COFFEE PRICES are bouncing up again for the first time in nearly a year, after an agreement among South American producers to regulate exports instead of dumping surpluses on the market. A. & P., Safeway and Grand Union have boosted prices 2-c- to 3-c- a lb., and other big roasters will probably follow suit.

ALUMINUM-NICKEL shortages will be eased by diverting metal from the Government's strategic stockpile to private users. For 1955's third quarter, the Office of Defense Mobilization, which released some metal earlier this year, will release another 200 million Ibs. of aluminum and 3,000,000 Ibs. of nickel.

GIANT RADAR NETS under construction around the North American continent will be a bonanza for the electronics industry. They will cost the U.S. some $2 billion in fiscal 1956 alone, says Assistant Air Force Secretary Lyle S. Garlock.

ANTIBIOTICS INDUSTRY will get a long, hard look from the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC will investigate pricing policies in various drugs (profits vary from near zero to 400%), patents on drugs that the Government helped develop, and the decrease in competition.

BUDGET-BUREAU reorganization can save the U.S. $4 billion annually, says the Hoover Commission, which says that under current procedures "there is no effective control over expenditures either by the Congress or by the executive branch." The commission recommends that the Budget Bureau apply the accounting and financial methods of U.S. business to its job, wants it to pay more attention to budgeting yearly Government expenditures on a strict cost basis, and less to preparing mere estimates of proposed expenditures.

AIRCRAFT MERGER TALK between Lockheed and Bell has pushed their stocks up on the New York Stock Exchange. Though both companies say that nothing is imminent, the deal would be a shrewd diversification move for both: Lockheed makes chiefly fixed-wing planes, while Bell is hip-deep in rocket engines, guided missiles, helicopters.

STEEL DEMAND will hit about 190 million tons annually within 15 years, some 50% more than current U.S. capacity, predicts Bethlehem Steel's President Arthur B. Homer.

FRUIT PRICES will soar this summer because of spring freezes in the South, California and Michigan. Prices of plums, apricots, watermelons and peaches will go up, at least until late Northern crops start coming to market. On Southern markets, peaches are selling at 25-c- apiece.

RENEGOTIATION LAW for defense contracts will probably be extended by Congress for another two years. Under the bill now before the Senate, the Government can renegotiate all contracts beyond the first $500,000 of sales if it thinks profits excessive. Exception: contracts made by competitive bidding for new military buildings, defense plants, additions to current facilities.

VICKERS VISCOUNT, Britain's most successful postwar transport, will soon replace U.S. Convair 240s on short-haul routes on Holland's KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Vickers has sold nine Viscounts worth $11 million to KLM, landed orders for five planes from three U.S. corporations (U.S. Steel, Standard Oil Co. of California, Hughes Tool Co.), thus breaking into the lucrative business-flying field for the first time. Total Viscounts sold to date: 214.

FIRST POLIO SUIT against Cutter Laboratories has been filed by an Oakland, Calif, couple. They charge that their four-year-old boy contracted polio as a result of the company's "negligence and carelessness" in making the vaccine, ask $100,000 damages from Cutter and two drugstores which sold the vaccine.

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