Business Highlights

Yet almost lost in the anxiety that gripped the stock market this week is that whenever the Fed slows its drive to keep interest rates low, it will be cause for celebration: It would mean policymakers think the economy is strong enough to accelerate with less help from the Fed.

Over the past five years, the Fed has acted aggressively to try to boost the economy. Among other steps, it cut short-term interest rates to record lows and said it planned to keep them there at least until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent (from 7.5 percent in April).

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Stocks edge lower as investors reassess Fed fears

NEW YORK (AP) — Investors recovered their poise after a shaky start to trading on Wall Street that sent stocks sharply lower.

U.S. markets plummeted immediately after the opening bell Thursday following a global slump prompted in part by an unexpectedly weak report on manufacturing in China. Concern that the Federal Reserve might ease back on its economic stimulus program sooner than expected had also riled investors.

The dip gave investors who had missed this year's rally in stocks an opportunity to get into the market, and by midday stocks had recouped most of their early losses. The market even climbed into positive territory by midday, before ending the day marginally lower.

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Japan gyrations underline economy's vulnerability

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's financial markets gyrated wildly Thursday, underscoring the vulnerability of its economy to a loss of investor confidence as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attempts shock monetary easing to end two decades of stagnation.

Interest rates, or yields, on 10-year Japanese government bonds briefly topped 1 percent for the first time in a year on Thursday, following news that some U.S. Federal Reserve officials are willing to scale back the American central bank's stimulus efforts as soon as June if the economy perks up.

Thursday's spike, which came despite the Bank of Japan's aggressive efforts to keep borrowing costs down, is unnerving some investors at a time when Japan's already overburdened government finances are vulnerable to rises in interest rates. A sustained rise would push up the cost of borrowing for the government.

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Between economy and trouble, Obama approval steady

WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy is recovering, the White House is dealing with multiple controversies, and President Barack Obama appears generally unaffected either way.

He's getting no significant uptick in approval from gains in housing, jobs and the stock market. Likewise, he has so far seen no downtick from the recent storms over the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS and a leak investigation that has swept up the phone records of Associated Press journalists.

All in all, recent polls show the president sustaining an overall approval rating around 50 percent.

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Stricken Japan nuke plant struggles to keep staff

TOKYO (AP) — Keeping the meltdown-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in northeastern Japan in stable condition requires a cast of thousands. Increasingly the plant's operator is struggling to find enough workers, a trend that many expect to worsen and hamper progress in the decades-long effort to safely decommission it.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant that melted down in March 2011 after being hit by a tsunami, is finding that it can barely meet the headcount of workers required to keep the three broken reactors cool while fighting power outages and leaks of tons of radiated water, said current and former nuclear plant workers and others familiar with the situation at Fukushima.

Construction jobs are already plentiful in the area due to rebuilding of tsunami ravaged towns and cities. Other public works spending planned by the government, under the "Abenomics" stimulus programs of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is likely to make well-paying construction jobs more abundant. And less risky, better paid decontamination projects in the region irradiated by the Fukushima meltdown are another draw.

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US companies challenging contraception mandate

DENVER (AP) — Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. is challenging the part of the federal health care law that requires for-profit companies to offer employees health coverage that includes products the business owners find morally objectionable, such as certain types of contraception.