NEW YORK, March 26 (UPI) -- U.S. stock indexes slid in New York on news from the U.S. Commerce Department that durable goods orders fell 1.7 percent in February.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 143.04 points to 12,389.56 down 1.14 percent in late-morning trading.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 14.65 points to 1,338.34, down 1.08 percent.

The Nasdaq composite index also fell, down 30.38 points to 2,310.67, down 1.30 percent.

The 10-year U.S. Treasury note gained 14/32 to yield 3.458 percent.

The dollar weakened. The euro traded at $1.5728 from Tuesday's $1.5611, while the dollar traded at 99.00 yen from Tuesday's 100.16 yen.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei index lost 38.59 points Wednesday to close at 12,706.63, down 0.3 percent.

Motorola to split company in two

SCHAUMBURG, Ill., March 26 (UPI) -- Illinois-based Motorola Inc. announced Wednesday it would divide the company, splitting into Mobile Devices and Broadband and Mobility Solutions.

The split would create two publicly-traded companies and provide "flexibility, more tailored capital structures and increased management focus," Chief Executive Greg Brown said in a statement.

The move comes after months of pressure from investor Carl Icahn, who owns 6 percent of Motorola and has positioned himself to nominate four candidates for Motorola's board at the annual meeting in May.

The Fortune 100 company, with sales of $36.6 billion in 2007, has been struggling in recent years. A recent cut of 2,500 jobs left the company with 65,000 employees, down from a peak of 150,000 in 2000.

'Green collar' jobs have growth potential

WASHINGTON, March 26 (UPI) -- The green-collar job sector is growing in the United States and could include more than 14 million workers by 2017 industry, analysts said Wednesday.

It is hard to pin down what constitutes a green-collar job but the American Solar Energy Society said jobs there are 8.5 million U.S. jobs that involve Earth-friendly enterprises and renewable energy sources. That figure could grow by 5 million in the next 10 years, Jerome Ringo of the Apollo Alliance told The New York Times.

Green-collar jobs, defined by purpose, could include bankers, roofers, scientists or teachers. They include "Ph.D.'s and Ph.-do's," said Van Jones, president of Green for All in Oakland, Calif.

"We need people who are highly educated at the theoretical level and we need people who are highly educated at the level of skilled labor," he said.

The concept is seen as a panacea that will lift the economy and steer the environment in the right direction, the report said.

"It will affect every business and every industry," Lois Quam, managing director for alternative investments at a bank in Minneapolis, told the Times.

Vietnamese securities regulators step in

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, March 26 (UPI) -- Vietnamese securities regulators have decided to rein in the free fall of the country's stock market after the benchmark VN-Index closed below the 500 mark.

Effective Thursday, the State Securities Commission will more tightly control the value that shares can lose on a single trading day on the country's two main stock exchanges.

Under the new rules, the daily trading band will be reduced to 1 percent, plus or minus, of the day's reference price, from the previous 5 percent for securities traded on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange and to 2 percent from the previous 10 percent for securities on the Hanoi Securities Trading Center, the Vietnam News reported Wednesday.

After crossing the 1,000 mark, the VN-Index has been losing momentum since the start of this year, closing at less than 500 Tuesday, as the government battles inflation in an economy that has shown impressive growth in recent years.

"We considered tightening the trading band for some time before making this decision," commission Chairman Vu Bang said, adding the market intervention would only be a temporary measure.

One analyst, however, said the steps should have been taken earlier.