SHIPPING BUSINESS is sinking close to lowest ebb since World War II, and transocean charter rates are down about 50% from peak of Suez crisis. Should recession continue, it will run older, smaller ships off main sea routes. Some ships are already being laid up, but most operators hope to ride out temporary storm, are still placing orders for new ships.

JAPANESE CARS will soon make bid for share of U.S. market. Japan's Toyota automobile company in September will send over models of its four-door, 55-h.p. "Toyopet Crown de Luxe," which gets up to 69 m.p.h. from four-cylinder engine. Car sells for about $2,400 in Japan.

CANADA'S DOLLAR is up to all-time high of $1.058 in U.S. currency, largely because of heavy investments by foreign companies, which must convert their currencies into Canadian dollars.

GLASS-INDUSTRY SLUMP is growing so acute (because of 200% jump in cut-rate imports since 1954) that prices of heavy sheet window glass and light picture-frame glass are being lowered 7% to 16%. Big companies, operating some plants at 50% to 75% capacity, are going along with cuts started by Libbey-Owens-Ford to match foreign prices, but complain that reductions are unrealistic because glass workers' wages will soon rise about 12-c- an hour.

BIGGEST LAND-LEASE BOOM in Washington State since turn of century is being touched off by state's first big oil well (TIME, July 29). Oilmen have filed about 800 bids for leases on more than 450,500 acres of state-owned land, mostly near Sunshine Mining Co.'s test well outside Ocean City.

MOONSHINE WHISKY accounts for 25% of U.S. liquor consumption, says Licensed Beverage Industries Inc., and bootleg output of about 76 million gallons a year costs almost $1 billion in lost taxes. Law officers nipped 25,608 moonshine stills in 1956. Palatable Southern moonshine is now going into northern cities, is often used to refill bottles of name brands and sold in bars.

HUGE FARM AREA will be created along Colorado River in southwestern Arizona, where Real Estateman Stanley W. Barton made deal with Interior Department to transform 67,000 parched acres of Indian reservation into desert garden. In history's biggest lease of Indian lands for agricultural development, Barton will spend about $28 million to complete an irrigating system, also develop industrial and residential sites. Reservation's 1,400 Indians will get jobs, and much improved land will revert to them in 20 to 25 years.

SCHERING CORP., a top ethical drugmaker (1956 sales: $57 million), will merge with $12.7 million-a-year White Laboratories (Feen-A-Mint, Aspergum) to fight current attempts by Revlon Inc. to win Schering control. If stockholders approve, Schering will swap about 11% of its shares for White, thus set up White group as a counterbalance to Revlon, which now owns 9% of Schering stock, probably the biggest single block outstanding.

U.S. AUTO EXPORTS are down owing to mounting gasoline prices, stiffer competition from foreign automakers and higher taxes placed by some countries on heavier cars. In first half of 1957 U.S. exported only 88,214 new cars, a reduction of 29% from 1956.

CONRAD HILTON is dickering to build $16 million hotel in New Orleans on Tulane University-owned land. Main problem is that Hilton wants to buy the site but Tulane wants to lease it for $200,000 a year.

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