Free Republic

<p>Silicon Valley technology stocks, the source of much pain for investors during the past three years, finally may be breaking out of their slump and rising fast enough to spark the sluggish tech economy back to life.</p> <p>Sound implausibly optimistic?</p>

SACRAMENTO - The Davis administration has drafted plans to create a new state authority that would issue bonds to help bail California out of its budget troubles and then increase the sales tax by half a cent to repay those bonds. The plan, parts of which were shared privately with major Wall Street firms last month, is modeled after the one that kept New York City solvent in the 1970s. It would pay off much of California's current deficit this year, then repay that loan over several years. By creating a separate entity to raise those taxes and issue those...

<p>SAN JOSE, Calif.(AP) - The space shuttle Columbia broke up in a mysterious area of the upper atmosphere once so little understood and difficult to study that scientists dubbed it the "ignorosphere."</p> <p>On Friday, NASA said it has asked outside atmospheric scientists for their opinion on whether some sort of electrical discharge could have occurred as the shuttle screamed toward touchdown at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.</p>

Iraqi war 'would spark British terror attacks' Radical Muslim leaders say a war against Iraq could spark September 11-style terrorist attacks in Britain and the US. London-based fundamentalists are to issue a joint "Islamic verdict" condemning plans for US-led military action against Saddam Hussein. At a press conference in London, extreme Islamic groups are to warn that the inevitable consequence of such a war would be retaliation. In a statement, they said: "If the US and the UK continue to play with fire there can only be one consequence which is of them to burn their hands and to choke...