Stocks sink…Jobless claims rise…Record drop in durable goods orders…New cyber threat

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.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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