NEW YORK, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. dollar weakened in late trading on Thursday as market participants pored through the newly-released jobless claims numbers.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers, fell 0.40 percent at 90.1200.
In late New York trading, the euro rose to 1.2159 U.S. dollars from 1.2107 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound rose to 1.3725 dollars from 1.3645 U.S. dollars in the previous session. The Australian dollar increased to 0.7761 U.S. dollar from 0.7744 dollar.
The U.S. dollar bought 103.51 Japanese yen, lower than 103.53 Japanese yen of the previous session. The U.S. dollar fell to 0.8852 Swiss franc from 0.8898 Swiss franc, and it fell to 1.2628 Canadian dollars from 1.2643 Canadian dollars.
On the economic front, initial jobless claims in the United States slightly dropped to 900,000 last week, after soaring to five-month high in the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
In the week ending Jan. 16, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits declined by 26,000 from the previous week's downwardly revised level of 926,000, according to a report released by the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The latest BLS report also showed that the number of people continuing to collect regular state unemployment benefits in the week ending Jan. 9 decreased by 127,000 to 5 million.
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