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The average long-term US mortgage rate falls to 7.22%
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate fell for the fifth week in a row, more good news for prospective homebuyers grappling with an increasingly unaffordable housing market. The latest decline brought the average rate on a 30-year mortgage down to 7.22% from 7.29% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.49%. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage is now at the lowest level it's been in 10 weeks, when it was 7.19%.
Academy Sports is paying $2.5 million to families of a serial killer's victims
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- A sporting goods chain is paying the families of three people shot to death by a South Carolina serial killer $2.5 million after one of its stores sold guns to a straw buyer who gave them to the killer, a felon who couldn't legally buy the weapons. At times, Todd Kohlhepp stood near the buyer, picking out guns at Academy Sports Outdoors to be purchased for him, the families said in a lawsuit that led to the settlement. Academy Sports asked that the amount of the settlement be kept confidential because it could encourage other lawsuits, but a judge ruled it didn't make much of a difference because the case had attracted so much publicity already, and that the public had a right to know how it turned out. The estates of the victims will split the settlement.
Oklahoma executes man who claimed self-defense in a 2001 double killing
McALESTER, Okla. (AP) -- Oklahoma executed a man Thursday for a double killing in 2001, despite his claims of self-defense and a board's clemency recommendation that the governor waited until the last minute to reject. Phillip Dean Hancock, 59, received a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary for the killings of Robert Jett Jr. and James Lynch and was declared dead at 11:29 a.m. His execution went forward once Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt declined to commute his sentence.
Applications for jobless benefits up modestly
(AP) -- Slightly more Americans filed for jobless claims last week, but the overall number of people in the U.S. collecting unemployment benefits rose to its highest level in two years. Applications for unemployment benefits rose by 7,000 to 218,000 for the week ending Nov. 25, the Labor Department reported Thursday. However, 1.93 million people were collecting unemployment benefits the week that ended Nov. 18, about 86,000 more than the previous week and the most in two years. Continuing claims have risen in nine of the past 10 weeks.
Kari Lake loses suit to see ballot envelopes in 3rd trial
PHOENIX (AP) -- A judge has rejected Kari Lake's request to examine signed ballot envelopes of 1.3 million early voters, giving the defeated Arizona Republican candidate for governor another loss in her third trial related to last year's election. In an order filed Thursday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah Jr. argued their release would undermine the ballot verification process in future elections. "The broad right of electoral participation outweighs the narrow interests of those who would continue to pick at the machinery of democracy," Hannah wrote.