN L. Lewis' miners are being sharply reminded of how they have priced coal out of many markets. Pension and other benefits are being cut heavily because of lagging coal production (down 26% in the anthracite fields). Anthracite miners will have their $100 monthly pension cut to $50, and bituminous miners will lose their $30 a month (plus $10 for each dependent) disability pay.

RUSSIA, which recently puzzled financial experts by selling gold (TIME, Nov. 15 et seq.), has now added a mystery for commodity men. Though short of sterling, the Reds have just made a deal with a British firm to buy 50,000 tons of refined sugar, the biggest such sale in more than 20 years, at a time when Russia's satellites are exporting sugar.

UNDERWATER prospectors have taken up the hunt for tidelands oil. California's Monterey Oil Co. is sending down teams of diver-geologists to prowl the ocean bottom (to depths of 150 ft.), looking for likely formations in areas where seismographic exploration with dynamite is forbidden.

ELECTRIC power output, which recently hit a weekly record of 9,000,000,000 kwh, will soar 160% in the next 14 years, predicts Philip Sporn, president of American Gas & Electric Co. By 1968, the U.S. will be using power at the rate of 1,138,000,000,000 kw-h a year, v. 442,000,000,000 in 1953.

AIR cargo traffic will surpass passenger volume by 1960, predicted Ralph Damon, president of Trans World Airlines. For T.W.A. alone, international cargo loadings have increased nearly 1,000% in five years (from 776,964 ton-miles to 8,000,000), now represent 30% of the airline's total cargo business.

BUDGET cuts will mean cancellation of $500 million worth of Army contracts by June 30.

TIREMAKERS expect 1954's production to equal or exceed last year's 100,500,000 units. A drop in auto output would hurt some companies which do a large original-equipment business, but not affect others (e.g., General Tire, Armstrong Rubber, Seiberling) which supply the growing replacement market. Prices will be about the same as 1953.

TITANIUM castings for jet aircraft will soon be mass-produced for the first time under a process developed by National Research Corp. of Cambridge, Mass. The process depends on special furnaces and superheat-resistant molds. The first license will go to the Titanium Casting Corp., a big supplier of nonferrous castings to the aircraft industry.

MOVIE theater owners are stepping up their investment in TV broadcasting. The latest buyer: Stanley-Warner Corp., the theater chain separated from Warner Bros. Pictures a year ago (TIME, March 2). It has bought a 50% interest in a new TV station (WTRI) under construction in Schenectady, N.Y., plans to "obtain as many licenses as the FCC permits."

CANNED salmon prices may drop if the tentative consent agreement between the salmon industry and the Federal Trade Commission goes through. Under the agreement, which would end the FTC price-fixing suit against 43 canners and eleven fishermen's unions (TIME, Dec. 21), all hands will desist from price-fixing, and raw-fish prices will be individually negotiated between each canner and each fisherman or fishermen's cooperative instead of having the union bargain with the canners' association for all.

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