MIDDAY MARKETS: Techs rally

Sprint PCS and Ciena ushered techs into a rally at midday Monday. The Nasdaq rose 43.91 to 3,847.67 and the Dow Jones industrial average climbed 15.17 to 10,862.54.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index rose 10 to 536.77.

Sprint PCS surged 3.25 to 31.25, or 12 percent after Lehman Bros. said it upgraded the wireless phone operator to "buy" from "neutral."

Ciena Corp. (Nasdaq: CIEN) surged 13.25 to 134 Monday after it announced that Korea Telecom has selected its MultiWave Metro system in a deal to deploy optical transport systems in Korea.

Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rebounded slightly from its Friday lows, shares moved up 0.13 to 48.06. Other news lifting techs was a fall in oil prices, whose record highs had been threatening to slow the economy's boom.

Webvan Inc. (Nasdaq: WBVN), up 0.22 to 3.13, said Monday that founder Louis Borders was stepping down as chairman of the company, a few days after the online grocer announced a delay in its commercial launch in several cities.

Online advertising network DoubleClick Inc. (Nasdaq: DCLK), up 0.44 to 37.94, has agreed to acquire @plan.inc (Nasdaq: APLN) in a deal worth $120 million.

Wind River Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: WIND), up 3.13 to 49.75, a leading provider of software and services for computers and other devices, said it named Michael Zellner to the position of vice president of finance and chief financial officer, effective Sept. 25, 2000.

NBC Internet, Inc. (Nasdaq: NBCI), up 1.9 to 8.09, will re-emerge Monday as a portal that blankets all the NBC properties, including Snap.com, Xoom.com, MSNBC and NBC, and focuses on personalization, the company said Monday.

News that Palm Inc. (Nasdaq: PALM), up 2.13 to 53.94 and rival Handspring (Nasdaq: HAND), up 7.25 to 70.00, regarding cellphone linkups hits the market as Palm gets ready to report first quarter results.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose 1.69 to 42.13, AOL (NYSE: AOL) gained 0.5 to 55.75 and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) fell 2.5 to 108.94.

Among other leading tech issues: Cisco (Nasdaq:CSCO)dropped 0.50 to 59.81, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) shed 1.31 to 61.94 and Oracle(Nasdaq: ORCL)was up 1.47 to 82.19.