Transgender woman sues CrossFit over competition

SAN FRANCISCO -- A transgender woman in Northern California has sued the company behind the popular CrossFit workouts for refusing to let her compete in the female division of its annual fitness competitions.

The lawsuit brought Thursday by Chloie Jonsson, 34, accuses CrossFit Inc. of violating her rights under a California law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

Jonsson's complaint says she was born male but has been living as a woman since she was a teenager and underwent sex reassignment surgery eight years ago. The surgery, coupled with the female hormones she takes, satisfied the state's requirements for her to be recognized as female on her birth certificate and other official documents.

Her lawyer, Waukeen McCoy, said Jonsson, who works as a personal trainer and is an avid CrossFit practitioner, first spoke to company representatives about her background a year ago after a teammate learned that participants in the Reebok CrossFit Games were required to register according to their gender at birth.

"They said she has an advantage over other women because of the sex she was born with, and that is completely untrue, scientifically," McCoy said, noting that the International Olympic Committee and other sports governing bodies allow athletes who have undergone surgery, taken hormones and secured legal recognition to compete in the category that corresponds to their affirmed gender.

CrossFit's general counsel, Dale Saran, would not comment on the lawsuit, which seeks $2.5 million in damages. Saran directed The Associated Press to a CrossFit online discussion board, where he posted that Jonsson had never supplied medical documents to back up her assertion that she was a woman. He also dismissed McCoy's suggestion that transgender athletes are engaged in a struggle as valid as the one black baseball players waged to be accepted in the major leagues.

"The fundamental, ineluctable fact is that a male competitor who has a sex reassignment procedure still has a genetic makeup that confers a physical and physiological advantage over women," Saran wrote in a letter to McCoy that's linked to the discussion board. "That Chloie may have felt herself emotionally, and very conscientiously, to be a woman in her heart, and that she ultimately underwent the legal and other surgical procedures to carry that out, cannot change that reality."

Saran said CrossFit may create a separate division for transgender athletes if enough step forward to compete.

"Our decision has nothing to do with 'ignorance' or being bigots - it has to do with a very real understanding of the human genome, of fundamental biology, that you are either intentionally ignoring or missed in high school," he said.

CrossFit is headquartered in Washington, D.C., but its founder, Greg Glassman, launched it in Santa Cruz, Calif. in the late 1990s. The company has 7,000 affiliate gyms around the world where classes offer an intense, military-style mix of weight-lifting, core conditioning and cardio exercises, according to its website.

Individuals and teams compete every year in the timed CrossFit Games to determine who can complete the most repetitions of various exercises.

4 nations urge US gas exports amid Ukraine crisis

WASHINGTON -- Four Central European nations are urging the United States to boost natural gas exports to Europe as a hedge against the possibility that Russia could cut off its supply of gas to Ukraine.

Ambassadors from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic made their appeal Friday in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. A similar letter was expected to be sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

The letter from the four nations, known as the Visegrad Group, asks for Congress to support speedier approval of natural gas exports, noting that the "presence of U.S. natural gas would be much welcome in Central and Eastern Europe."

The ambassadors warn that the unrest in Ukraine has brought back Cold War memories and that energy security threatens the region's residents on a daily basis.

"Gas-to-gas competition in our region is a vital aspect of national security and a key U.S. interest in the region," the ambassadors wrote in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Ukraine is heavily dependent on Russian natural gas, and previous disputes between Ukraine and Russia have led to gas supply cuts. Russian state gas company Gazprom has increased the pressure on Ukraine's new government, which now owes $1.89 billion for Russian natural gas, by warning that if Ukraine doesn't pay off its debt, there could be a repeat of 2009, when Russia cut off supplies to Europe because of a pricing dispute with Ukraine.

Recent advancements have made it possible for gas that normally flows through Ukraine to the EU to instead flow the other direction, so that nations like Poland and Hungary can supply gas to Ukraine if Russia were to cut off its supply. But with gas supplies limited, the region is still vulnerable unless the U.S. makes it easier to import American natural gas, the ambassadors argued.

Boehner and Republicans have been urging the Obama administration to clear the way for more exports amid a natural gas boom in the U.S. The Energy Department has only approved six export licenses in recent years out of about two dozen pending.

In a statement Saturday, Boehner called on Obama to "heed this call from our allies" and "do everything possible to use American energy to reduce the dependency on Russia for our friends in Europe and around the globe."

"I hope President Obama will heed this call from our allies to use his 'pen and phone' to direct the Secretary of Energy to immediately approve pending natural gas export requests and do everything possible to use American energy to reduce the dependency on Russia for our friends in Europe and around the globe."

The White House has argued that Russia's dependence on gas revenues makes it unlikely that the country will cut off supplies to Europe despite the ongoing crisis in the Ukrainian region of Crimea, where the Russian military has intervened in what the U.S. regards as a violation of international law.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday that because Europe has had a relatively mild winter, gas supplies are at or above normal levels. He said even if the U.S. did approve more export licenses, it would take until the end of 2015 for gas to be delivered.

"Proposals to try to respond to the situation in Ukraine that are related to our policy on exporting natural gas would not have an immediate effect," Earnest said.

Bigger pig pens create challenges for farmers

By M.L. JOHNSON The Associated Press

FAIR OAKS, Ind. -- Pigs cluster around a food stall like Black Friday shoppers waiting for the store to open. One pushes impatiently against the locked door with her snout, waiting for the sow inside to finish eating so she can take her turn.

After about 10 minutes, the sated sow sidles out the front gate and rejoins about 80 other pregnant pigs in a large pen surrounding the food stall. The hungry pig enters the stall through the now-open back door, and food flows in from a computer-controlled dispenser.

The big pens and electronic feeding systems at Fair Oaks Farms in Indiana could be the future of the pork industry as consumers pressure farmers to move pregnant pigs out of individual stalls too narrow for the animals to turn around. The switch from gestation stalls is not as simple as many consumers believe, however. It's expensive, there are debates over pen designs and it takes time to train pigs to use feeders and other equipment. In short, farmers are spending millions of dollars with no certainty yet that the changes are best for the animals.

Most bacon, ham and chops come from hogs that never spend time in the narrow breeding stalls, though the hogs' mothers almost certainly did — if only a few days for insemination. More than four out of five sows in the U.S. remain in the stalls after they become pregnant, according to a 2012 study done for the National Pork Producers Council.

But a growing number are being moved into group pens as industry giants like Smithfield Foods and Cargill try to protect their brands from criticism by animal rights activists. Other major pork processors who have not required farms to convert are seeing some do so because image-conscious buyers, such as McDonald's, Oscar Mayer and Safeway, have called for an end to gestation crates.

Americans pig out on pork, eating an average of 45 pounds per person each year. Sales were worth more than $97 billion in 2011, according to industry groups.

Most of the hogs bought by Indiana Packers Corp., a major meatpacker, come from open-pen gestation and have for several years, President Gary Jacobson said. The switch has been hastened by laws in Michigan and Ohio requiring farmers to phase out gestation stalls by certain dates, but Jacobson said it also makes business sense.

"Given the controversy with the gestation crates, we would encourage people to look at the alternatives for that," he said.

The alternatives aren't cheap. Malcolm DeKryger, a partner in Fair Oaks' hog farm, said a 2,400-pig barn with gestation stalls typically costs about $1.8 million. The feeding system, other equipment and extra space required for group pens can push the cost to $2.5 million. He and his partner spent even more because their farm, about 1.5 hours south of Chicago, has observation areas for tourists.

DeKryger isn't entirely sold on group pens, which remind him of the farms where he worked as a teenager.

"We would throw feed over the gate, and the sows would all go crazy ... one sow would eat three times as much, and others would get gypped or didn't eat enough. And that system is happily gone," he said.

Gestation stalls became standard in the 1980s and enabled farmers to feed each sow individually. The stalls also prevented pecking-order fights and injuries caused by sows mounting each other.

Better technology addresses some of those problems in group pens. The sows at Fair Oaks go through a monthlong boot camp at about 6 months old to learn to use electronic feeders that ensure each one eats the right amount.

A scanner reads the sow's ear tag when she enters the stall, and computer-controlled equipment dispenses the recommended portion, usually about 5 pounds. When the sow leaves, the door can open either to the right for veterinary care or left to the group pen.

Farm workers are testing other ways to reduce conflict that can injure smaller sows and cause them to miscarry. For example, pigs in groups scrum to establish a pecking order. Fair Oaks workers aim to move sows into 80-pig pens all in one day so the order can be set and peace established. Later additions would cause new fights.

An alternative is to place sows in groups too big for them to notice when a new animal enters.

DeKryger said it's too soon to tell which method works best in reducing fights. And no system is perfect.

On a recent day, a bigger sow muscled her way into line at the feeder like a mean girl in middle school. A sow in another pen mounted a smaller one, leaving it with a limp. Yet another sow got its foot caught under rail, squealing and thrashing about until a worker freed it.

A foot or leg injury can mean death to a hog, and studies have shown such injuries are slightly more common in group pens than individual stalls because the animals move more.

"We can't fix a broken bone," DeKryger explained. "If they dislocate a hip, we have to euthanize."

He has five other farms in Indiana, most with gestation stalls, and said he's not sure what he would build next. Group housing requires more space and therefore a bigger investment, and thus far, he's seen no payoff in healthier animals or profits.

But, he said, "if my ultimate customer says this is what I know and want — and that's a very dicey observation ... is it smart for me to say, eh, you aren't qualified to know what I do, so I'm just going to tell you to take a hike?"

Obama: It's time to give America a raise

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says he's hearing from business owners across the country who are voluntarily paying their workers more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama says those actions show that change comes to Washington, not from it.

Congressional Republicans are resisting Obama's pleas to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Obama recorded the address in Washington before leaving Friday for a weekend in Florida.

In the Republican address, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman says Obama's proposed 2015 budget taxes too much and spends too much.

Portman says Senate Republicans have a plan to spark economic recovery by getting government out of the way.

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Online:

Obama address: http://1.usa.gov/O6MtVu

Republican address: http://bit.ly/1eKnHjK

Japan sees future business in Fukushima cleanup

TOKYO -- There is something surprising in the radioactive wreck that is the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant: opportunity. To clean it up, Japan will have to develop technology and expertise that any nation with a nuclear reactor will one day need.

Eyeing dozens of aging reactors at home and hundreds of others worldwide that eventually need to be retired, Japanese industry sees a profitable market for decommissioning expertise.

It may sound surprising, given all the ongoing problems with the coastal Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, including massive leaks of contaminated water and other mishaps that followed its devastation by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

But many experts and industry officials say the experience and technology such as robotics being developed can be used in any decommissioning in the future. That could represent new opportunities for Japan Inc., which has lost some of its global clout to competitors from countries such as South Korea, China and the U.S.

"There is decommissioning business here beyond Fukushima and it's a worldwide business," said Lake Barrett, a former U.S. nuclear regulator who headed the Three Mile Island cleanup. "I think it's an exciting new area," he said. "Japan can be a world leader again."

Japan's government hopes an offshoot will a boom in the country's nuclear technology exports.

Japan on Tuesday marks the third anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters known as 3.11 that killed 15,884 people and left 2,636 unaccounted for in vast areas of its northern coast. The country has struggled to rebuild tsunami-hit communities and to clean up radiation from the nuclear crisis, and has earmarked 25 trillion yen ($250 billion) for reconstruction through March 2016. About 50,000 people from Fukushima are still unable to return home due to concerns over radiation.

Despite the Fukushima meltdowns that experts say are far more challenging to deal with than the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is eager to sell Japan's nuclear plants and technology overseas. He boasts that Japan can offer the world's highest safety standards that reflect lessons learned from Fukushima.

More than 400 nuclear reactors are already in operation in more than 30 countries, with dozens more under construction. More new reactors are expected, including hundreds planned in China alone by 2050.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that runs Fukushima Dai-ichi, is setting up a separate company in April to clean up the plant.

Tentatively called the Decommissioning Company, it is overseen by the government's economic ministry and could evolve into a decommissioning organization for other plants at home and abroad. Academics, construction giants, electronics makers and risk management firms are rushing to get on the bus.

Japan also created the government-funded International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, or IRID, last year. It brings together nuclear plant operators, construction companies and organizations of nuclear experts to promote research and development of nuclear decommissioning technologies, as well as cooperation between international and domestic organizations.

IRID has received 780 proposals for funding from around the world for ideas and technologies related to the treatment and management of contaminated water, as well as 220 others about retrieving the three melted cores.

Japanese companies including Toshiba Corp., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Hitachi have been developing robots that can monitor radiation, decontaminate, remove contaminated debris or repair damage, and some of them have been mobilized at the plant.

Standard decommissioning has been largely carried out by human workers. IRID Managing Director Kazuhiro Suzuki said the robotics technologies being developed to probe and remove Fukushima's melted fuel could benefit ordinary decommissioning, not just severely damaged reactors.

"Decommissioning of aging reactors is an imminent task that all nuclear plant operators face," he said.

Use of robotics and other advanced technologies not only helps to reduce worker radiation exposure but also could make a cleanup faster and cheaper, said Barrett, the Three Mile Island expert who now advises TEPCO and IRID.

Experts in Japan are eying a British model, the National Decommissioning Agency, founded in 2005 to be in charge of decommissioning and cleanup of nuclear plants and radioactive waste management.

TEPCO is decommissioning four reactor units crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and will later scrap the remaining two that survived. Three suffered meltdowns and one was damaged by hydrogen explosions. The decommissioning of the four would take about 40 years.

The total cleanup cost for the severely damaged Fukushima reactors could be as high as 10 times a standard decommissioning that normally costs about 70 billion yen ($700 million) per reactor, Suzuki said.

Having completed decommissioning of 10 regular reactors and the Three Mile Island cleanup, the U.S. government and nuclear industry see a profitable market too.

In February, representatives of 26 American companies came to Tokyo for presentation and business talks with 50 Japanese companies during a two-day decommissioning and remediation forum, co-sponsored by the governments of Japan and the U.S.

"We can work together and do so much more," said Austin Auger, an executive at CB&I, which worked with Toshiba to assemble one of the earliest treatment units for contaminated water at Fukushima.

Don't Run Out For Caviar Yet, But Wages Are Heading Higher

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hide captionConstruction companies added 15,000 jobs even though the weather was horrible in much of the country in February.

Sarah Glenn/Getty Images

Construction companies added 15,000 jobs even though the weather was horrible in much of the country in February.

Sarah Glenn/Getty Images

Friday's monthly employment report was encouraging — but not just for job seekers. People who already have work could find something to celebrate too: Hourly wages rose at a decent pace.

That's a welcome change for employees who have seen only very, very modest raises in this economic recovery.

The Labor Department said average hourly wages rose by 9 cents an hour in February, up to $24.31. With that bump, workers are now making 2.2 percent more per hour than they were a year ago.

Spring is a big season for buying and selling homes, but the housing market has a lot of hurdles ahead. NPR's Senior Business Editor Marilyn Geewax talks about them and the latest job numbers.

That may not sound like run-out-and-buy-caviar news, but at least the wage growth is exceeding the inflation rate of 1.6 percent. That means people who work now have a little more purchasing power, and that eventually could ripple out to retailers, car dealers and others.

The higher wages "will support a decent gain in consumer spending in March and April," Stuart Hoffman, chief economist for PNC Financial Services, said in his analysis.

The Two-Way

Jobless Rate Ticks Up, But Job Growth Is Better Than Expected

Planet Money

Beyond Job Titles: What Do You Really Do?

Planet Money

Does Raising The Minimum Wage Kill Jobs?

During the worst of the Great Recession and slow recovery, there were stretches when wages didn't rise even by a single penny from month to month. So a 9-cent jump during a period of low inflation is a meaningful change.

Linda Barrington, who heads the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell, wrote an assessment saying February's wage increase is an encouraging sign for the economy. But she cautioned that workers will need to see steady gains over several months before they can feel more confident.

"It's only when the labor market recovery consistently shows up in faster-rising paychecks, that we'll start to feel like it's a recovery," she said.

The Labor Department said that in February, employers added 175,000 workers. Most economists had been predicting only about 150,000 new jobs, so the report was widely interpreted as good news.

And this was another bright spot in the report: The size of the labor force grew by about 264,000. Economists say that means more people are feeling optimistic enough to try to find jobs. So the number of people classified as "discouraged workers" declined to 755,000 last month, from 837,000 in January.

Another hopeful sign: Construction companies added 15,000 jobs even though the weather was horrible in much of the country in February. That could be a positive indicator for the construction sector once the weather warms.

The bad weather appears to have hurt some retailers, and the sector lost about 4,000 jobs. But those new construction jobs bolstered their spirits.

Merchants "are encouraged by the growth in construction jobs and building material employment last month, which suggests a forthcoming improvement in residential and nonresidential spending along with household and business confidence," Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist for the National Retail Federation, said in a statement.

Abdullah Azzam Brigades apologizes for civilian deaths

BEIRUT: A Lebanese Al-Qaeda affiliate apologized late Friday for the civilian casualties of bombings it claimed responsibility for last month and said its military operations were solely aimed at Hezbollah and its backer Iran.

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades has claimed responsibility for several attacks in Lebanon, including the Feb. 19 attack on the Iranian Cultural center in Beirut that killed 11 people and wounded 128, citing Hezbollah’s military role in neighboring Syria.

Referring to the Feb. 19 attack, the group said there had been a “technical fault” in the second of the two bombs used in the operation.

“The two bombs were meant to be in a place where the explosion would not reach the main road and cause damage to passersby,” the group said in a statement posted on Twitter late Friday.

The group said its military operations were directed solely at Hezbollah, which in May 2013 acknowledged sending fighters to back forces loyal to President Bashar Assad in Syria.

“The military operations of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades do not target Shiites, or other sects,” the group said.

“We stress to our suicide bombers to be careful and to abort the operation if they believe it will kill others than those targeted,” according to the statement.

“We confirm to the Sunnis in Lebanon, and other sects, that our war is against Hezbollah and our targets are the party’s interests and military, political and security positions both inside and outside Lebanon,” the group said. “Such targets are legitimate,” it added.