BUSINESS NOTES.

JUDGE POSTPONES SEARS SANCTIONS: A bankruptcy judge agreed Friday to postpone sanctioning Sears Roebuck and Co. until the company can pursue a class-action settlement to compensate wronged customers.

The company admitted this week that it used ``flawed legal judgment'' in handling debt collections with bankrupt customers. The company threatened to repossess items if buyers did not agree to a new payment plan once their debts had been erased through bankruptcy proceedings.

The company offered to cancel debts from any wronged customers, repay interest and give $100 gift certificates as compensation.

But under pressure from U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Carol Kenner, company lawyers said Friday they would be willing to pay thousands of Massachusetts consumers more than $1 million.

BABY BELL WANTS TO OFFER LONG-DISTANCE CALLS: SBC Communications Inc. asked federal regulators Friday for permission to offer long-distance service to its own customers in Oklahoma.

It would be the first Baby Bell to do so since Ameritech was forced to withdraw an application to the Federal Communications Commission in February.

SBC Communications recently merged with Pacific Telesis Group, the Bell company that provides local phone service to California and Nevada.

Congress gave local phone companies two ways to break into the long-distance business in their own markets: either show that they compete against other local phone companies for business and residential customers; or show they have opened their networks to would-be phone competitors.

FARMER SETTLES WITH AG DEPARTMENT: A southern Virginia farmer has become the first of a group of African-Americans to settle one of a backlog of racial discrimination complaints against the Agriculture Department.

Willie L. Chute, 38, of Baskerville, Va., had filed an administrative complaint charging USDA officials with delaying his loan application because of his race.

Attorney James Myart said Chute became the first to settle his case Thursday and received a ``substantial payment'' from the department, although the attorney declined to provide further financial details.

The settlement was confirmed Friday by Tom Amontree, press secretary for Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.

DUPONT POSTPONES MINE PLAN: Bowing to opposition from environmentalists, DuPont postponed plans to mine titanium on the edge of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge until it does more studies of the project's impact.

If the company discovers the operation would be destructive, it will consider halting the project permanently, Ellen Kullman, vice president of DuPont White Pigment and Mineral Products, told a news conference Friday.

Last week, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt visited the 438,000-acre Okefenokee Swamp and said he disapproved of the project.

He called on DuPont to abandon the plan, which has been strongly opposed by environmental groups.

MATHEMATICIAN SUES KLEENEX MAKER: One of Britain's most distinguished mathematicians is suing Kimberly-Clark, claiming the company is using his copyright design on its Kleenex quilted toilet paper.

The suit brought by Sir Roger Penrose, the Rouse Ball professor of mathematics at Oxford University, alleges that the company is using a pattern which has the same overall appearance as ``the Penrose Pattern.'' Penrose devised the complex design in the 1970s.

Penrose is best known for his work with Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University on relativity, black holes and the question of whether time has a beginning. They concluded that it does.