DENVER (AP) — Contraception coverage by for-profit companies faces a prominent test in Denver.

PARIS (AP) — International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde has appeared at a special Paris court to face questioning over a controversial arbitrage deal that she oversaw as French finance minister.

By Richard Hubbard LONDON (Reuters) - Concerns over the future of the U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary stimulus and weak Chinese factory data sent shares sharply lower and safe haven currencies like the yen higher on Thursday. The shift from riskier assets to safer markets was triggered when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told a congressional committee on Wednesday the central bank could scale back the pace of bond purchases at one of its next few policy meetings. A weak manufacturing survey from China added to investors' worries, dragging MSCI's world equity index down 1. ...

BANGKOK (AP) — Japanese stocks plummeted Thursday after a spike in government bond yields and unexpectedly weak Chinese manufacturing spooked investors sitting atop months of massive gains in share prices. The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo nosedived 7.3 percent to close at 14,483.98.

By Aileen Wang and Koh Gui Qing BEIJING (Reuters) - China's factory activity shrank for the first time in seven months in May as new orders fell, a preliminary manufacturing survey showed, entrenching fears that its economic recovery has stalled and that a sharper cooldown may be imminent. The flash HSBC Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for May fell to 49.6, slipping under the 50-point level demarcating expansion from contraction for the first since October and sending Asian financial markets sharply lower. The final HSBC PMI stood at 50.4 in April. ...

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

By Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Metals swap deals with Iran by Switzerland-based commodities giants Glencore Xstrata and Trafigura could have been a way of skirting international sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program, according to a confidential U.N. Panel of Experts report seen by Reuters on Wednesday. Reuters reported on March 1 that Glencore had supplied thousands of tons of alumina to an Iranian firm that has provided aluminum to Iran's nuclear program, an allegation Glencore confirmed as accurate. ...

By Nadia Damouni and Paritosh Bansal (Reuters) - American International Group Inc's board is looking for a new director with regulatory experience, as the insurer readies for the government to classify it as big enough to merit greater scrutiny, according to two sources familiar with the situation. AIG, which is already regulated by the U.S. Federal Reserve, expects more oversight if it is declared a "systemically important financial institution," or SIFI. The designation is widely expected after the U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Council told the company in October that it may do so. ...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co Ltd will recall about 841,000 vehicles worldwide including the Micra compact car, also known as the March, as a result of a steering wheel glitch, Japan's No.2 automaker said on Thursday. Nissan is recalling certain models of the Micra compact car produced in Britain and Japan between 2002 and 2006, as well as the Cube, produced in Japan around the same period. It is pulling back vehicles in Japan, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. ...

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - Kathrin Jansen is a microbiologist with at least two breakthrough vaccines to her name: she brought the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil to market for Merck and helped develop the $4 billion a year pneumonia and meningitis vaccine Prevnar 13 for Pfizer. Jansen's next vaccine success could come by taming the superbug MRSA, a drug-resistant bacterium that she has seen ravage a healthy man up close and personally. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infects an estimated 53 million people globally and costs more than $20 billion a year to treat. ...