June 20, 2002

Russia is moving to dismantle collectivization of its farmlands; Parliament's lower house, urged by Pres Vladimir V Putin, has approved preliminary bill to create legal system to buy and sell agricultural lands and is expected to adopt slightly amended version; Communist and Agrarian parties, regional leaders and privatization opponents are threatening to block effort; collectives still run over 90 percent of farms; farmers fear repeat of earlier corrupted privatizations that gave control of former state enterprises to richest oligarchs; map; photo (M)

David Pogue State of the Art column examines software available at no charge from www.openoffice.org, or for $76 from Sun, company that started and coordinates project; Sun package offers several extra functions as well as discounts to corporations buying in quantity; package was developed by group of programmers intent on making dent in Microsoft monopoly by offering software to compete with Microsoft Office, which is priced at $580; OpenOffice has word processor, spreadsheet and slide-show programs and runs in 27 languages on choice of three operating systems; timing of release coincides with Microsoft's new Office XP and pricey upgrade plan; in trials, OpenOffice is almost clone of Microsoft software and appears to be compatible with Microsoft-generated documents; drawing (M)

Second Palestinian suicide bomber strikes Jerusalem, killing six people at bus stop, even as Israel implements policy of taking back West Bank land in retaliation for attacks; Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat condemns both bombings; new bombing apparently spurs series of Israeli military actions, reportedly including helicopter gunship attacks in Gaza Strip and fierce firefight in Qalqilya; Israel, responding to first bombing, moved trailer houses into Jenin, shut city down in curfew and rounded up hundreds of Palestinians; map; photo (M)

Goldman Sachs sells about 60 percent of its stake in Koomin Bank of South Korea for $633.6 million, three times price it paid for shares when it invested in bank three years ago; Kookmin officials deny that Goldman's sale of shares reflects any lack of confidence in bank's future (M)

Microsoft and coalition of state attorneys general pursuing antitrust sanctions against company make their closing arguments in case, disregarding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's order to identify areas of compromise; she had hoped that company and nine states that have not signed on to settlement reached between company and Justice Department would assist her in arriving at consensus position before she begins her deliberations on whether to approve that settlement or impose more restrictive proposals of holdout states (M)