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DAIRYMEN are pressuring Agriculture Secretary Benson to put off reducing dairy supports from 90% to 75% of parity on April 1. Benson is standing firm, but he will soon bring out a new plan to encourage butter buying and dispose of surpluses. Most promising idea: a coupon plan under which housewives get, with each pound of butter they buy, a coupon that entitles them to another pound at cut-rate prices.

COMET jetliners, grounded since the disastrous (35 dead) crash off Elba Jan. 10, will return to service on one route next week with 50 precautionary modifications. Biggest change: armor plate between the engines and the fuel tanks to guard against an explosion in case a turbine whirls itself apart.

SANTA FE has just retired its last steam engine, thus becoming the biggest completely dieselized U.S. railroad, with 1,622 diesel units. Investment: $234,500,000 since 1935.

FIRST full-scale atomic power plant (see SCIENCE) will be built in Pittsburgh by the Duquesne Light Co. if negotiations with the AEC go through as expected. Under the deal, Duquesne will save the government an estimated $30 million on a $45 million plant, pay $5,000,000 towards a reactor that Westinghouse Electric will build (TIME, Nov. 2), plus a royalty on steam generated for electricity. Estimated output: at least 60,000 kilowatts of electricity, enough to supply a city of 100,000.

TV-MAKERS will sell at least 5,500,000 black & white sets in 1954, some 500,000 more than original estimates, predicts Motorola Executive Vice President Robert Galvin.

J. MYER SCHINE, whose son G. David is currently the most famed enlisted man in the U.S. Army (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), is in trouble with the Justice Department again. Both criminal and civil proceedings have been reinstituted against him and his companies, which own a chain of 90 theaters, seven hotels (among them: Miami's Roney Plaza, Los Angeles' Ambassador), charging that the companies failed to comply with a 1949 antitrust order to get rid of 23 of the 39 theaters they were operating in restraint of trade.

SIESTA COACH has been developed by Philadelphia's Budd Co. to give railroad passengers sleeping accommodations at coach fares. The lightweight stainless-steel car will have 36 single roomettes, two double rooms, all with 6-ft. foam rubber beds, toilet, and washstand.

JC. PENNEY department-store chain, which racked up its third $1 billion year in a row in 1953, will open between 30 and 40 new stores (current total: 1,600) throughout the country this year, the largest annual increase in 20 years.

SHIPPING slump has cost one out of every three U.S. merchant seamen his job in the last two years, says the American Merchant Marine Institute. Since 1952, more than 30,000 of the 100,000 seamen on U.S. flag vessels have been laid off, 10,000 in the last five months.

CANADIAN demand for U.S. machinery and consumer goods in 1953 resulted in the greatest foreign-trade deficit in her history. Exports climbed to $4.1 billion, but imports rose even faster, to $4,380,000,000.

LEAD AND ZINC will probably be bought up by the Government for stockpiling, as a stopgap measure, because U.S. mines have been hard hit by falling prices.

LEVER Brothers, which had a management shake-up four years ago, is still in difficulty. Though the privately owned company never discloses operating figures, it admits it wound up 1953 with a big loss (reportedly $5,000,000), while both Procter & Gamble and Colgate's increased profits. Reasons: poor sales, high operating costs, and a 13-week strike at Lever's Hammond, Ind. soap plant.

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