Halladay was roughed up Sunday by the Miami Marlins in a 14-2 defeat, his second poor outing in a row. After the game, the two-time Cy Young Award winner acknowledged he has been pitching with a sore shoulder. He said he will have tests this week in Los Angeles and be examined by Dr. Lewis Yocum.

"It's not something that I had before," Halladay said. "It's something new this year. I felt good all spring. I had soreness in there and just wasn't able to get rid of it."

Halladay, who turns 36 this month, made a statement but did not take questions from reporters. He has struggled through seven starts this season, going 2-4 with an 8.65 ERA.

The right-hander said he started feeling discomfort the morning after an April 24 outing against Pittsburgh. He has made two ineffective starts since.

"I woke up and didn't really think anything of it, just regular soreness," Halladay said. "It has kind of progressed over the last two weeks or so."

Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said the team's former ace will likely be placed on the disabled list.

Miami rookie Adeiny Hechavarria hit a grand slam and a bases-loaded triple off Halladay, who had his worst start since his own rookie season with Toronto in 1999.

The eight-time All-Star left after giving up nine runs on four hits, four walks and two hit batters in 2 1-3 innings. He also threw a pitch behind a batter.

Halladay (2-4) has given up at least five earned runs in four of his seven starts this season.

"I have a hard time watching him struggle," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said. "Usually when he's on, he has great location. That's the kind of pitcher he is."

Kevin Slowey (1-2) pitched seven shutout innings for his first win since September 2010. He allowed two hits while striking out seven and walking two.

Slowey had been winless in 22 major league appearances, including 15 starts. His previous victory came on Sept. 18, 2010, as a starter for the Minnesota Twins.

"I'm really thankful for the opportunity to get a win," Slowey said. "When you don't have a win since 2010, you're thankful to still get the ball every fifth day."

Hechavarria tied a club record with seven RBIs.

Justin Ruggiano homered twice off Philadelphia relievers, and rookie Marcell Ozuna went 3 for 4 with two doubles and three RBIs for the Marlins, who set a season high for runs. The output by the league's worst offense was surprising especially against Halladay.

"To jump on Halladay like we did was big," Miami manager Mike Redmond said. "We were able to capitalize on his mistakes. He didn't look like the same guy we've seen over the years. He usually doesn't make mistakes."

Halladay, who has the most complete games (67) and shutouts (20) of any active pitcher, had 35 wins since Slowey's last one. But he hasn't resembled that pitcher for most of this season. Following Tuesday's poor outing in which he allowed eight runs on nine hits in 3 2-3 innings of a 14-2 loss to Cleveland, Halladay continued the troubling trend against Miami.

The Phillies have been outscored 28-4 in his last two starts.

Halladay helped the Marlins in the first with three walks and a hit batter. With the bases loaded, Ozuna put Miami on the board with a two-run double. Umpires reviewed the play to see if it was a home run but upheld the call on the field that the ball hit the top of the wall. After Halladay walked Greg Dobbs to load the bases again, Hechavarria, who entered batting .169, cleared them with a triple to right.

After a 1-2-3 second inning that featured two strikeouts, Halladay's struggles resumed in the third. He opened the inning by hitting Ruggiano with a pitch for the second time in the game. It was the fourth hit batter of the season for Halladay, who plunked just five per season over the last four years in an average of 220 innings. He also threw behind Ozuna later in the inning.

A walk to Ozuna and a single by Dobbs loaded the bases with nobody out. After Miguel Olivo struck out, Hechavarria hit a grand slam just over the wall in right to give Florida a 9-0 lead and chase Halladay.

"We got beat up pretty bad," Manuel said. "He just didn't have his command today."

Hechavarria's drive was first ruled a double but umpires reversed the call after reviewing the replay.

Halladay exited to a mixture of boos and cheers, though the majority of the crowd politely applauded. The nine earned runs were the second-most of his career, topped only by the 11 he gave up as a rookie with Toronto in a 17-1 loss to the Angels on April 29, 1999.

Meanwhile, the Phillies' hitters continued to have their own problems. A night after managing only one hit off 20-year-old rookie Jose Fernandez in a 2-0 loss, Philadelphia had just four against Slowey and relievers A.J. Ramos and Jon Rauch.

"We have trouble scoring runs, plus hitting the ball consistently," said Manuel, whose team avoided its sixth shutout with a pair of eighth-inning runs. "We're going to struggle until we start hitting the ball better, start making better contact and doing things right."

Amaro also weighed in on Philadelphia's tepid offense.

"They need to swing the bats better," he said. "It's not good enough. I believe in these guys still. I think they're good hitters; they're just not hitting the ball well. They need to do better for us to be contenders."

NOTES: Phillies C Carlos Ruiz went 0 for 2 and is 2 for 20 this season since returning from a 25-game amphetamine suspension. ... Phillies SS Jimmy Rollins got a hit as a pinch hitter in the ninth. ... Philadelphia LHP Cliff Lee (2-2, 3.46 ERA) is scheduled to face Giants lefty Madison Bumgarner (3-0, 1.55) when the teams open a three-game series Monday night in San Francisco.

A Philippines fisheries official said one of its vessels, acting under the threat of being rammed, opened fire on Thursday on a Taiwanese fishing boat about 170 nautical miles southeast of Taiwan, killing one person on board.

The Philippines and Taiwan, as well as China, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam, are embroiled in diplomatic rows over territory in the South China Sea, potentially rich in oil and gas and criss-crossed by crucial shipping lanes. The disputes have sometimes escalated to confrontation between vessels.

This incident occurred in waters north of the Philippine archipelago, where the economic zones of the Philippines and Taiwan -- extending 200 nautical miles from shore -- overlap.

Asis Perez, director of the Philippines' Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, said a Taiwanese fishing boat, one of four vessels in the area, tried to ram the 30-metre surveillance boat after an attempt was made to board another fishing boat.

"This incident is very unfortunate, and efforts will be instituted to prevent similar occurrences. The government will increase our visibility in the area to prevent future incursion of our waters," Perez told reporters at the coast guard headquarters.

"We sympathize with the family of the fisherman who died and we assure them as well as the government of Taiwan of a transparent and impartial investigation."

The fisherman was killed as officers fired on the ship's engine to try to put it out of action.

The Philippine Coast Guard operates the small surveillance ships armed with a .30 caliber machinegun that are technically part of the country's fisheries bureau. A Philippine Navy spokesman earlier had denied navy involvement in the shooting.

"We have expressed strong condemnation to the Philippines, urging them to probe what happened, apologize, and arrest whoever was responsible," Taiwan Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Anna Kao told Reuters.

China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province, also condemned the shooting.

"China demands that the Philippines immediately conduct an investigation and quickly offer an explanation. We express our heartfelt sympathies to the family of our deceased Taiwanese compatriot," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters on Thursday.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato in MANILA and Faith Hung in TAIPEI and Michael Martina in BEIJING; Editing by Ron Popeski)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Shrinking the size of kids' plates and bowls and encouraging them to eat more frequently throughout the day might help them eat less and keep off extra weight, new research suggests.

In one study, researchers found first graders served themselves smaller portions when using miniaturized dishware - and ate less food when they had less on their plate.

Another review of past research found kids and teens who ate most often during the day were 22 percent less likely to be overweight than those who ate the fewest meals and snacks.

Jennifer Fisher, who worked on the dish-size study, said it was preliminary but could still inform parent choices.

"For now, certainly it seems like something parents can easily incorporate into their daily lives without a lot of work and effort," Fisher, from Temple University in Philadelphia, told Reuters Health.

She and her colleagues studied 42 elementary school kids who were given the chance to serve themselves lunch. On four days the kids used child-sized plates and bowls; on another four they used adult-sized dishware, which was twice as large.

First graders served themselves an average of 300 to 500 calories worth of the lunch entre - pasta or chicken nuggets - each day.

When they used adult dishware, the kids took an average of 90 more calories of food, the researchers found. And kids who ended up with more food on their plates also tended to eat more, Fisher's team wrote Monday in Pediatrics.

"It doesn't appear that simply because you might have large dishware at home, your child is going to overeat," said Fisher - because it depends on who's doing the serving and how much is served.

But, she added, "If more food appears on the plate, they're going to eat more."

"The results are very interesting and confirm our expectations that the impact of plate size on adults in the laboratory also apply to children," Dr. Thomas Robinson, a childhood obesity researcher at Stanford University in California, told Reuters Health in an email.

"This study provides very important preliminary evidence that using smaller dishware may help reduce children's energy intakes."

For their own analysis, researchers from Harokopio University in Athens, Greece, looked at 11 studies, mostly conducted in the Mediterranean, that compared eating frequency and weight in close to 19,000 kids and teens.

The overall pattern showed that youth who ate most often - typically at least four or five times per day - were least likely to be overweight or obese. However when they looked closer, the researchers found that link only held up in boys.

Robinson, who was not involved in the new research, said it's hard to tell which came first in those studies: eating frequency or extra weight.

The results "do not look very convincing one way or another," he said. "It is also hard to come up with a convincing reason why boys and girls would be different."

The researchers said their findings don't prove that a given child will lose weight by eating more often. But schools, for example, may be able to make a difference by integrating smaller, more frequent meals into the day.

"Instead of providing three big meals per day, it would be better (for parents) to have their children eating smaller meals and more snacks throughout the day," co-author Mary Yannakoulia told Reuters Health in an email.

However, she added, parents still need to pay attention to the quality of those snacks.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17 percent of kids and teens in the U.S. are obese - a proportion that has almost tripled since 1980.

"We know that it's so complex that there's absolutely not one cause or solution," Fisher said.

A third study also published this week in Pediatrics found teens who spent more time focused on the TV were heavier than their peers. However, time spent playing video games or on the computer was not tied to weight.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/jsoh2P Pediatrics, online April 8, 2013.

"The ACA is a missed opportunity, and we have a long way to go in ensuring access to oral health for all Americans," writesDr. Marko Vujicic, managing vice president of the HPRC and co-author of the briefs. "This is especially true for adults, who have experienced greater financial barriers to dental care in recent years. Unfortunately, the ACA does little to break down financial and other critical barriers to dental care, and states will need to pick up the slack if we're going to address the oral health challenges facing America."

According to the HPRC reports, under the ACA about 8.7 million children are expected to gain some form of dental benefit from the program, which will reduce by approximately 55 percent the number of children without dental benefits.

But for adults it's a different story. Only an estimated 5.3 million adults are expected to gain extensive oral health coverage as a result of the ACA, almost all due to Medicaid expansion in the few states that provide extensive dental benefits. This will reduce the number of adults without dental benefits by about 5 percent, a negligible impact. Further, Medicaid-eligible adults may see few improvements in their ability to receive dental care, the HPRC analysis suggests.

The HPRC also warns there is likely to be significant pressure on Medicaid providers under the ACA changes, because the law fails to address such critical factors as administrative inefficiencies and low provider reimbursement rates. "As a result, poor adults could increasingly resort to other options, including visiting emergency rooms for dental care," writes Dr. Vujicic.

Taken together, the briefs reinforce previous HPRC analyses that show barriers to dental care for children have declined in the past 10 years, while barriers for adults have risen. The HPRC review shows more children had dental benefits in 2010 than in 2001, due primarily to Medicaid and SCHIP which mandate dental benefits for children. By contrast, more adults went without dental benefits in 2010 than they did in 2001. Although more adults had Medicaid over that period, adult dental benefits within Medicaid programs eroded during the 2000s.

Despite the troubling outlook for adults, HPRC analysis does suggest opportunities to reverse the recent trend. First, state governments have the chance to pick up where the ACA left off. Most state Medicaid programs currently provide no or very limited dental benefits for adults, giving states the ability to expand coverage in conjunction with reforms that would help shore up their Medicaid systems.

Accountable care organizations also present a critical opportunity to help bridge the gap between oral and whole body health. They are meant to improve the coordination of various types of care, improve the patient experience and help reduce overall health care costs by breaking down "silos" of care, the HPRC noted.

"Through their analyses, the HPRC has made a compelling case on the need to act now to address the oral health care crisis facing tens of millions of Americans," said ADA President Dr. Robert A Faiella. "We are committed to creating and sustaining actionable solutions that provide care now to people in need, prevent disease from occurring or recurring, and provide people with the knowledge that empowers them to be good stewards of their own oral health."

Dr. Faiella added that the ADA will launch a major campaign next week aimed at achieving those goals.

To read the full research briefs, visit .

[Follow the ADA on Twitter]

About the American Dental AssociationThe not-for-profit ADA is the nation's largest dental association, representing 157,000 dentist members. The premier source of oral health information, the ADA has advocated for the public's health and promoted the art and science of dentistry since 1859. The ADA's state-of-the-art research facilities develop and test dental products and materials that have advanced the practice of dentistry and made the patient experience more positive. The ADA Seal of Acceptance long has been a valuable and respected guide to consumer dental care products. The monthly TheJournal of the American Dental Association (JADA) is the ADA's flagship publication and the best-read scientific journal in dentistry. For more information about the ADA, visit . For more information on oral health, including prevention, care and treatment of dental disease, visit the ADA's consumer website .

SOURCE American Dental Association

The increase is the result of the government last year lowering the threshold for lead poisoning, so now more children are considered at risk.

Too much lead can harm developing brains and can mean a lower IQ. Lead poisoning used to be a much larger concern in the United States, but has declined significantly as lead was removed from paint and gasoline and other sources.

The new number translates to about 1 in 38 young children. That estimate suggests a need for more testing and preventive measures, some experts said, but budget cuts last year eliminated federal grant funding for such programs.

Those cuts represent "an abandonment of children," said David Rosner, a Columbia University public health historian who writes books about lead poisoning.

"We've been acting like the problem was solved and thiswas a thing ofthe past," he added.

Lead can harm a child's brain, kidneys and other organs. High levels in the blood can cause coma, convulsions and death. Lower levels can reduce intelligence, impair hearing and behavior and cause other problems.

Most cases of lead poisoning are handled by tracking and removing the lead source, and monitoring the children to make sure lead levels stay down. A special treatment to remove lead and other heavy metals is used only for extremely high levels.

Often, children who get lead poisoning live in old homes that are dilapidated or under renovation. They pick up paint chips or dust and put it in their mouth. Other sources include soil contaminated by old leaded gasoline, dust from industrial worksites and tainted drinking water

Lead has been banned in household paint since 1978 and was gone from gasoline by the late 1980s.

After lowering the standard, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention went back and looked at old blood tests from 1,653 children under 6 to determine how many would have lead poisoning under the new definition.

About 3 percent of them or about 50 kids had blood lead levels higher than the new threshold of 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. Using that result, CDC officials calculated that an estimated 535,000 young children have lead poisoning.

A year ago, when the threshold was 10 micrograms, experts estimated that somewhere between 77,000 and 255,000 young kids had high levels of lead.

These estimates have focused on children younger than 6, who have been considered most at risk of neurological problems due to lead.

Overall, the new CDC study found lead counts were higher on average in children who were poor or African-American, said the CDC's Mary Jean Brown, an author of the study.

Those kids are more likely to live in old housing or in neighborhoods with greater exposure to lead, she added.

The good news: Even with the lower threshold, lead poisoning appears to still be declining. Years ago, some local health departments began tracking the number of kids with blood levels at 5 or greater, and they say those numbers have been dropping steadily.

However, it's likely that many children with lead poisoning have not been diagnosed. In the CDC study, elevated lead levels were discovered for a third of the children only when they were tested by researchers.

"When you look for it, you find it," Columbia's Rosner said.

Once lead poisoning is diagnosed, doctors often refer parents to local health departments to get their homes checked out to try to find the source of the problem. But as demand for investigations grows, there's less money to pay for them. Congress last year cut CDC lead program's budget from about $29 million to $2 million. That ended CDC grants to local health departments for their programs.

Detroit's lead program was all but eliminated because of the federal cut and state and local funding problems, said Bob Scott of Michigan's lead poisoning prevention program.

Other places are struggling to keep up with lead work at the same time they are cutting staff. The Cleveland area has been aggressive about lead poisoning prevention but the loss of CDC funding hurt those efforts.

For example, Cuyahoga County which includes Cleveland saw its staff for blood testing of children and public education drop from 2 1/2 positions to 1.

"It's unsustainable," said Terry Allan, the county's health commissioner.

____

Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

NEW YORK (Reuters) - At first blush the two leading U.S. stock exchanges won a sweeping victory this week in a long-running legal battle over market data - the stock quotes, share prices and other trading information that are highly prized in the electronic marketplace.

But a ruling by the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit may also have opened the door for the Internet companies, brokers and others in the case to achieve a decade-old goal of cutting the fees the exchanges charge for the data.

The court ruled in a decision earlier this week it had no jurisdiction over a case brought by the NetCoalition of some 20 Internet companies, including Google Inc and Yahoo Inc, and the Securities Industry and Finance Markets Association, a 600-member lobby for brokers, bankers and asset managers.

The decision appeared to slam the door on the petitioners and remove a potential obstacle to efforts by the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market to offset sharp drops in revenue from stock transactions by boosting market data sales.

But the court did offer a path for Sifma and the NetCoalition group to mount a new battle, several people close to the case said.

The court indicated the Securities Exchange Act, which governs exchanges and their responsibilities as self-regulatory organizations, requires that the exchanges provide for the "equitable allocation" of reasonable fees, among other dues and charges.

The petitioners have argued the exchanges are effectively monopolies and competition is not sufficient to restrain prices.

"I intend to submit a ... petition," said Roger Blanc, a lawyer with Willkie Farr who represented the NetCoalition, the name by which the case is also called. "As soon as we can put it together, we'll be back before the circuit court."

The case is notable because of the importance of market data in an electronic market that relies on "signal processing," the analysis of data by high-speed computers, to trade.

Sifma and the NetCoalition had sought judicial review of the proprietary data both NYSE and Nasdaq sell after the Securities and Exchange Commission let stand almost all their filings for new schedules and higher prices for market data in recent years.

The petitioners challenged the SEC over more than a dozen filings, saying the fees were exorbitant and regulators had abdicated their duties to ensure data fees were "fee and reasonable," a loosely defined standard the agency must uphold.

Four of the complaints were combined before the appeals court, which has oversight of the SEC, and the two exchanges with the regulators provided a joint opinion in the case.

Market data has been a thorn in the side of the SEC for years, with regulators unable to resolve the issue despite a series of high-profile hearings and studies from 1999 to 2005.

A former senior SEC official said market data is highly contentious with no easy answer.

Although the appeals court said the Dodd-Frank act stripped it of jurisdiction in the case, the court left intact its August 2010 ruling that there must be evidence that competition is constraining the fees the exchanges charge for the data.

The court also said the exchanges cannot enforce fee rules that are inconsistent with the exchange act, and said fees need to be tied to "some type of cost-based" standard to guard against excessive profits.

The latter point could be a boon for the petitioners' cause. They have long contended the cost of producing the data is negligible and the exchanges charge far in excess of its cost.

"We are pleased that the court has affirmed our ability to provide high-quality data at reasonable rates to vendors who profit from reselling the data to their customers," a spokesman for the Nasdaq said. The NYSE declined to comment.

The NYSE and Nasdaq presented academic studies to bolster their position that competition exists for market data, and they have strongly resisted any cost analysis of their data.

The Nasdaq's chief financial officer has been telling analysts that market data is an "extremely high-margin" business. Revenue from the U.S. sale of proprietary data at the Nasdaq has expanded at a compound annual growth rate of about 10.8 percent since 2007, a period in which data usage has exploded.

The emphasis on market data as a profit center is misplaced, according to former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt. The exchanges are trying to staunch their hemorrhaging and charging for data is purely a short-term solution to a long-term problem, he said.

A good portion of market data is public and should not be proprietary as the exchanges see it, Pitt said in an interview before the court's ruling this week. Allowing data to be available only for those who can afford it will create hard-to-justify market dislocations, he warned.

"The question is when you've allowed people to treat market data as proprietary for so long, how do you justify making a shift and what accommodations do you make?" Pitt said.

The case is NetCoalition and Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association v Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit; No. 10-1421.

(Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

ROME (Reuters) - Scientists have criticized an Italian government decree allowing a group of terminally-ill patients to continue using an unproven stem cell treatment, saying such therapies may cause harm and risk exploiting desperate people.

The treatment, created by the privately-owned Stamina Foundation, was banned by Italian medicines regulator AIFA last year after it inspected their laboratories, leading to a series of legal challenges by families of patients.

In early March, Health Minister Renato Balduzzi allowed a terminally ill child to continue using the Stamina treatment after hearing the emotional pleas of her parents.

The Health Ministry then issued an official decree on March 21 allowing 32 patients, mainly children, already using the treatment to continue it.

Scientists from around Europe released a statement on Thursday criticizing the decree, warning that Balduzzi was "riding roughshod over existing European licensing criteria", failing to protect patients from exploitation and ignoring the need for sound evidence that therapies are effective.

"These unproven and ill-prepared stem cell therapies, for which there is no scientific basis, will do nothing for patients and their families except make them poorer," said Charles French-Constant from the University of Edinburgh's Center for Regenerative Medicine.

"DANGEROUS PRECEDENT"

Advocates of the therapy say strict regulations work in favor of big drug companies with their portfolio of blockbuster treatments, reducing the pool of potential competitors. But scientists said Stamina's treatment was unproven and risky.

"There is no rationale for this and no evidence that these procedures are not dangerous for patients," said Professor Michele De Luca of the University of Modena.

"This creates a dangerous precedent," he said, adding that anyone could use media pressure and take advantage of patients' hopes of skirting normal evidence-based procedures.

Stem cells are the body's mother cells and can self-renew or multiply while maintaining the ability to transform into any type of cell.

Stem cell therapy involves introducing new adult stem cells into damaged tissue to treat disease. A number of therapies exist but many remain at the experimental stage.

Several judges presiding over the cases brought by patients' families ruled the Stamina treatment should be available under a law that permits the use of unproven therapies for patients who are dying and have no other options.

Supporters of the therapy have held rallies calling for it to be made available to anyone with an incurable disease. One woman staging a near-naked protest in a Rome square with "yes to life, yes to Stamina" scrawled on her body.

Scientists warned that a complication or death as a result of such an untested therapy could become an obstacle for the advancement of all stem cell therapies.

"This would include some of the more promising therapies that have a strong scientific rationale for working in patients with certain types of disorders such as Parkinson's disease," said Roger Barker, Professor of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge.

(Editing by Rosalind Russell)

2. NETFLIX SHARES TAKE OFFAfter announcing on Monday that it has added more than 2 million new U.S. streaming customers, Netflix shares shot up nearly 25 percent, exceeding $216 on Tuesday. The jump is a huge turn-around for the company, which just last September logged a 52-week low of $53.80. Netflix also posted a profit of $2.7 million, contrasted with a loss of $4.6 million, this quarter last year. With subscriptions up to 28.7 million, by one measure Netflix now has . []………………………………………………………………………………

3. ADIDAS SELLS OUT OF BOSTON MARATHON TRIBUTE T-SHIRTSAdidas, the Boston Marathon's official apparel supplier, says that it can't keep up with demand for the tribute t-shirts they released after last week's attacks. The shirts read "Boston stands as one," and sell for $26.20 (mirroring the 26.2 miles in a marathon). All proceeds go to , a charity created for the victims of the bombings and their families. "Efforts are being made to restock so that together we can continue to help those affected by the tragic events in Boston," said a spokesperson. []………………………………………………………………………………

4. NEW STARTUP LETS YOU INVEST IN HUMAN POTENTIALA new company called Upstart, which lets you invest in the future earnings of college grads, has attracted $5.9 million in funding from Google executive Eric Schmidt and Founder Fund executive Peter Thiel, among others. How Upstart works: Investors and borrowers sign a 10 to 15-year contract, and if the borrower is successful, the investor earns a return on their investment. If the borrower earns less than $30,000 per year for the length of the contract, however, the lender sees nothing. Much of the new capital will allow Upstart to take on legal hurdles. []………………………………………………………………………………

5. RADIOSHACK HAS ANOTHER ROUGH QUARTERRadioShack reported an even larger than expected loss in the first quarter, as sales fell 7 percent to $849 million. Customers are buying fewer wireless phone contracts and more smartphones which are less profitable, and the once-thriving company continues to struggle with image problems. "I know we have some gaps and improvements that need to take place," CEO Joseph Magnacca told reporters. A BB&T Capital Markets analyst tells Yahoo News, "We are starting to suspect this could be a case of 'too little, too late.'" []

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"Our uncertainty on future water levels which is considerable is a direct reflection of our uncertainty on future climates," Drew Gronewold, a hydrologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich., said in a news briefing today (April 23).

In January, average water levels in Lake Michigan andfell to 576.02 feet (175.57 meters), the lowest levels since 1964. Gronewold says these drops were largely due to warmer and dryer conditions the previous year, which produced less snowpack in the region.

Scientists monitor changes in the so-calledwater budget to make short- and long-term forecasts of water levels. This budget takes into account the water that comes into the Great Lakes basin through precipitation, ice cover and runoff, and the water that leaves through evaporation.

"The interplay between relative increases in precipitation and relative increases in evaporation are what will drive water levels," Gronewold said.

But, these calculations can be tricky because they incorporate so many different variables, including the , he added. Changes in solar energy, for example, which would increase or decrease evaporation, can affect how much rainfall eventually runs off into the lakes, or gets sent back into the atmosphere.

And whereas NOAA closely monitors the interplay between precipitation and evaporation for all the Great Lakes, Gronewold said it is difficult to know how these changes will play out over the next several decades.

In the meantime, the spring season may bring some short-term relief to the area. It is not unusual for springtime runoff, coupled with , to contribute 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) to the lakes, Gronewold explained.

"This is a time of year when water levels typically rise naturally," Gronewold said.

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Singh, who won a middleweight bronze at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, was ordered by the ministry to take a test after local police accused him of using heroin on several occasions amid allegations from a fellow boxer.

"Vijender Singh...along with four others was subjected to an out-of-competition test for banned substances," the sports ministry said in a statement.

"The Ministry...is glad to announce that on the basis of these tests none of the boxers were found to have used any banned substances in the recent past."

Singh came under scrutiny when a fellow boxer told investigators after a $24-million drug haul in the northern state of Punjab last month that he and Singh had consumed heroin supplied by a drug dealer.

The 27-year-old Singh denied the allegation.

(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly; editing by Clare Fallon)