CIA acknowledges its mysterious Area 51 test site for first time

National security scholars at George Washington University have some good news and bad news for UFO buffs - the U.S. government has finally confirmed the existence of Area 51 inNevada, but it makes no mention of little green men or alien spaceships.

The government acknowledged the existence of the mysterious aviation test site known as Area 51, a remote installation about 80 miles (130 km) northwest of Las Vegas, in a newly declassified CIA history of its U-2 spy plane program.

After decades of extreme secrecy surrounding the site, stokingconspiracy theories about UFOs and experiments on alien spacecraft, the CIA lifted its veil on Area 51 in response to a public records request from George Washington University scholars in Washington, D.C.

Publicly released online on Thursday by the university's National Security Archive, the 400-page CIA history contains the first deliberate official references to Area 51, also known as Groom Lake, as a site developed by the intelligence agency in the 1950s to test fly the high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance plane.

Other top-secret aircraft were tested there later, including the supersonic reconnaissance A-12 aircraft, code-named OXCART, and the F-117 stealth ground-attack jet, said archive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson, who asked for the CIA's U-2 history in 2005.

A newly revised document restoring numerous references to Area 51 that had been redacted in earlier versions was furnished by the CIA a few weeks ago, he said.

"It's the first time that there must have been a senior-level decision to acknowledge the term 'Area 51' and its specific location," he told Reuters on Friday.

Chapter 2 of the CIA history recounts how Richard Bissell, the CIA officer then overseeing development of the U-2 plane by Lockheed, first spotted the site on an aerial scouting mission over Nevada in April 1955, accompanied by an Air Force officer and two others.

The four men landed their plane near an old, abandoned air strip at the edge of a salt flat known as Groom Lake near the northeastern corner of the Nevada Test Site, the nuclear proving ground then controlled by the Atomic Energy Commission.

IDEAL TEST SITE

The group agreed that Groom Lake would "make an ideal site for testing the U-2 and training its pilots." Bissell subsequently asked the Atomic Energy Commission to add the area to its Nevada real estate holdings, the account says.

"AEC Chairman Admiral Lewis Strauss readily agreed, and President Eisenhower also approved the addition of this strip of wasteland, known by its map designation as Area 51, to the Nevada Test Site," the document says.

To make the barren new facility seem more appealing to its workers, managers of the U-2 program dubbed the facility "Paradise Ranch," which was later shortened to "the Ranch."

Photos of the site and a newly declassified map outlining and labeling the location were also included in the document.

Richelson said he could recall at least two previous government documents in which an incidental reference to Area 51 appeared, but he assumed those were inadvertent because they were devoid of any other details or context.

The multiple detailed references to Area 51 in the latest CIA account - the document's index lists at least 12 mentions - show that they were deliberate, he said.

The intelligence agency had little to say about the disclosure.

"What readers of the CIA study will find is that CIA tests its U-2 and A-12 reconnaissance aircraft at the site in Nevada sometimes referred to as 'Area 51,'" CIA spokesman Edward Price said. "What readers won't find are any references to aliens or other conspiracy theories best left to the realm of science fiction."

Among the more sensational pieces of UFO conspiracy lore linked to Area 51 is that the remains of a flying saucer that supposedly crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, were brought to the site for reverse engineering experiments that attempted to replicate the extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Richelson said the CIA document makes no mention of any such theories. But he pointed to one passage that discusses the relationship between U-2s and unidentified flying objects "in the sense that people sighted U-2s in a time that they were very secretive and at very high altitude and didn't know what they were, and in that sense they were UFOs." 

Electronic Arts expects games boost from new consoles

Video games publisher Electronic Arts Incis banking on a boost from Sony and Microsoft's new consoles to bring the digital and physical media sides of its portfolio into balance.

Like other makers of traditional boxed video games, EA has struggled to keep up with a massive switch to online and mobile gaming. The segment is expected to grow to $14.4 billion in 2017, from $8.8 billion last year.

"We actually see growth this year in our plan for physical boxed games ... The concept that physical media is dead is completely erroneous at this point," EA's Chief Operating Officer Peter Mooretold Reuters before the start of Gamescom, Europe's biggest gaming fair, this week.

"It is actually going to grow a little bit, certainly in our world."

Sony and Microsoft will start selling their latest consoles this autumn, intensifying competition ahead of the key pre-Christmas period.

Sony has priced its PlayStation 4 console $100 lower than rival Microsoft's new Xbox One, which is priced at $499.

TIMELY ARRIVAL

The arrival of the new consoles comes not a moment too soon for the video games industry as it tries to arrest the decline in revenues in recent years. Industry tracker NPD says that sales of video game hardware and software have fallen every month, on a year-on-year basis, since January 2012.

Research from consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) suggests that the global market for video games will recover to $86.9 billion in 2017, up from $63.4 billion in 2012, with consumer spending on console games increasing to $31.2 billion in 2017 from $24.9 billion in 2012.

Mobile games, online offerings and new digital sales streams accounted for more than 76 percent of revenue at Electronic Arts in the first quarter of this year, but the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles should provide more balance.

"We are almost at a 50-50 split between digital and physical media," Moore said.

Electronic Arts has a long line-up of games, including shooter Battlefield 4 and new science fiction game Titanfall for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

"We see digital business on a global basis in this fiscal year growing 20 percent. The packaged business on an industry basis is declining radically. We are in a position where we see growth year-on-year in both businesses," Moore said.

That optimism is reflected in EA's shares. They have almost doubled in value to about $26, from nearly $14 at the end of last year.

Italian astronaut recounts near-drowning during spacewalk

As his helmet filled with water, blurring his vision and cutting off radio communications, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano says his thoughts quickly turned to the possibility of drowning during a recent spacewalk outside theInternational Space Station.

Parmitano gave a blow-by-blow account of the terrifying incident, which occurred on July 16, in a blog published this week.

"I can't even be sure that the next time I breathe I will fill my lungs with air and not liquid," Parmitano wrote on the European Space Agency's website.

"It's vital that I get inside as quickly as possible ... but how much time do I have? It's impossible to know," he wrote.

NASA, which oversaw the spacewalk, is investigating the cause of Parmitano's helmet malfunction. Pieces of the failed spacesuit are due to be returned to Earth for analysis aboard an upcoming SpaceX Dragon cargo ship or Russian Soyuz capsule, NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said.

Parmitano was setting up an internet cable between the space station's Unity connecting node and the Russian Zarya module when he noticed liquid collecting inside his helmet.

"The unexpected sensation of water at the back of my neck surprises me - and I'm in a place where I'd rather not be surprised," Parmitano wrote.

NASA says the water did not come from a drink bag in the space suit. Engineers are focusing on the suit's backpack, which holds a water storage tank for a liquid-cooled undergarment.

A week before the incident, Parmitano had become the first Italian astronaut to walk in space.

THURSDAY SPACEWALK

In a far more routine spacewalk on Thursday, two Russian cosmonauts floated outside the $100 billion research complex, which flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, to do some maintenance work.

Flight engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin left the Russian Pirs airlock at 7:34 a.m. EDT (1134 GMT) for their second spacewalk in less than a week.

Their main goal was to remove a laser communications system from outside the Zvezda module, the crew's main living compartment, and install a swiveling platform for a future telescope.

Yurchikhin and Misurkin removed the laser system, which had been used since 2011 for high-speed data transmissions from Russian science experiments to ground stations. But they ran into a problem as they prepared to install a base for a pair of cameras that comprise the new telescope.

The cosmonauts realized that if the base was attached as planned, the camera's steerable platform would have been misaligned, said a translator monitoring communications between the spacewalkers and Russian flight controllers.

Flight controllers told the spacewalkers to skip that work and bring the equipment into the airlock. They moved on to their next task - inspecting covers on antennas used to dock Europe's unmanned cargo ships after one cover was seen floating away from the station on Monday.

Halfway through their work tightening screws to keep the remaining covers in place, Russian flight controllers changed their minds and told the cosmonauts to retrieve the telescope platform from the airlock and go ahead with the installation.

"They realized the camera platform would only be out of alignment in the yaw axis, not in the roll or pitch axes," NASA mission commentator Pat Ryan, referring to the three directions of motion, said during a TV broadcast of the spacewalk by the U.S. space agency.

"They determined it would be possible to correct for that misalignment ... by using the pointing platform," he said.

Thursday's six-hour spacewalk came six days after a 7-1/2 hour outing by Yurchikhin and Misurkin, which set a Russian record. That spacewalk, as well as one that the cosmonauts made on June 24, were primarily to prepare the station for a new multipurpose Russian module that is scheduled for launch in December. 

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Bradley Manning faces legal and social difficulties as transgender

Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier sentenced this week for leaking 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks in the biggest breach of secret data in the country's history, could soon be entangled in another legal showdown.

Unlike the court-martial Manning faced for leaking the data, the next challenge could play out in federal court over a far different issue: sexual identity.

Manning's announcement on Thursday of wishing to live as a woman named Chelsea raised unprecedented legal questions over whetherthe Army will provide the female hormone therapy Manning wants to undergo, not to mention questions over how life will unfold as a transgender military inmate.

"The prime issue concerns the manner in which Chelsea Manning will be treated in prison, and whether she will have the same access that all prisoners have to treatments that are prescribed to her," saidMichael Stillman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund in New York.

"Will the prison in which she is housed allow her doctors to treat her the same way they allow them to treat other prisoners?" he asked.

Manning, 25, was sentenced to 35 years at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which houses military prisoners about 25 miles north of Kansas City, Kansas.

At Fort Leavenworth, Manning will have access to mental health professionals, including a psychiatrist, psychologist, social workers and behavioral science specialists, according to an Army spokeswoman.

But she said the Army did not provide hormone therapy, which is what Manning would seek, or gender-reassignment surgery.

"I'm hoping that Fort Leavenworth will do the right thing and provide that," Manning's attorney, David Coombs, said on the "Today" show. "If Fort Leavenworth does not, then I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that they are forced to do so."

Neal Minahan, a Boston lawyer who won a federal court decision in 2011 for his client to receive hormone therapy in a Massachusetts state prison, said federal judges have consistently knocked down bans on such therapy.

"What is very clear is that prisons cannot do exactly what Leavenworth is doing in saying that there is a blanket ban on hormone therapy as a matter of policy," he said.

But while Manning's first step would be getting a doctor's prescription for the treatment, the soldier will likely face years getting legal approval in the courts, Minahan said.

Manning's lawyers argued during the sentencing phase of the court-martial that the soldier suffered from gender identity disorder. Coombs said on Thursday that Manning has had feelings of being female since childhood.

The American Psychiatric Association in its newest diagnostic manual replaced "gender identity disorder" with "gender dysphoria" to remove the stigma associated with the diagnosis and avoid what it said was the incorrect indication that gender nonconformity was a mental disorder.

Prescribed treatments for gender dysphoria can range from hormones, which typically affects breast development and other secondary sex characteristics, to facial feminization and genital surgery.

Challenging the Army's policy on hormone therapy could have long-term broader benefits, said Jennifer Levi, director of the Transgender Rights Project at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD.

In the Massachusetts case, she said, the ruling not only knocked down the policy but also helped launch training for prison staff.

"It's that kind of training and education that I think ultimately changes the ways people view the transgender experience," Levi said. "As there's more understanding of the medical condition, there's more humanity that is extended to people who experience it."

Coombs said he was not worried about Manning's safety in a military prison since inmates there were first-time offenders who wanted to complete their sentences and get out.

Still, experts said transgender inmates tend to be vulnerable or targeted, and steps taken to protect them can be punitive, such as segregation or isolated cells. Fort Leavenworth is an all-male prison. Female military prisoners are housed at the Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in California.

A spokeswoman for the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Manning case.

"The worst case scenario is that she's going to experience harassment or abuse in prison as a result of being transgender," said Stillman, of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund. "That abuse might or could include the withholding of medical treatment.

"It's hard for people who haven't been diagnosed with gender dysphoria to understand quite how severe it can be to have treatment withheld," he said. "It can have profoundly debilitating effects on people." (Additional reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington and Scott Malone in Boston; Writing by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Bernard Orr and Xavier Briand)

guessing game begins on new Microsoft CEO

As Steve Ballmer bows out of Microsoft Corp , the guessing game over who will replace him has started with a British bookmaker putting Nokia's Stephen Elop as the favourite.

Ballmer, 57, unexpectedly announced his retirement last Friday after more than three decades at the world's largest software company, including 13 years as chief executive.

With no heir apparent, Ladbrokes opened up betting on successors for Ballmer who will depart within the next year, with Elop, 49, topping a list of 26 candidates with odds of 5/1.

British and Irish bookmakers offer a wide range of bets as a niche sideline to more lucrative wagers on sports. Online gambling is far more restrictive in the United States.

Elop, a Canadian, led Microsoft's business division before becoming chief executive of the Finnish firm Nokia in 2010 with a brief to revive the once-undisputed leader in mobile phones.

Senior Nokia employees say he has forced them to make faster decisions. But Nokia's ability to compete in the global smartphone market is increasingly questioned; its market share stands at around three percent, far behind Samsung and Apple which control around 50 percent between them.

Internal Microsoft candidate Kevin Turner, chief operating officer, is second favourite with odds of 6/1 to replace Ballmer, according to Ladbrokes. In third is former Microsoft executive Steve Sinofsky, who left the company last November.

The top female candidate in the stakes is internal head of devices and studios, Julie Larson-Green, in fourth place.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is ranked as a 50/1 shot to return to fill the void but he is considered more likely than rank 100/1 outsider Tim Cook, CEO at Apple.

Ladbrokes' spokesman Alex Donohue said the market was a "who's who of high fliers" in the technology world. "With a year to go we anticipate that this market will smash all previous records for technology betting," Donohue said in a statement.

Microsoft: The insiders who could be CEO

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp has a stable of senior executives who could be contenders to succeed Chief ExecutiveSteve Ballmer, even though outsiders have sparked the most discussion so far.

After Ballmer's surprise announcement on Friday that he would retire within a year, the board's lead independent director John Thompson, who heads the search for the new CEO, said the planned transformation of the software giant into a fast-moving 'devices and services' company is still on track.

"It does seem like if they are going to continue down the path of this devices and services strategy that they probably get somebody who was part of formulating this strategy or who can stand fully behind it. I don't know if most outside candidates would be willing to do that," said Sid Parakh, an analyst at fund firm McAdams Wright Ragen.

He expects Microsoft to favor an internal candidate.

But insiders would face skepticism from those who want a clean break from Ballmer's personal legacy, as well as other obstacles.

"The issue with internal candidates is that Microsoft has cultivated a holding-company style culture so very few execs are broadly exposed to all areas of the business," said Al Hilwa, an analyst at tech research firm IDC.

The following is a list of potential internal candidates, with pros and cons, based on conversations with analysts and insiders. All except Raikes and Thompson are executive vice presidents.

Satya Nadella, cloud and enterprise

PRO: A 21-year Microsoft veteran, he knows the inner workings of the company, especially the hot areas of servers, data centers and online services. Recently promoted to run the newly created 'cloud and enterprise' unit, he controls the infrastructure behind the 'services' side of Microsoft's new vision.

CON: Although he was once a vice president in the Office unit, he might struggle to impose authority over the all-powerful Windows and Office factions, the wellsprings of the company's profits which are famously antagonistic to one another.

Tony Bates, corporate strategy

PRO: Came to Microsoft two years ago as CEO of the acquired online chat company Skype, which represents the new wave of internet-centric, consumer-focused technology that Microsoft has had difficulty replicating. He so impressed his new boss that Ballmer put him in charge of corporate strategy and relations with developers and PC makers.

CON: May not have been at Microsoft long enough to know how to wrench it into a new shape, and his narrow specialty in the telecommunications and router field may not be broad enough to run such a large software-based company.

Terry Myerson, operating systems

PRO: A young entrepreneur whose web software company was bought by Microsoft in the late 1990s, he might bring a start-up mentality to the top job. Recently selected by Ballmer to run the full range of operating systems - which are still the heart of Microsoft - ranging across Windows PCs, tablets, phones and the Xbox game console.

CON: His last assignment was running the Windows Phone unit, which won praise for its clean, stylish software but has not come close to making Microsoft a big player in the smartphone market.

Qi Lu, search and Internet

PRO: The former Yahoo Inc executive is a heavyweight in the online search and advertising area, with 20 U.S. patents. He now runs the 'applications and services' group, which is in charge of putting Microsoft's established software businesses, like its Office suite, onto the Web. It is a crucial part of Ballmer's reorganization plan.

CON: Under his stewardship, the Bing search engine has cost Microsoft billions of dollars without threatening Google Inc's dominance.

Julie Larson-Green, Xbox gaming console and Surface tablet

PRO: a 20-year veteran of Microsoft and acolyte of recently departed Windows chief Steven Sinofsky, she has intimate knowledge of both the Office and Windows units, having led the redesign of both products.

CON: Is now in charge of the 'devices and studios' unit, leading Microsoft's foray into making its own computers and other hardware. The Surface tablet has had poor sales, despite initial enthusiasm. She may be marked down for her close involvement with the tepidly received Windows 8.

Eric Rudder, research and technology

PRO: A fixture in the background at Microsoft for two decades, this deeply tech-savvy exec now runs Microsoft's long-term research unit and sets overall technical strategy. He is the nearest the company has to a big thinker in the mold of Bill Gates.

CON: Never having been a business unit leader, he may not have the experience to deal with the sharp-elbowed internal politics of Microsoft to survive as CEO.

Kevin Turner, COO

PRO: Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer for the last eight years, the former Wal-Mart Stores Incexec is the power behind the company's fearsome sales operation.

CON: A professional salesman and motivator, he does not come from an engineering background, which could be a liability.

Jeff Raikes, philanthropy, ex-Office chief

PRO: Bill Gates, who is on the committee to choose the next Microsoft CEO, picked this former leader of the Office unit to be the chief executive of his philanthropic foundation. As Microsoft approaches a critical transition, his long experience, understanding of Gates' thinking and steady hand might be an effective combination.

CON: Immersed in the world of philanthropy for the past five years, he may be out of touch with the latest technology trends. The same generation as Ballmer, his appointment might be seen as a continuation of the old guard.

John Thompson, search committee leader

PRO: It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the man leading the committee to find a new CEO may end up being considered by it. The former IBM executive went on to be CEO of computer security firm Symantec Corp , giving him experience both of a large company reinventing itself and an understanding of the enterprise software market.

CON: He only joined Microsoft's board last year and has no direct experience of managing the company. His current day job is CEO of the little-known, privately held cloud-computing firm Virtual Instruments.

BlackBerry eyes spinoff of messaging service

 BlackBerry Ltd is considering spinning off itsmessaging service into a separate unit, the Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday, quoting people familiar with the matter.

The subsidiary would be called BBM Inc, the newspaper said. (http://link.reuters.com/meq62v)

A BlackBerry spokeswoman told Reuters the company cannot comment on rumor and speculation.

Two sources familiar with the company's thinking, who declined to be named because they are not authorized to discuss the matter with the media, told Reuters the company has reallocated internal resources and personnel to work exclusively on fine-tuning theBlackBerry Messenger service ahead of its launch on competitors' devices.

However, there is no immediate plan to spin off the unit, one of the sources said, adding that BBM for Apple's iPhone and devices using Google's Android should be available to consumers in the next few weeks.

The instant messaging service has about 60 million users who send billions of messages a day. BlackBerry has sought to add value to the service, even as the popularity of the company's own handsets shrinks, by adding video calling over WiFi and working to make the service available to users of other devices.

The company has already announced plans for BBM Channels, which would allow advertisers to promote special deals or to target markets narrowly.

BlackBerry is also considering making BBM available for desktop computers, the Journal said, quoting a person it said was familiar with the matter.

BlackBerry said earlier this month it was looking into options for the company, which could include an outright sale.

BlackBerry's shares were 3 percent lower at C$10.63 on the Toronto Stock Exchange early on Tuesday afternoon. They have lost well over three-quarters of their value since a peak in early 2011, and are down more than 7 percent so far this year.