"National Association of Securities Dealers Chairman Frank Zarb asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to delay the start of decimal stock prices until the first quarter of next year. The SEC has ordered a phase-in of decimals on U.S. securities markets between July and October. ""We believe the shift to begin trading in decimals this year would impose unacceptable risks,"" Zarb said in a letter to SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. An SEC spokesman declined comment.</br></br>The Department of Agriculture will announce today that it is lifting restrictions on how much soy, diary and vegetable protein can be included in the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs. Currently, food service professionals working in schools only can include up to 30 percent of soy or other proteins in the meat, poultry or seafood served to children. Regulators said they wanted to give menu planners more flexibility in menu planning and lower the fat content of foods.</br></br>Productivity grew at the fastest pace in seven years in the fourth quarter of 1999, and labor costs fell for the second straight quarter, the Labor Department said. Productivity, a gauge of output per hour worked, rose at a 6.4 percent annual rate in the final three months of the year. Unit labor costs, a barometer of underlying inflation pressures, fell at a bigger-than-expected 2.5 percent rate in the fourth quarter, the steepest drop in seven years.</br></br>BP Amoco wants to swap Atlantic Richfield's Alaskan oil fields for similar assets elsewhere to overcome federal antitrust objections to its proposed $32.5 billion purchase of Arco, people familiar with the situation said. Chevron and Royal Dutch/Shell have large fields in West Africa that BP Amoco would want, said Fadel Gheit, research director at Fahnestock.</br></br>RCN's Starpower Internet services, which were out for about 33 hours on Sunday and Monday, were supposed to be back online yesterday, but more than a few of its half-million subscribers still couldn't couldn't log on. Tony Pedutto, general manager for Starpower, formerly Erols, blamed jammed phone lines due to increased traffic from people who couldn't get their e-mail over the weekend. He also said some customers who did manage to get on to the service weren't able to reach popular sites such as Yahoo Mail and ESPN because of network problems. Pedutto said the problems ""when they are being reported are being fixed."""