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)

The Senate Agriculture Committee will mark up its bill on Tuesday, and the House Agriculture Committee will follow suit on Wednesday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said he would like to finish the bill on the floor in May. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., who held up the bill last yearprobably in hopes of electing a Republican-controlled Senate and a Republican presidentsuddenly declared this month that he wants to bring the bill to the House floor this summer. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., has suggested that the leadership should bring it up in June.

Why, after Congress missed the deadline to pass the bill last year and had to extend the 2008 bill for another year, and after negotiations have been going on behind the scenes for more than four months, is the bill finally moving?  And could the bills still stall?

The reason the bills are moving seems to be that each chamber has gotten tired of the farm bill hanging on and has something more interesting to move on to. Reid has told the Senate that he wants the farm bill passed in May because he wants to devote June to immigration reform. Since exit polls showed that President Obamas election percentage in rural America went from 50 percent in 2008 to 41 percent in 2012, while Hispanic voters have become the new hope of the Democratic Party, it seems that Reid has a logical reason to get the farm bill done quickly and move on to something that interests more Democratic voters. Agricultural employers will encourage this movement, too, since they are promoting provisions for immigrant farm workers and meat-company employees that are included in the immigration-reform bill.

House Republicans want to move on to the periodic reauthorization of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the House Agriculture Committee has to do it. Most of the futures industry today is financial, but the commission, which regulates the industry, falls under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture committees because the exchanges that engage in financial futures started out trading in agricultural commodities and minerals.

The House and Senate Agriculture committees wrote the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which so deregulated the futures industry that it played a major role in the 2008 financial crisis. Those committees also wrote Title VII of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which gave the CFTC new regulatory powers and for the first time regulated the high-earning swaps industry. The financial-services industry hates the Dodd-Frank Act and is chomping at the bit to restrict the CFTCs ability to finalize some of the regulations the agency has proposed.

It did not seem to be a coincidence that last Thursday, when Lucas scheduled the House panels farm-bill markup for Wednesday, he also announced that the committee will hold the first of a series of CFTC reauthorization hearings on May 21.

Lucas could barely contain his enthusiasm in an e-mail he sent out. The committee will kick off its series of CFTC reauthorization hearings with a broad range of market participants to comment on the current state of the marketplace, Lucas wrote. Extremely pressing issues face the futures and swaps markets, and the committee will hold several hearings to examine customer protections, review the commissions operations, and evaluate how regulations are impacting end-users and the agricultural community.

The Republicans believe, perhaps accurately, that Americans have forgotten that the lack of regulation of futures and swaps was key to the 2008 crisisor that at least the public will not follow the complicated issues of regulating or deregulating futures, derivatives, and swaps.

Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee seem to love to compete to cut food stamps. Lucas has called for a $20 billion cut over 10 years in the farm bill, while other proposals would cut as much as $36 billion. But its really more fun to sit around and help out the well-dressed financial-services executives, especially when they bring along those generous campaign contribution checks.

Farm lobbyists have been frustrated in their inability to get Congress moving on the farm bill, but between immigration and CFTC reauthorization, Congress may have found its own motivation to act.

There are still plenty of big fights ahead over food stamps, dairy, sugar, crop-support programs, and crop insurance, as well as the question of whether farmers should have to follow federal conservation rules to get premium subsidies.

And, as Lucas put it in a recent interview, Conference may be quite an experience.

The bill could still stall, but there is a sense of optimism and compromise in the air on Capitol Hill, along with the desire to move.

This time I know the lay of the land in the committee, Lucas said. Ive had a year to work with leadership, a year to bring them along in understanding.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., wants no cut to food stamps, but she said in an interview that she hopes to vote for a final bill even if there is a small cut to food stamps, as there was in the Senate bill she voted for last year.

Noting that current dairy policy is not working, Gillibrand said, there is a need to refine agricultural policy in this country.

Contributing Editor Jerry Hagstrom is the founder and executive director of The Hagstrom Report, which may be found at www.HagstromReport.com.

On Thursday, actress Susan Lucci from TV's "All My Children" and Alex Trebek from "Jeopardy!" visited the National Museum of American History to donate objects from their shows. They were joined by the creators of "Barney" to show the range of daytime TV programs.

The new artifacts range from show scripts and props to original artwork. Lucci donated the pink gown and shoes she wore for a national magazine cover when she won an Emmy in 1999.

The museum is launching a three-year initiative to collect more objects to tell the story of daytime television. It is partnering with the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

But new research finds the financial world doesn't just respond to the Internet; the Internet can also predict what the stock market will do. The research isn't the first to find such online clairvoyance. For example, Google may even be able tobefore doctors can, thanks to people's tendencies to self-diagnose using the search engine. Google searches can also forecast the .

The new study, however, takes the extra step of testing out how well stock-buying would go, using Google search trends as guidance. The result: a pretty nice return.

Googling the markets

University of Warwick Business School researcher Tobias Preis and colleagues had previously found a correlation between the number of Google searches for a company's name and the number of times that company's stock was bought and sold. However, that method couldn't predict a stock's price. []

Now, Preis and his colleagues have turned to broader search trends to try to predict the whole stock market's movements. Using publicly available data on search terms from Google Trends, the researchers tracked 98 terms, many of them finance- or economics-related, such as "debt," "crisis" and "derivatives" from 2004 to 2011. They then compared the searches to the closing prices of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a major stock-market index.

To test whether the terms searched in the week prior to any given closing day could predict the Dow Jones, the researchers invented a pretend investing game. If searches for financial terms went down, they opted to buy stocks and take a "long" position, holding on to the stocks and waiting for their value to go up.

If searches for financial terms went up, the researchers instead chose to "short" the market a strategy that allows buyers to sell stocks they don't own, with the understanding that they will buy the stocks later at a lower price in essence, gambling that thein value.

Worried searchers

The reasoning behind the game was simple. If people get anxious about the stock market, they will likely seek out information on financial issues before trying to dump their stock. Thus, finance-related Google searches should go up before a stock market decline.

That's exactly what the researchers found: An uptick inon finance terms reliably predicted a fall in stock prices.

"Debt" was the most reliable term for predicting market ups and downs, the researchers found. By going long when "debt" searches dropped and shorting the market when "debt" searches rose, the researchers were able to increase their hypothetical portfolio by 326 percent. (In comparison, a constant buy-and-hold strategy yielded just a 16 percent return.)

"Trends to sell on the financial market at lower prices may be preceded by ," the researchers write today (April 25) in the journal Scientific Reports. "During such periods of concern, people may tend to gather more information about the state of the market. It is conceivable that such behavior may have historically been reflected by increased Google Trends search volumes for terms of higher financial relevance."

Nevertheless, the average day-trader might find the strategy tough to implement, Preis said.

"This is something I wouldn't recommend to do without testing this very carefully," Preis told LiveScience. For one thing, markets have a tendency to adapt. If everyone starts using Google search terms to try to game the system, the strategy will become less effective.

For another, the financial terms used by the researchers may no longer be the best predictors of how buyers and sellers are feeling.

"You would need to find a way to identify, on the fly and in real time, what are the emerging topics that are relevant to markets?" Preis said.

The findings are scientifically "truly exciting," Preis said, because they have implications far beyond the stock market. Online chatter could help predict disease spread, civil unrest and political elections, he said. And Google is only the beginning, he added. Wikipedia, for example, provides open-source information on how many people view specific articles hour-by-hour, making the online encyclopedia another potential predictor of stock markets and other real-life behavior.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on and . Follow us , & . Original article on LiveScience.com.

In its response to Miami's motion that was filed two weeks ago asking for the case to be brought to an immediate end, the NCAA's investigative arm said it would remove some of Wright's testimony "in an abundance of caution" according to the person, who spoke with AP on condition of anonymity because neither the association nor the Hurricanes authorized the move to be revealed publicly.

It's a victory for Miami, though the size of that victory will only be known as the case continues. It's also unclear if the NCAA will drop all of Wright's testimony, or just a portion.

In its motion, which was based in part on what the school said was ill-gotten testimony from Wright, Miami asked the NCAA's Committee on Infractions the group that would actually hear the case, not the investigators who shaped the case to bring the long saga to an end.

As of now, the case is still scheduled to be heard by the Committee on Infractions starting June 14.

Miami argued that some of the questions Wright was asked in a February 2012 interview with NCAA investigators were based on answers given in depositions that were conducted as part of a bankruptcy case by the attorney for former Hurricanes booster Nevin Shapiro, whose claims of providing impermissible benefits to Miami athletes, recruits and coaches for nearly a decade are the root of the scandal.

Those depositions were conducted under subpoena power, a tool the NCAA does not have. The NCAA has said it removed information gleaned in those depositions from the notice of allegations against Miami, though the Hurricanes argued that process did not go far enough.

"In an abundance of caution, the enforcement staff will suppress (Wright's) transcript as well as strike through any allegations relying solely on the information the student-athlete reported," read a portion of the NCAA's response.

Miami cited six allegations that Wright helped investigators substantiate in a February 2012 interview.

Wright, according to Miami's motion, acknowledged getting extra benefits "only after (now-retired NCAA investigator Rich) Johanningmeier asked him specific questions regarding the benefits" that the former quarterback received from Shapiro, a convicted felon serving a 20-year term in federal prison for masterminding a $930 million Ponzi scheme.

And the NCAA, Miami contended, only knew about those benefits like a trip to a Snoop Dogg concert at Detroit in 2005 and an overnight trip to the Bahamas because of the deposition that Shapiro attorney Maria Elena Perez conducted of former Miami equipment-room staffer and Shapiro confidant Sean Allen in December 2011.

That was one of the depositions Perez conducted while receiving payment from the NCAA for the work performed.

The AP previously learned that Wright, a Miami quarterback from 2004 through 2007, was alleged by the NCAA to have received "VIP access and beverage service" from Shapiro at Miami nightclubs between 2002 and 2009. Wright also allegedly was entertained at Shapiro's home, received invitations to bowling-alley outings from the former booster, and dined with him at a Benihana restaurant.

Wright, also according to the notice of allegations against Miami, received at least $1,824 in impermissible benefits "in an effort to secure signing with Axcess Sports," an agency Shapiro was aligned with.

Wright finished his four Miami seasons with 38 touchdown passes and 31 interceptions.

Miami has already missed three postseason football games because of the scandal, and school officials have said repeatedly that self-imposed sanctions like those and a scholarship reduction mean the Hurricanes have been penalized enough.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Electronic Arts Inc forecast fiscal 2014 earnings above Wall Street's expectations as cost cuts take hold and higher-margin digital sales accelerate, lifting the video game publisher's stock 8 percent.

Electronic Arts, which like the rest of the industry is struggling as players migrate to more casual games such as "Angry Birds" on mobile devices, estimated fiscal 2014 profit, excluding certain items, of $1.20 a share, beating an average estimate of $1.10.

EA has been cutting staff and reorganizing studios in recent months to embrace new game platforms, cut costs and adapt to tougher market conditions. The publisher is preparing a new slate of games - including the latest installment of its "Battlefield" shooter game franchise - partly to take advantage of next-generation video game consoles due later this year.

Digital revenue - from mobile games, online offerings and other newer sales channels - rose 45 percent year-over-year to $618 million, larger than EA's packaged goods business in the fourth quarter ended on March 31.

EA shares rose to $19.88 in after-hours trading on Tuesday after closing at $18.41 on Nasdaq.

"We've cut operating costs, sharpened our product focus, and made strategic investments in next-generation consoles, mobile, and PCs," EA Executive Chairman Larry Probst told analysts on an earnings call.

Consumers have held back from buying hardware and software as they await new versions of Sony Corp's PlayStation and Microsoft Corp's Xbox expected later this year.

"Their focus on margin expansion is impressive but they're going to have to continue to deliver on that," Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said. "But so far, so good."

For fiscal 2014, the video game maker forecast revenue of $4 billion, in line with Wall Street's expectations, according to Thomson-Reuters I/B/E/S.

"STAR WARS" IN THE MAKING

Weakness in the packaged games market dented revenue, but EA recognized $120 million of deferred payments from its "Battlefield Premium" service in the fourth quarter, Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said in an interview.

For the latest quarter, total revenue declined to $1.2 billion from $1.37 billion a year ago. Adjusted revenue rose 6.4 percent to $1.04 billion over the same period, barely beating analysts' average estimate of $1.03 billion according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net income fell to $323 million, or $1.05 per share, from $400 million, or $1.20 per share, a year ago.

John Riccitiello stepped down as chief executive on March 30, after taking responsibility for missed operational targets.

Former CEO and Chairman Probst has been appointed executive chairman as the company begins its search for the next CEO.

There's "no new news" on the search for EA's next CEO, Jorgensen said. "The search continues."

EA's big 2014 release is "Battlefield 4," the new installment from its hugely popular first-person shooter franchise that is expected to release this fall.

"It would have been tougher for them this year had it not been for 'Battlefield 4.' I think that accounts for most of the growth and in the absence of that they would have had a flat to down year," Bhatia said.

EA management on the earnings call cited 11 titles in the company's 2014 lineup. These include sports game franchises such as "Madden" and "FIFA," city-building simulation game "Sims 4" for personal computers and "Plants vs. Zombies 2" from its PopCap mobile game studio.

On Monday, Electronic Arts sealed a multi-year licensing deal with Walt Disney Co, under which the video game publisher will develop games for mobile devices, PCs and consoles based on the "Star Wars" movies.

"Development is at least a year plus in timing so you won't see anything in fiscal '14," Jorgensen said.

(Reporting by Malathi Nayak; Editing by Richard Chang)

The extraordinary edition of CNN's "Reliable Sources" contained not only his apology but also a session with two other media critics who sharply questioned Kurtz's credibility.

Kurtz wrote in The Daily Beast that Collins, the NBA center who made headlines last week by being the first active player in one of the four major U.S. pro sports leagues to come out as gay, had hidden a previous engagement to a woman in his announcement. In fact, Collins revealed the engagement in his first-person Sports Illustrated story and in a subsequent interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

Kurtz said Sunday that he had read the Sports Illustrated story too quickly and missed the reference to a fiancee there and elsewhere. He said he was wrong to rush the story without seeking comment from Collins, was too slow to correct himself when it became clear he was wrong and made an inappropriate comment (about playing "both sides of the court") in a video report.

Besides his "sloppy and inexcusable" errors, Kurtz said, the story itself was insensitive and shouldn't have been written.

"I apologize to readers, to viewers and, most importantly, to Jason Collins and his fiancee," said Kurtz, who spent many years as a media writer for The Washington Post. "I hope this very candid response can help me earn back your trust over time. It is something I am very committed to doing."

The Daily Beast and Kurtz announced they were "parting ways" on the same day the mistake came to light. Kurtz said it was amicable and had been in the works before the Collins story.

His public mea culpa included questioning from media writers David Folkenflik of NPR and Dylan Byers of Politico, who both dug deeper into Kurtz's work history and business relationships.

They questioned why Kurtz, with time-consuming jobs at CNN and as Washington bureau chief for The Daily Beast, was doing regular video commentaries for Daily Download, a media website. Kurtz said he was paid on a freelance basis by the website and had no financial stake in its operation, though he did offer advice to the people who started it.

Kurtz said, "I'll leave it to others to judge if I've taken on too much."

They also discussed other Kurtz mistakes from the past few years: a supposed interview with Rep. Darrell Issa that was instead conducted with the congressman's aide, wrongly attributed quotes from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and wrongly suggesting that Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren had questioned the seriousness of an injury to Hillary Clinton.

Given the other mistakes, Byers wondered whether viewers should believe Kurtz had learned from the Collins error. Folkenflik asked why the audience should still trust Kurtz as a media critic.

Kurtz pointed to his track record over many years and said he would recommit himself to being more careful.

A judge on Monday scheduled a July 15 sentencing for Floyd Corkins II, who prosecutors say planned a mass shooting at the Family Research Council in August. Prosecutors have recommended a 45-year prison sentence.

Corkins pleaded guilty in February to interstate transportation of a firearm, assault with intent to kill while armed and committing an act of terrorism while armed.

Authorities said the security guard was the only person wounded as he subdued Corkins in the lobby of the conservative group and Corkin fired three shots.

Corkins told authorities he had planned to kill as many people as possible.

British Open champion Els was tied fourth, four strokes behind Thongchai, after carding five birdies against three bogeys for a two-under-par 70 at the Royale Jakarta Golf Club.

"Today was a bit of a jet-lag day for me. I was trying to get some energy going. Hopefully, I will have more energy tomorrow. I think my game is all there. I just need to get a bit sharper mentally," the big South African said.

"I was hoping for a better score but I didn't quite get it. My game is not too bad. I just need to eliminate some really small mistakes.

"This is the type of course where you can get a little bit aggressive. I'm hitting the ball quite nicely so I like to stay aggressive. If I get myself in position, I will go for flags and get my putts in," the four-times major winner said.

A confident Thongchai, three-times Asian Tour Order of Merit winner, hit a blemish-free seven-under-par 65 to move two shots ahead of Australian Scott Barr.

"I hope I can keep my confidence like this in the next few days. If I drive, hit and putt like today then I think I have a good chance to win the tournament," the Thai, who has been joined by his wife and two sons in Jakarta, said.

"My putting wasn't that good in the last few months but it is coming around now.

"I played very solid and I have no complains at all. I think I have a chance to go even lower in the next few days. I'm only halfway there. There are many strong players here but getting off to 10-under after two rounds gives me a good chance."

Wade Ormsby of Australia was three shots behind the leader and Hung Chien-yao of Chinese Taipei and three more Australians, Kieran Pratt, Jake Higginbottom and Scott Hend, shared fourth place with Els.

(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by Ed Osmond)

In appealing the ruling, the administration recommitted itself to a position Obama took during his re-election campaign that younger teens shouldn't have unabated access to emergency contraceptives, despite the insistence by physicians groups and much of his Democratic base that the pill should be readily available.

A day earlier, the Food and Drug Administration lowered the age that people can buy the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill without a prescription to 15 younger than the current limit of 17 and decided that the pill could be sold on drugstore shelves near the condoms, instead of locked behind pharmacy counters.

That decision appeared to fly in the face of a judge's decision last month that women of any age should be allowed to buy both Plan B and its cheaper generic competition as easily as they can buy aspirin. U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York gave the FDA 30 days to comply, and the Monday deadline was approaching fast, prompting the administration on Wednesday to ask the court to put the ruling on hold while it reconsiders.

With the appeal, the Obama administration is making clear that it's willing to ease access to emergency contraception only a certain amount not nearly as broadly as doctors' groups and contraception advocates have urged. Still, the FDA decision moving the pill from behind the counter to drugstore shelves reflected a societal shift in the long battle over women's reproductive rights, marking a major milestone for those who believe all forms of birth control should be easy to buy.

Reluctant to get drawn in to a messy second-term spat over social issues, White House officials insisted Wednesday that both the FDA and the Justice Department were acting independently of the White House in deciding how to proceed. But the decision to appeal was certain to irk abortion-rights advocates who say they can't understand why a Democratic president is siding with social conservatives in favor of limiting women's reproductive choices.

"We are deeply disappointed that just days after President Obama proclaimed his commitment to women's reproductive rights, his administration has decided once again to deprive women of their right to obtain emergency contraception without unjustified and burdensome restrictions," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit that prompted Korman's ruling.

Current and former White House aides said Obama's approach to the issue has been heavily influenced by his experience as the father of two school-age daughters. Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have also questioned whether there's enough data available to show the morning-after pill is safe and appropriate for younger girls, even though physicians groups insist that it is.

In Wednesday's filing, the Justice Department said Korman exceeded his authority and that his decision should be suspended while that appeal is under way, meaning only Plan B One-Step would appear on drugstore shelves until the case is finally settled. If Korman's order isn't suspended during the appeals process, the result would be "substantial market confusion, harming FDA's and the public's interest" as drugstores receive conflicting orders about who's allowed to buy what, the Justice Department concluded.

Rather than take matters into his own hands, the Justice Department argued to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Korman should have ordered the FDA to reconsider its options for regulating emergency contraception. The court cannot overturn the rules and processes that federal agencies must follow "by instead mandating a particular substantive outcome," the appeal states.

The FDA actually had been poised to lift all age limits and let Plan B sell over the counter in late 2011, when Kathleen Sebelius overruled her own scientists. Sebelius said some girls as young as 11 were physically capable of bearing children but shouldn't be able to buy the pregnancy-preventing pill on their own.

Sebelius' move was unprecedented, and Korman had blasted it as election-year politics meaning he was overruling not just a government agency but a Cabinet secretary.

More than a year later, neither side in the contraception debate was happy with the FDA's surprise twist, which many perceived as an attempt to find a palatable middle ground between imposing an age limit of 17 and imposing no limit at all.

Any over-the-counter access marks a long-awaited change, but it's not enough, said Dr. Cora Breuner of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which supports nonprescription sale of the morning-after pill for all ages.

"We still have the major issue, which is our teen pregnancy rate is still too high," Breuner said.

Even though few young girls likely would use Plan B, which costs about $50 for a single pill, "we know that it is safe for those under 15," she said.

Most 17- to 19-year-olds are sexually active, and 30 percent of 15- and 16-year-olds have had sex, according to a study published last month by the journal Pediatrics. Sex is much rarer among younger teens. Likewise, older teens have a higher pregnancy rate, but that study also counted more than 110,000 pregnancies among 15- and 16-year-olds in 2008 alone.

Contraception advocates see a double standard. No one is carded when buying a condom, but under the FDA's decision they would have to prove their age when buying a pill to prevent pregnancy if that condom breaks.

"This isn't a compromise. This is wrong," said Cynthia Pearson of the National Women's Health Network.

Social conservatives were outraged by the FDA's move to lower the age limits for Plan B as well as the possibility that Korman's ruling might take effect and lift age restrictions altogether.

"This decision undermines the right of parents to make important health decisions for their young daughters," said Anna Higgins of the Family Research Council.

Obama aides bristled at the suggestion that the FDA decision was an attempt at political compromise, insisting the FDA merely responded to an application filed by Plan B's manufacturer. At the same time, however, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama's concern had been about girls younger than 15 having access, suggesting an age limit of 15 might be acceptable.

If a woman already is pregnant, the morning-after pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg. According to the medical definition, pregnancy doesn't begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus. Still, some critics say Plan B is the equivalent of an abortion pill because it may also be able to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, a contention that many scientists and Korman, in his ruling said has been discredited.

___

Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.