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| - Wall Street stocks slumped further into negative territory Friday afternoon amid mounting worries the coronavirus will significantly dent global growth. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.9 percent, or 540 points, at 28,319.49 around 1900 GMT. The broad-based S&P 500 dropped 1.6 percent to 3,231.51, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index shed 1.3 percent to 9,175.37. All three major US airline carriers announced they were suspending service to China after the US State Department urged no travel to the country. Estimates of the number of cases rose to almost 10,000 in China and more than 100 cases outside of the country as economists upgraded their assessment of the impact of the outbreak. "Based on the continuing rise in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths, it's increasingly apparent the disease is becoming an economic as well as a public health concern," said a note from Oxford Economics. Losses were broad-based, with oil giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron both off more than four percent, Apple down 3.7 percent and JPMorgan Chase 2.5 percent. An exception was Amazon, which surged 8.3 percent and returned to a market value of more than $1 trillion after releasing quarterly earnings results for the holiday period that trounced market expectations. jmb/ft
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