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.

Japan's Abe battles doctors' lobby over "Third Arrow" reform

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to promote the advanced medical technology industry as part of a plan to breathe new life into the economy - but the country's doctors' lobby is opposing what they say is risky surgery.

Health care has become the latest battleground in Abe's efforts to craft a strategy to engineer growth in the world's third biggest economy, the so-called "Third Arrow" of his economic turnaround plan.

The plans include changes to the country's universal health insurance system - as cherished in Japan as the National Health Service is in Britain - in order to boost growth by increasing demand for innovative drugs and medical devices.

The debate is being cast as a litmus test of Abe's commitment to deregulation as he attempts to revitalise Japan's stagnant economy. It also illustrates the opposition that Abe, who returned to power after his Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) big election win in December, faces from within his own camp.

"The idea of the growth strategy is ... for the private and public sectors to get together and promote innovation, We agree with that," Takashi Hanyuda, an LDP lawmaker who is also vice president of a powerful doctors' lobby, told Reuters.

The growth strategy also aims to promote exports of advanced medical technology and speed approval of new drugs and devices.

"But we have to protect the universal health insurance system to which everyone belongs," said the 65-year-old ophthalmologist, elected to parliament last month after running with the support of the Japan Medical Association (JMA).

"If the system starts to break down a little, it will turn into a flood and it would be extremely hard to halt the trend."

On one side of the argument is the 165,000-member JMA and health ministry officials, who say they want to protect the cherished principle of universality in a system that has been the envy of much of the developed world.

Lined up against them, and pushing Abe to go further, are advocates of more radical reform who accuse the small family doctors who make up the bulk of the JMA's membership of wanting protection from competition from larger clinics and hospitals.

Reformers say the changes would give patients more choice and allow doctors more discretion.

The JMA, the health ministry and some experts counter that the reforms would widen healthcare gaps between rich and poor. Critics also question just how much economic growth the changes proposed in a growth strategy unveiled in June would generate.

The JMA also worries that Abe's push for Tokyo to join the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade pact would give impetus to such changes if Washington pushes in negotiations for market-oriented reforms to healthcare, although U.S. officials deny they have such an agenda in mind.

RETURN OF THE "TRIBES"

Organised interest groups and the "zoku giin" ("tribal lawmakers") who represent them have staged a comeback since the LDP returned to power in December after a three-years gap and cemented its grip on government in a July upper house poll.

So although opposition parties have been badly weakened, Abe faces tough policy battles with forces inside his own party.

"The organised vote is definitely making its presence known. The 'zoku giin' are feeling empowered," said Steven Reed, a political science professor at Chuo University in Tokyo.

At first blush, the proposed reform hardly appears the stuff of a political battle royal.

All Japanese are enrolled in one of four health insurance schemes that provide the same level of cover at the same prices.

But because of a ban unique to Japan, patients who want to combine a new drug or treatment not included in the official health insurance package with a treatment that is ordinarily covered must pay out of their own pocket for both.

That means they are faced with an "all-or-nothing" choice - relatively low-cost treatment inside the public insurance scheme or relatively high-cost treatment without any public cover.

That ban on so-called "mixed medical treatment" was imposed because the system, whose roots stretch back before World War Two, is based on the premise of ensuring equal access for all Japanese to the full range of safe and effective treatments.

Exceptions have been made for some advanced treatments - such as cancer drugs approved overseas but not yet in Japan - on the assumption that effective drugs and devices will eventually be covered by public insurance.

Critics say the system is too slow and exceptions too few.

"HOLY GRAIL" OF HEALTHCARE

Abe returned to power for a rare second term pledging to revive Japan with a radical economic policy - known as "Abenomics" - comprising the "Three Arrows" of drastic monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and a growth strategy that includes structural reforms such as deregulation.

Unveiling his "Third Arrow" in June, Abe promised to "dramatically" expand mixed care in health by increasing the range of treatments included and reducing approval times. On Thursday he reiterated that the change should be a top priority.

Advocates of more radical change want a complete end to the ban.

"The current system is unfair," said Haruo Shimada, president of the Chiba University of Commerce and a former an adviser to then-premier Junichiro Koizumi, a privatisation fan, during his 2001-2006 term. "It's an institutional defect."

Some even want to deregulate public health insurance and widen the scope for private providers, reducing the burden on public finances already heavily strained by Japan's ageing population and spurring growth of innovative medical treatments.

"The government should abandon 100 percent control over the medical industry, especially insurance," Shimada said. "Liberalization of the differential in terms of quality and price would give tremendous growth power for the medical industry."

Doctors at large hospitals that would benefit most from the change also favour a complete end to the ban, pitting them against self-employed physicians operating small clinics.

"The JMA says they are protecting patients' interests, but in fact, it is the patients who are crying," said former surgeon Ryosuke Tsuchiya, a member of the board at the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research and an expert adviser to Abe's panel on regulatory reform, who wants the ban lifted entirely.

Critics say the doctors' group is trying to protect the interests of its members who won't be able to compete against bigger hospitals offering advanced care in a deregulated system, while health ministry officials want to maintain their control.

"They are protecting their turf, power and influence," Shimada said.

Health ministry officials counter that leaving healthcare to market forces threatens both quality and equal access.

Some outside experts agree that lifting the ban, or even easing it, would be a move towards creating a two-tiered medical insurance system in which expensive, advanced treatments would increasingly be left outside universal coverage.

"Universality of access is the 'holy grail' of healthcare in Japan and they (the JMA and health ministry) don't want to see anything that would fundamentally undermine that commitment to universal access," said one foreign medical industry expert.

Given the tangle of conflicting interests, the outlook for drastic reform is dim. The prime minister already faces a politically fraught decision on whether to implement a planned sales tax rise next year and is pushing controversial changes to Japan's security policies, so may have little political capital to spend on deregulation, those involved in the process said.

Still, with no election set until 2016, the next three years may offer the best chance to push deregulation.

"If we want to promote growth, we need to deregulate where possible since the scope for fiscal measures is limited," said Yuri Okina, a Japan Research Institute economist and member of Abe's regulatory reform panel."For deregulation, now is our only chance."

New app helps Twitter users protect accounts from hackers

A new app has been developed for iOS andAndroid Devices that will protect Twitter users' accounts from hackers and other attackers.

The new app features two-step verification.

According to news.com.au, when it is activated, Twitter sends aconfirmation request to the smartphone at every login attempt on a browser or other device.

The user does not get access to their account until approving the request.

The new function is found under Security in Settings.

A 12-digit backup code is generated upon activation, and is subsequently needed to access your account when you don't have your phone, the report said.

According to the report, double verification with Twitter was previously only available via text messages.(ANI)

New York Times, Twitter hacked by Syrian group

 Media companies including the New York Times, Twitter and the Huffington Post lost control of some of their websites Tuesday after hackers supporting the Syrian government breached the Australian Internet company that manages many major site addresses.

The Syrian Electronic Army, a hacker group that has previously attacked media organizations that it considers hostile to the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, claimed credit for the Twitter and Huffington Post hacks in a series of Twitter messages.

Security experts said electronic records showed that NYTimes.com, the only site with an hours-long outage, redirected visitors to a server controlled by the Syrian group before it went dark.

New York Times Co NYT.N spokeswoman Eileen Murphy tweeted the "issue is most likely the result of a malicious external attack", based on an initial assessment.

The Huffington Post attack was limited to the blogging platform's U.K. web address. Twitter said the hack led to availability issues for an hour and a half but that no user information was compromised.

The attacks came as the Obama administration considers taking action against the Syrian government, which has been locked for more than two years in an increasingly bloody struggle against rebels.

In August, hackers promoting the Syrian Electronic Army simultaneously targeted websites belonging to CNN, Time and the Washington Post by breaching a third party service used by those sites.

The Syrian Electronic Army, or SEA, managed to gain control of the sites by penetratingMelbourneIT, an Australian Internet service provider that sells and manages domain names including Twitter.com and NYTimes.

Officials at The New York Times, which identified MelbourneIT as its domain name registrar and the primary hacking victim, warned its employees to stop sending sensitive e-mails from their corporate accounts.

MebourneIT spokesman Tony Smith said that login credentials from one of its resellers had been used improperly.

Once MelbourneIT was notified, he said, the company restored the correct domain name settings, changed the password on the compromised account, and locked the records to prevent further alterations.

"We are currently reviewing our logs to see if we can obtain information on the identity of the party that has used the reseller credentials, and we will share this information with the reseller and any relevant law enforcement bodies," Smith said. "We will also review additional layers of security that we can add to our reseller accounts."

Twitter did not respond to requests for comment. In a blog post, the company said "it appears DNS (domain name system) records for various organizations were modified, including one of Twitter's domains used for image serving, Twimg.com. Viewing of images and photos was sporadically impacted."

HACKERS LIMITED TARGETS, SAY EXPERTS

Jaeson Schultz, a Cisco Systems researcher, said that in the authoritative records known as WHOIS the Syrian Electronic Army listed itself as the contact for all of Twitter.com, which would have given it the power to take the site offline or place its own content there.

"It seems that their message is redirecting people back to their own website for news about the SEA or about Syria," Schultz said. "They don't seem to be interested in infecting end users, which is a good thing."

Hackers who successfully break into MelbourneIT's systems could potentially redirect and intercept emails sent to addresses under certain domains, researchers said. And users of sites that don't begin with "https" could have been fooled into entering passwords that could have been captured, said Jaime Blasco, a researcher with security firm AlienVault.

Because MelbourneIT serves as the registrar for some of the best known domain names on the Internet, including Microsoft.com and Yahoo.com, Tuesday's breach could have had potentially catastrophic consequences.

"This could've been one of the biggest attacks we've ever seen, if they were more subtle and more efficient about it," said HD Moore, the chief research officer at Rapid7, a cyber security firm. "They changed just a few sites, but if they had actually gone all out, they could've had most of the Internet watching them run the show."

Media companies, which were largely ignored by hackers until 2011, have been targeted since then by pranksters and suspected Chinese agents, as well as partisans in the Middle East.

"As long as media organizations play a critical role as influencers and critics, they will continue to be targets of cyber attacks," said Michael Fey, chief technology officer at Intel Corp's McAfee security division.

Apps that turn your tablet into a digital library

I read on impulse. If I feel like reading a book, I immediately search for it on my book rack. Mostly, I find my impulse evaporating before I find the book. Now, with my Google Nexus 7, I can find any book I want instantly.

Reading a real book feels different from reading a digital one, but there are benefits in having your own digital library. Now, read about the apps that have turned my Android tablet into a digital library. Let us begin with E-BOOK READERS:

Kindle

Kindle is my favourite app. Designed for Kindle Ebook Readers, it is available for Android tablets (also for Apple devices) and smartphones. With a Kindle account, you can download and read hundreds of free ebooks from the Kindle store. You can also send your personal ebooks and documents to your Kindle email address and get them converted to your account automatically. The converted documents will be available on your Kindle account on Amazon.com.

Store and organize your ebooks, bookmark pages, highlight important paragraphs and add notes – the Kindle app supports all these functions. Select a word by gently pressing on it and an in-built dictionary pops up to provide you with the meaning and reference. It helps you spend more time reading and less time searching for meanings. You can change font type and sizes as per convenience.

Flipping through pages is easy and fast. You can set screen brightness and change background colour from white to black or sepia. Thousands of ebooks on your handy device, and all your notes for instant reference — that’s what Kindle is all about.

Classics available for free include: `The Brothers Karamzov’, `Crime and Punishment’, `Sons and Lovers’ and `Pride and Prejudice’.

Night Mode: Unlike regular ebook readers, tablets have backlight support and bright screen, which make it difficult to read for lengthy periods of time. Here is an app called Night Mode that allows setting the brightness level to your comfort. You can read books even in darkness. These apps are available on Google Play store.

Google Play Books

Google has recently enabled access to Google Books for Indian users. Google Play has millions of downloadable ebooks including free and public domain documents. Like the Kindle app, this too has day, night and sepia background themes. When you flip pages in this app, you feel you are turning pages of a real book.

An option ‘Reading aloud’ turns this app as an audio-book reader. With this, instead of reading, you can listen to a book.  
 
Play Books has an in-built dictionary but the one in Kindle app is better as it gives detailed explanations. Viewing chapters, bookmarks and notes is easy in Play Books as it has a separate dropdown option.

Kobo

Reading in Kobo can be a social experience. It has a Facebook login and you can share your reading activity with your friends. You can also comment and share views with Kobo community.

Aldiko

Aldiko has no dictionary support. When you click on dictionary, it takes you to web browser. Also, highlighting and note-making options only come with its premium version. There are many other similar reading apps available in the Google Play store. Install them, experiment with them, and finally you can decide which are suitable for you.

AUDIO BOOK APPsWith your Android device you can not only read but also listen to your favourite books. With audio book apps, give your eyes some rest. Audio books are great pastime while travelling. For those learning English as their second language, audio book apps are a medium of learning language and accent. The following apps provide hundreds of free audio books.


1.       LibriVox Audio Books
2.       Audio Books

Apart from these two, there are other apps such as Audible for Android and MortPlayer Audio Books. Get these apps at Google Play Store.

With these apps you can access live streaming audio online or even download them. Audio-books of different categories like literature, mathematics, science, biography and others are available. These are the results of efforts by volunteers who recorded, edited and made them available for free. 

Books available for free include: `Emma’, `The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’, `The War of the Worlds’ and `Hard Times’.

NEWS READER APPs

Here are mobile magazine apps that collate news and articles and present them in readable style.

1.       Flipboard
2.       Google Currents
3.       Pulse

Add RSS feeds, Twitter or Facebook updates from prominent news magazines into these apps, and they render the content readable in a simple and elegant interface. News stories and articles appear in sections such as cover stories, sports, entertainment, science and technology. You can share stories on social media with a click. Find these apps at Google Play Store.