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NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are sinking in early Wall Street trading following a mixed batch of economic reports. Apple led tech stocks lower after a software glitch. The tech giant had to pull a software update after users complained they could no longer make phone calls. Others complained that they bent their new iPhones by sitting on them.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment aid has increased after falling sharply two weeks ago. The Labor Department says weekly unemployment benefit applications rose by 12,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 293,000. Yet the four-week average, a less volatile measure, fell for the second straight week to 298,500. Two weeks ago, applications had plummeted to 281,000, near a 14-year low first reached in July.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A plunge in demand for commercial aircraft is blamed for a record drop in business orders for long-lasting manufactured goods. The Commerce Department says that orders for durable goods fell 18.2 percent last month following a 22.5 percent increase in July. Both the big increase and the big drop were records. Airplane orders fell 74.3 percent in August. But orders in a key category that tracks business investment plans rose 0.6 percent.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates have declined slightly this week, after their largest one-week gain of the year last week. Mortgage company Freddie Mac says the nationwide average for a 30-year loan eased to 4.20 percent from 4.23 percent last week. The average for a 15-year mortgage slipped to 3.36 percent from 3.37 percent.
NEW YORK (AP) — New warnings are emerging of a security flaw known as the "Bash" bug. Cyber experts say the bug may pose a serious threat to computers using Unix-based operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS X. Experts are divided over whether the bug could pose a bigger threat than the "Heartbleed" computer security flaw discovered earlier this year. Computer security firm Rapid7 says a perfect set of circumstances would need to occur for an attack to work. The software does not run on Windows computers.
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