After being held up a day due to bad weather in Florida, space shuttle Discovery soared across the Pacific and over Southern California, going through a route just north of Los Angelese before touching down on Edwards Air Force Base. The flight path was egregiously adjusted due to safety considerations, particularly after the Columbia disaster, but this time around, there were no problems as the shuttle began enduring the period of maximum heating (roughly 20 minutes before landing).

The Internet / consumer portal sweepstakes have never been higher, with the recent stunning debut of Baidu.com Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU), a popular Chinese web search company that achieved the best first-day performance of any IPO by a foreign company (today, Baidu closed at $115.50).  Not to be outdone, Yahoo! is reportedly offering about $1 billion to acquire a 35 percent share in Alibaba.com, a B2B bridge between local Chinese players and foreign buyers.  Obviously, if this deal goes through, eBay could get some real competition (Alibaba has a US consumer-based auction site called Taobao.com).  Alibaba also counts with the backing of Japanese-based Softbank, which is the largest investor in the Chinese company.  Coincidentally, Softbank is Yahoo's largest foreign shareholder, so it obviously played a role in bringing Yahoo and Alibaba to the table.