STEEL INDUSTRY is buzzing with merger talk. Bethlehem Steel Corp. and Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. are reportedly talking one over. Follansbee Steel Corp. announced that it will submit to shareholders a "favorable" cash offer to sell out to a corporation not identified, but reported to be outside the steel business.

PENNY URANIUM STOCKS are being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sharp dealing by some brokers and uranium companies prompted the commission to take three cases to court and alert its watchdogs in Salt Lake City and Denver.

SOUTHERN NEWSPRINT production will be stepped up by the opening of one of the South's biggest newsprint mills. From fast-growing southern pine, Britain's Bowaters Southern Paper Corp.'s new, $60 million plant at Calhoun, Tenn. will turn out 130,000 tons of newsprint and 55,000 tons of kraft pulp a year. More than 100 Southern publishers have signed up to buy the mill's entire output for the next 15 years.

CABLE TO ALASKA will be laid off the British Columbian coast by American Telephone & Telegraph Co. By 1956 A.T.&T. expects to connect Port Angeles, Wash, and Ketchikan, thus (at a cost of $14 million) add 36 new circuits to its 13 radio and land-line circuits to Alaska.

A MERGER is being worked out between W. R. Grace Co., which is diversifying, and Dewey & Almy Chemical Co. ($26 million assets), producer of plastic food bags, synthetic rubber, etc. Dewev & Almy's 913,898 shares of stock (over-the-counter value: $35) will probably be traded share-for-share for Grace shares, selling at $38.75.

NEVINS YACHT yard will continue to build and repair custom yachts, thanks to a last-minute rescue by Carl Hovgard, 48, president of the Research Institute of America and enthusiastic yachtsman (his Swedish-built yawl Circe won the Class B Newport-Bermuda race last month). Hovgard bought the yard, which was going to close (TIME, July 12) for a reported $900,000, will keep the Nevins name, try to run the company as a break-even hobby.

ANTI-BOOTLEGGING bill, introduced in Congress to stop dealers from dumping new cars at cut-rate prices, will probably be pigeonholed. Federal Trade Commission came out against the bill, arguing that it would violate the principle of antitrust laws.

PAN AMERICAN World Airways ordered the first 15 new, long-range Douglas DC-7Cs (about $2,200,000 each), will start putting them in service on all routes in 1956. By adding 5 ft. to each wing, Douglas is boosting fuel capacity 23%, expects that the DC-7C will be able to make a nonstop transatlantic run, in either direction.

BURLINGTON MILLS Corp.'s purchase of Pacific Mills and Goodall-Sanford, Inc. (TIME, July 26) will be investigated by the New York Stock Exchange on complaints from stockholders that they should have been notified individually of Burlington's plans. But chances are good that nothing will come of the probe, since both stocks are higher now than they were when the offers were made. Burlington will sell Goodall-Sanford's Palm Beach suit subsidiary, will probably eventually shift the work in Goodall's biggest mill, at Sanford, Me., to the South.

KAISER-WILLYS is on the auction block, may be broken up and sold piecemeal. President Edgar Kaiser offered it to Chrysler Corp., but was turned down. Chrysler has shown interest in the money-making jeep business and Packard in the Maywood (Calif.) assembly plant. But nobody seems to want Kaiser-Willys as a package. The sale is being forced by continuous losses and the fact that Henry J., now 72, needs son Edgar on the West Coast to help run the rest of the Kaiser empire.

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