(Reuters) - Sales of previously owned homes unexpectedly fell in June to touch a seven-month low as cancellations of pending contracts surged, indicating continued weakness in the housing sector. The National Association of Realtors said on Wednesday sales fell 0.8 percent last month from May to an annual rate of 4.77 million units, the lowest since November. May's sales were unrevised at a 4.81 million-unit rate.

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(Reuters) - EU leaders must find a convincing solution to Greece's debt crisis at a summit on Thursday or the global economy will pay the price, the head of the European Commission said in an unusually somber warning. Jose Manuel Barroso delivered the message as officials of the 17-nation currency area and bankers struggled to pin down a package of measures to persuade markets that Greece can be saved from default and the rest of the euro zone from contagion.

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(Reuters) - Apple Inc shares surged 6 percent in pre-market trading on Wednesday, a day after the company posted stellar results even by its own lofty standards, prompting several analysts to raise their earnings targets for the iPhone maker. Apple's second-quarter results were driven by blockbuster sales of the iPhone and strong Asian business, while concerns over iPad 2 supply constraints and the launch of iPhone5 eased.

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(Reuters) - AMR Corp (AMR.N), parent of American Airlines, said on Wednesday it would buy 460 narrowbody planes in a historic deal that gives Europe's Airbus (EAD.PA) a new toehold in U.S. markets and forces Boeing Co (BA.N) to put a new engine in its best-selling airplane. The order, which AMR says is the largest in aviation history, is valued at nearly $40 billion and calls for American to buy 200 Boeing 737s and 260 Airbus A320s. The deal comes after tense haggling as American Airlines played the world's two largest plane makers off each other.

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(Reuters) - Applications for home mortgages surged last week, racking up the biggest increase in four months on a flood of refinancing demand as interest rates remained low, an industry group said on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and home purchase demand, spiked up 15.5 percent in the week ended July 15. It was the largest increase since early March.

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(Reuters) - China pressed the United States to take "responsible" measures to boost market confidence in the dollar and U.S. government debt on Wednesday, underscoring investor worries that Washington could default on its debt. The urging from China's currency regulator came as U.S. leaders tried to hammer out an 11th-hour deal to raise a $14.3 trillion debt ceiling for the United States before it runs out of money to cover all its bills on August 2.

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(Reuters) - BlackRock Inc (BLK.N), the world's largest money manager by assets, marshaled a rapidly growing list of fund styles and asset classes to post a 43 percent jump in second-quarter profit, topping expectations. The New York-based company has long been known as a fixed-income institutional manager, but CEO Laurence Fink has pressed into new areas such as exchange traded funds and multi-asset products -- areas that took in healthy inflows of cash from investors in the latest quarter.

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(Reuters) - Stocks rose about 1 percent on Tuesday as a strong quarterly report from IBM and a surge in housing starts sparked investor optimism a day after a selloff. Bank stocks were pressured after Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) fell following its results, though Bank of America (BAC.N), which also issued its quarterly report, advanced.

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(Reuters) - Goldman Sach Group Inc rattled investors with earnings that fell far short of analysts' estimates because of sharp declines in trading revenue. Goldman, once Wall Street's largest bond trading house, reported its sixth consecutive quarterly decline in that business, making bond trading smaller than its traditionally low-margin equities trading business.

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(Reuters) - Housing starts scaled a six-month high in June and permits for future construction unexpectedly increased, a government report showed on Tuesday, partly reflecting growing demand for rental apartments. The Commerce Department said housing starts increased 14.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 629,000 units, the highest level since January, as ground breaking for multi-family units soared 30.4 percent. But May's starts were revised down to a 549,000 unit pace, which was previously reported as a 560,000 unit rate.

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