国际英语新闻：Gold plunges to 3-month low as dollar soars on jobless data, Europe debt woes

CHICAGO, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- Gold futures on the COMEX Division of the New York Mercantile Exchange went sharply down on Thursday as dollar rallied on risk-aversion buying, catalyzed by worse-than- expected jobless data and Europe debt crisis. Silver and platinum both plummeted.

The most active gold contract for April delivery tumbled 49.0 U. S. dollars, or 4.4 percent, to finish at 1,063 dollars an ounce, hitting the weakest level of 1,060.40 since Nov. 3. A quantity of bearish news pushed the investors out of high-risk assets like stocks and commodities and to flock to the dollar for save-haven.

The Labor Department reported that claims for unemployment benefits increased by 8,000 to 480,000 last week, while economists had been expecting a drop. It was the fourth increase in the past five weeks.

Europe sovereign debt crisis, which is spreading to the other countries, provided additional support to dollar.

The European Central Bank (ECB) announced it will hold rates at record low of 1 percent as expected on Thursday. But the ECB also said in a statement that many euro area countries face "large, sharply rising fiscal imbalances." Those countries are considered as Spain and Portugal, which are facing the same debt problems as Greece.

The dollar rose against most major currencies on Thursday. By the end of gold floor trading time, the dollar index, a gauge measuring the greenback's value against six major currencies, rose 0.43 to 79.98, hitting a fresh 7-month high of 80.125 earlier in the session. Investors' appetite for gold against dollar's devaluation was much reduced.

March silver was down 96.7 cents to 15.35 dollars per ounce. April platinum lost 60.90 dollars to 1,515.30 dollars an ounce.