BUSINESS NOTES.

KODAK DROPS 10 PERCENT: Eastman Kodak Co. stock plunged 10 percent Friday after the world's largest photographic products company said sales for the first two months of the year were below expectations.

Kodak said sales for January and February were ``essentially flat'' from a year ago, with a small increase in the amount of products sold offset by lower prices and unfavorable foreign exchange rates.

It also said sales growth in emerging markets was slower than in 1996. With U.S. camera sales stagnant in recent years, Kodak has increasingly looked to China, India and Eastern Europe for more business.

Investors drove the stock down $9.25 to close at $79 per share, making it single-handedly responsible for a 15-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average. Without Kodak, the Dow would have been up 12 points.

BEN & JERRY'S SALES MELT: Be prepared to spoon out a little more money for Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

The company said it is raising prices by about a dime a pint starting April 15 partly because of higher dairy prices. The company also said slack sales would contribute to a loss in the current quarter.

Ben & Jerry's said it expects to lose somewhere between 12 and 15 cents for each share of stock in the first quarter - which works out to as much as $1 million overall.

NET COMPANY SUES NET AGENCY: A small New York-based Internet company has sued the agency that assigns on-line names under antitrust laws, calling it monopolistic and demanding access to its databases.

The suit, brought by PGP Media Inc. of Manhattan, accuses Network Solutions Inc. of conspiring with other Internet groups to prevent free and open competition in the market for Internet addresses, known as domain names.

The case is over who gets to assign and make money from a basic human-machine disconnect - humans like names, computers like numbers.

Every computer on the Internet has a numerical address (an Internet Protocol address. To make it easier to remember, it's also assigned a ``domain name.'' Thus, 192.220.250.1 becomes nike.com.

PGP Media wants to be able to assign and sell addresses just as Network Solutions now does. It also wants to expand the number of possible top-level domains, so that rather than being limited to simple ones like .com, .net and .org, users could make up their own domains.

MICROSOFT RIVALS SIGN DEAL: Netscape Communications and Novell, two of Microsoft's key rivals, are forming a spinoff company that will take on Microsoft in the key area of corporate computing.

The new venture, to be called Novonyx, will be financed jointly by the two companies. Based in Utah, where Novell is headquartered, it will focus on creating versions of Netscape's software that will run on Novell's NetWare, the leading software used by corporations running networks of personal computers.

AMERICAN, PILOTS STILL TALKING: The Allied Pilots Association board recessed Friday without receiving a final contract proposal while its negotiators endeavored to resolve final sticking points with a rival union and American Airlines.

Union negotiators briefed the board about the agreement in principle reached with the airline before they returned to the table to hash out a deal involving operation of American Eagle jets on regional routes.

The APA pilots are concerned that their jobs could be threatened when the airline upgrades the aircraft used by American Eagle, whose pilots are represented by another union, the Air Line Pilots Association.

EMPLOYEES STOLE $500,000 FROM FEDS: Federal Reserve employees have lifted nearly $500,000 from the Fed's own vaults over the past decades, ranging from a trainee who ``adjusted his socks'' after taking a stack of bills to a senior teller who made off with $110,000 in damaged money.

The 21 inside jobs since 1987 were reported by the Fed in response to an inquiry from Rep. Henry Gonzalez of Texas, who publicized the cases Thursday.

Gonzalez, the senior Democrat on the House Banking Committee and a frequent critic of the central bank, said some of the thefts eluded both internal surveillance cameras and Fed bookkeepers. He has proposed legislation that would require government auditors to examine Fed vaults every three years.

The Fed said the $498,000 stolen from Federal Reserve banks around the country represents a tiny fraction of the $2.7 trillion that the Fed processed from 1987 to 1996. It said $279,000 has been recovered and that officials expect to soon recover another $116,000.