SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An independent commission led by a former U.S. surgeon general has concluded there "is no compelling medical reason" for the U.S. armed forces to prohibit transgender Americans from serving and that President Barack Obama could lift the decades-old ban without approval from Congress, according to a report being released Thursday.

The report said Department of Defense regulations designed to keep transgender people from joining or remaining in the military on the grounds of psychological and physical unfitness are based on outdated beliefs that require thousands of current service members either to leave the service or to forego the medical procedures and other changes that could align their bodies and gender identities.

"We determined not only that there is no compelling medical reason for the ban, but also that the ban itself is an expensive, damaging and unfair barrier to health care access for the approximately 15,450 transgender personnel who serve currently in the active, Guard and reserve components," said the commission led by Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who served as surgeon general during Bill Clinton's first term as president, and Rear Adm. Alan Steinman, a former chief health and safety director for the Coast Guard.

The panel, convened by a think tank at San Francisco State University, said the ban has existed for several decades and apparently was derived in part from the psychiatric establishment's consensus, since revised, that gender identity issues amounted to a mental disorder.

The ban also appears based on the assumption that providing hormone treatment and sex reassignment surgeries would be too difficult, disruptive and expensive. But the commission rejected those notions as inconsistent with modern medical practice and the scope of health care services routinely provided to non-transgender military personnel.

"I hope their takeaway will be we should evaluate every one of our people on the basis of their ability and what they can do, and if they have a condition we can treat we would treat it like we would treat anyone else," Elders said in an interview with The Associated Press, which was provided along with the report ahead of its official release.

At least a dozen nations, including Australia, Canada, England and Israel, allow military service by transgender individuals. Transgender rights advocates have been lobbying the Pentagon to revisit the blanket ban in the U.S. since Congress in 2010 repealed the law that barred gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals from openly serving in the military

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In this photo taken Wednesday, March 12, 2014, Army Reserve Capt. Sage Fox poses in El Dorado Hills, …

"At this time there are no plans to change the department's policy and regulations which do not allow transgender individuals to serve in the U.S. military," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a defense department spokesman.

The commission argued that facilitating gender transitions "would place almost no burden on the military," adding that a relatively small number of active and reserve service members would elect to undergo transition-related surgeries and that only a fraction might suffer complications that would prevent them from serving. It estimated that 230 transgender people a year would seek such surgery at an average cost of about $30,000.

Retired Brigadier General Thomas Kolditz, a former Army commander and West Point professor on the commission, said he thinks allowing transgender people to serve openly would reduce gender-based harassment, assaults and suicides while enhancing national security.

But Center for Military Readiness President Elaine Donnelly, whose group opposed the repeal of the ban on openly gay troops, predicted that putting transgender people in barracks, showers and other sex-segregated could cause sexual assaults to increase and infringe on the privacy of non-transgender personnel.

"This is putting an extra burden on men and women in the military that they certainly don't need and they don't deserve," Donnelly said.

The commission recommends the president issue an executive order instructing the Department of Defense to amend its regulations so transgender people are no longer automatically barred. The Pentagon then would need to develop rules for assigning service members who are transitioning, said Palm Center Executive Director Aaron Belkin, whose San Francisco State-based think tank commissioned the report.

The Palm Center, which previously researched "don't ask, don't tell," is funded in part by a $1.3 million grant from Jennifer Pritzker, a billionaire former Army lieutenant colonel who came out as transgender last year.

The Williams Institute, a think-tank based at the University of California, Los Angeles, estimates about 15,500 transgender personnel are currently serving, nearly all under their birth genders and not transitioning in an appearance-altering way.

Army Reserve Capt. Sage Fox, 41, was one until recently. Following a deployment to Kuwait, Fox started taking female hormones last year. In November, with her hair getting long and her voice higher, she notified her battalion commander, whom she says expressed support. At drill time, an announcement was made to 400 colleagues at the B.T. Collins Reserve Center in Sacramento.

For a few days, Fox thought she might escape the ban. But then she was informed she had been placed on inactive status.

"When I transitioned, I wasn't just a good officer, I became a better officer because I didn't have to deal with that conflict anymore," she said.

___

Associated Press writer David Crary in New York contributed to this report.

Obama could take action after a panel finds "no compelling medical reason" for the prohibition, a report says.
Ex-Army general weighs in

By Stephen Brown and Timothy Heritage

BERLIN/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia launched new military exercises near its border with Ukraine on Thursday, showing no sign of backing down on plans to annex its neighbor's Crimea region despite a stronger than expected drive for sanctions from the EU and United States.

In an unusually robust and emotional speech, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned of "catastrophe" unless Russia changes course, while in Ukraine a man died in fighting between rival protesters in a mainly Russian-speaking city.

In Berlin, Merkel removed any suspicion that she might try to avoid a confrontation with Russian President Vladimir Putin,

"We would not only see it, also as neighbors of Russia, as a threat. And it would not only change the European Union's relationship with Russia," she told parliament. "No, this would also cause massive damage to Russia, economically and politically."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said serious steps would be imposed on Monday by the United States and Europe if a referendum on Crimea joining Russia takes place on Sunday as planned.

Obama meets with Ukraine's PM, shows supportPlay video

Merkel, a fluent Russian speaker who grew up in Communist East Germany, has emerged in recent days as a leading figure in threatening tough measures against Moscow.

Her foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said European states would draw up a list over the weekend of Russians who will face visa restrictions and asset freezes.

Putin declared Russia's right to invade its neighbor on March 1, as Russian troops were already seizing control of Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula with a narrow ethnic Russian majority and a Russian naval base.

Events have moved rapidly, perhaps signaling an effort by Moscow to turn the annexation into a fait accompli before the West could coordinate a response.

In the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, a young man was stabbed to death and more than a dozen people were in hospital after pro-Russian and pro-European demonstrators clashed. The violence was the worst since last month's overthrow of Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovich.

Russian army stages overnight army drills near Ukr …Play video

But in an apparently conciliatory move, Russia backed deployment of an OSCE monitoring mission in Ukraine, including Crimea, the Swiss chairman of the European rights watchdog said.

ARMED MEN

The leader of pro-Moscow separatist politicians, who took power in Crimea after armed men seized the regional parliament on February 27, predicted a strong vote in favor of union with Russia in Sunday's referendum.

"We have a survey by renowned Ukrainian and Crimean polling experts showing clearly and plainly that more than 80 percent of people in Crimea are ready to join the Russian Federation," Crimean prime minister Sergei Aksyonov told Reuters.

Aksyonov, whose election in a closed session of the regional parliament is not recognized by Kiev, dismissed opponents' accusations that he will fix the referendum on Moscow's orders. "We guarantee that all aspects of European law will be followed, including security for voters," he said in an interview.

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Ukrainian border guards stand at a checkpoint at the border with Moldova breakaway Transnistria regi …

Western countries dismiss the vote as illegal. "The referendum on Sunday will have no legitimacy, no legal effect, it can have no moral effect. It is a piece of political theatre that is being perpetrated at the barrel of a gun," Daniel Baer, the U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, told reporters in Vienna.

Russia has taken territory from its former Soviet neighbors in the past with no serious consequences - in 2008 it invaded Georgia and seized two breakaway regions. But if Putin was hoping for a similarly tepid response this time, he may have misjudged.

In particular, he seems to have alienated Merkel, the Western leader with whom Putin - a German speaker who was once a KGB spy in East Germany - has had the closest relationship.

Merkel was initially more cautious than other Western leaders on the Crimean crisis, but in recent days she has pushed the European Union to match U.S. sanctions. EU action is critical because Europe does 10 times as much trade with Russia as the United States, buying most of its gas and oil exports.

The prospect that EU measures could be implemented as soon as Monday has weighed down the Russian economy.

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A truck drives through a checkpoint with a local self-defense unit on the highway between Kherson an …

STASHING MONEY ABROAD

Goldman Sachs revised its prediction for Russian economic growth this year down to 1 percent from 3 percent, blaming the tension over Ukraine for capital flight that would cripple investment. It said $45 billion had already left Russia this year, mostly Russians stashing money abroad.

The Russian stock market hit a four-and-a-half-year low on Thursday and is down 20 percent since mid-February. The cost of insuring Moscow's debt against default rose to its highest level in nearly two years.

The crisis has already forced several Russian firms to put plans on hold for public offerings to raise cash abroad.

Yet none of that appears to have slowed down Putin, who told officials of the Winter Paralympic Games he is hosting in Sochi that Russia was "not the initiator" of the crisis.

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A member of a local self-defense unit mans a checkpoint on the highway between Kherson and Simferopo …

The Russian Defence Ministry said 8,500 troops were taking part in new military exercises near the Ukrainian border, testing artillery and rocket launchers.

It was the second big exercise Moscow has ordered since the crisis began; the first, involving 150,000 troops, began a few days before Russian forces seized Crimea.

In a gesture of support for NATO's eastern members, U.S. F-16 fighter jets landed at Poland's Lask air base on Thursday.

Among efforts by the West to isolate Russia politically, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a 34-member rich nations' club, announced it was suspending membership talks with Russia, under way since 2007.

RESPOND IN KIND

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Armed men, believed to be Russian servicemen, march outside an Ukrainian military base in Perevalnoy …

Moscow has pledged to respond in kind to any Western sanctions. The prime minister of Lithuania - a former Soviet republic that is now an EU member state, said Russia had suspended food product imports through its port of Klaipeda.

But European leaders appear to be calculating that the damage to Russia would be far worse than to Europe. EU-Russian trade makes up 15 percent of Russia's economy and just 1 percent of Europe's. Although EU countries depend on Russian gas imports, storage tanks are full after a mild winter season.

Diplomatic lines have been open between Russia and the West throughout the crisis: U.S. Secretary of State Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke on Thursday as they have nearly every day. They are due to meet in London on Friday.

Russia's top general discussed Ukraine with the chairman of NATO's Military Committee by telephone on Thursday, the Interfax news agency said.

The crisis over Crimea began after Yanukovich fled Kiev and pro-European politicians took charge, following three months of demonstrations.

In Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights warned Russia and Ukraine that any military action that harmed civilians would violate an international convention signed by both countries.

(Additional reporting by Lina Kushch in Donetsk, Aleksandar Vasovic in Simferopolm, Fredrik Dahl in Vienna, Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, Gilbert Reilac and Alexandria Sage in Paris; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood and David Stamp)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday endorsed a proposal that would result in shorter prison sentences for many nonviolent drug traffickers, saying the change would rein in runaway federal prison costs and create a fairer criminal justice system.

Holder's backing for a U.S. Sentencing Commission proposal to lower the guideline penalties is part of a broader Justice Department effort to lessen punishment for nonviolent drug dealers. He has been pressing to ease long mandatory sentences and has called for greater discretion for judges in sentencing.

"This focused reliance on incarceration is not just financially unsustainable — it comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate," Holder said in an appearance before the Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that establishes sentencing policies.

In a country where nearly half of all federal inmates are serving time for drug crimes, the harshest penalties should be reserved for violent drug defendants and criminals with long rap sheets, Holder said.

Holder directed prosecutors in August to stop charging many nonviolent drug defendants with offenses that carry mandatory minimum sentences. He has also said he also wants to divert people convicted of low-level offenses to drug treatment and community-service programs and to expand a prison program to allow the release of some elderly, non-violent offenders. Bipartisan legislation pending in Congress would give judges more discretion in sentencing defendants for drug crimes.

The attorney general last year asked the commission to consider reductions in the sentencing guidelines for non-violent drug crimes. The commission responded with a proposal in January that would tie many drug offenses to shorter sentencing ranges.

DRUG SENTENCING GUIDELINESPlay video

The effect, the Justice Department says, would be to reduce by 11 months the average sentence of a drug dealer and would trim the federal prison population by roughly 6,550 inmates at the end of five years. The proposal would affect about 70 percent of drug trafficking offenders.

"I understand that people feel a sort of tension in this notion that we're going to spend less, we're going to put people in jail for smaller amounts of time, and yet you're going to tell me that we're going to be more safe," Holder said in response to a question about whether the proposal could compromise public safety. "And yet, the empirical studies that I have seen, and which I have faith in, indicate that if done appropriately those are in fact the results that you can get."

The commission was not expected to vote on the proposed change until at least April, but Holder planned to instruct prosecutors in the meantime not to oppose sentencing recommendations in line with the newly proposed ranges.

Holder's announcement won support from groups including Families Against Mandatory Minimums and the American Civil Liberties Union, which decried what it called the "failed, racially biased war on drugs." But a national association of prosecutors is opposing the proposal, arguing that mandatory sentences have been helpful in securing cooperation from defendants and witnesses and that the majority of federal prisoners "have been very bad actors for a long time."

"Rewarding convicted felons with lighter sentences because America can't balance its budget doesn't seem fair to both victims of crime and the millions of families in America victimized every year by the scourge of drugs in America's communities," Raymond Morrogh, the top prosecutor in Fairfax County, Va., and the director-at-large of the National District Attorneys Association, said in prepared remarks.

Thursday was Holder's second appearance before the Sentencing Commission.

The proposal would reduce sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and reduce prison costs, Eric Holder says.
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