AlQa'dah 24, 1432, Oct 22, 2011, SPA - U.S. stocks finished higher on Friday, with all three major indexes rising more than 1 percent, as the government reported a drop in unemployment rates. In world markets, European stocks ended higher, led by the DAX in Germany rising 3.6 percent. Asian markets ended mixed, as the Shanghai Composite fell 0.6 percent and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong rose 0.2 percent. In U.S. economic news, unemployment rates fell in half of U.S. states last month, the Labor Department said. Nationwide, employers added 103,000 new jobs in September, nearly double the number created in August. That increase is still not enough to lower the unemployment rate, which stayed at 9.1 percent for the third straight month. In U.S. company news, General Electric (GE) reported an 18 percent profit rise that met Wall Street's expectations, helped by strong revenue growth in key foreign markets including Brazil, Russia and China. The U.S. dollar fell versus the euro and versus the yen. Light sweet crude oil for December delivery rose $1.33 to $87.40 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold futures rose $23.20 to $1,636.10 an ounce. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 267.01, or 2.3 percent, to 11,808.79. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 22.86, or 1.9 percent, to 1,238.25. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 38.84, or 1.5 percent, to 2,637.46.
