MIDDAY MARKETS: Techs give in to selling

Despite some positive earnings reports, and a couple of deals, techs dragged the Nasdaq down again at midday Thursday. The Nasdaq shed 54.37 to 4009.64 and the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 109.96 to 10,387.78.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index fell 6 to 507.54.

Shares in electronics company Burr-Brown Corp. (Nasdaq: BBRC) jumped 31 1/8 to 103 3/4, or 43 percent, boosted by news of a takeover by Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE:TXN), up 5/8 to 82 5/8, in a $7.6 billion stock deal.

Manugistics (Nasdaq: MANU) shot up 39 percent after it reported a first-quarter loss of $1.2 million, or 4 cents a share, on sales of $50.5 million.

Tektronix (NYSE: TEK) said earnings for its fourth quarter were 64 cents a share, vaulting over First Call's expected profit of 35 cents a share. The stock rose 6 3/4 to 76 1/4.

Pegasus Communications (Nasdaq: PGTV), up 1 5/16 to 46 15/16, announced it will buy a dozen DIRECTV rural affiliates in the U.S. for about $100.6 million in cash and stock.

IDX Systems (Nasdaq: IDXC) plunged 3 9/16 to 11 9/16, or 24 percent following an announcement it expected to lose between 30 cents a share and 35 cents a share in its second quarter.

Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT)rose 3 7/16 to 35 5/16 and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) gained 11/16 to 81 3/8.

Other active stocks included Rambus (Nasdaq: RMBS) rose 6 3/8 to 99, and Citrix Systems, (Nasdaq: CTXS), up 2 3/16 to 22 9/16. Intel(Nasdaq:INTC) shed 2 1/2 to 136 1/2. Micron Technology (NYSE: MU) tumbled 4 1/3 to 86 1/4 ahead of its quarterly report, due after the close of trading Thursday.

Other leading tech issues were in decline: Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) fell 1 5/8 to 65 13/16, Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) dropped 3 to 92 15/16 and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) was down 3 1/2 to 82 11/16.

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) lost 2 3/8 to 43 11/16, Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) fell 4 3/4 to 138 1/16 and America Online Inc. (NYSE: AOL) rose 11/16 to 58 3/16.