SCOTTSDALE (AP) – A prominent Scottsdale nightclub that was embroiled in a battle earlier this year after it banned transgender patrons has changed names and become a dance club catering to a gay clientele.

Anderson’s Fifth Estate had a 25-year-run as a nightclub. It reopened Friday night as Club Forbidden.

“This will be more like a New York nightclub and I couldn’t do that under Anderson’s Fifth Estate,” owner Tom Anderson said.

Anderson recently lifted his ban on transgender customers and settled a discrimination dispute with transgender woman named Michele deLaFreniere. He had banned deLaFreniere and her friends from the club in late 2006 after complaints from patrons that “men dressed as women” were using the women’s bathrooms.

He said the club change is a business decision, not a political one.

WATERTOWN (AP) – The entire congregation of Christ Church in Watertown has abandoned the church, founded in 1764, and is severing ties with the national Episcopal Church.

It held its last service in the church on Sunday and future services of the newly named New Hope Anglican Church will be held in a community room at a nearby bank.

“We need to celebrate today, but we need to recognize there is a dying,” the Rev. Allyn Benedict said in his final homily at the church.

The next Sunday service of the congregation will be in the community room at the Thomaston Savings Bank around the corner.

The Sunday service will be held at the bank, starting Jan. 6, until they find or build another house of worship.

Christ Church is one of the “Connecticut six,” the half-dozen churches in the state diocese that disagree with national leadership on departure of scripture, including the appointment of a gay bishop.

In 2003, Benedict and several other Connecticut rectors clashed with Connecticut Bishop Andrew D. Smith, who supported the naming of V. Gene Robinson as New Hampshire’s bishop. Robinson is gay. Benedict and Christ Church leaders also feel the national church is rejecting scriptural authority and traditions of the church.

In cutting affiliation with the national leaders, the congregation has agreed to give up its church buildings and property, estimated to be worth $7 million, and its name, “Christ Church Parish.”

The congregation also ended its participation with the other Connecticut churches in a legal battle against national leadership over church real estate, deciding that “it’s not worth living under this oppression just for the property,” said Paul LePine, the senior warden.

Four of the “Connecticut six” have also ended their connection to the national church, LePine said.

KANSAS CITY (AP) – A prominent University of Kansas AIDS researcher who was developing a vaccine aimed at helping poor people around the world fight the virus has died of a heart attack.

Opendra “Bill” Narayan, 71, a senior faculty member at University of Kansas Medical Center, died Monday.

Narayan gained prominence more than a decade ago after developing a form of HIV that caused a disease in monkeys that was similar to AIDS in humans. He used his new animal model to test vaccines, and received close to $50 million in grants – including more than $16 million from the National Institutes of Health – for research at the medical center.

“Dr. Narayan was a brilliant researcher and professor,” University of Kansas Chancellor Robert Hemenway said in a statement on the school’s Web site. “His pioneering work on HIV/AIDS brought international acclaim to himself and the university. On behalf of the entire KU community, I offer deepest condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.”

His colleagues say they will continue his work.

“I hope I and others will be able to take his legacy and move forward,” said James Laufenberg, president of Lenexa-based ImmunoGenetix, a company Narayan helped found to bring his AIDS vaccine to market. “I, for one, will do everything I can.”

Laufenberg said his company was working on an application to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to test Narayan’s vaccine on a small number of people, and hoped to begin clinical trials within two years.

Narayan’s vaccines were not intended to prevent people from becoming infected, but he had demonstrated that vaccinated monkeys did not become ill after being infected with the simian version of HIV.

He was looking for an easy-to-administer vaccine that could help people in less-developed countries who could not afford expensive drugs.

“Bill had a very clear altruistic side,” said Paul Cheney, a KU Medical Center neuroscientist who collaborated with Narayan on research. “He saw that to stop AIDS around the world was going to take another approach.”

Narayan came to the medical center in 1993. He was a distinguished professor and chairman of the department of microbiology, molecular genetics and immunology. Prior to that he was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins.

“You could see the twinkle in his eye every time he made a discovery,” said Paul Terranova, vice chancellor for research at the medical center. “He had this excitement for what he was doing. It was work, but it was fun for him.”

Visitation is scheduled from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday at the Amos Family Chapel in Shawnee.

HOLYOKE (AP) – Holyoke has won a federal lawsuit filed by a former police sergeant who claimed she was the victim of discrimination.

Tammy Walker – who is black and a lesbian – claimed in her suit that she was shunned by co-workers, was the subject of derogatory police radio transmissions and called racially insulting names.

The judge wrote in the decision that the allegations were investigated and proved to be unfounded. Walker was fired in 2005.

Mayor Michael Sullivan says while he is pleased that the city won the suit, he feels for Walker, who had ``difficult life experiences.’’

Walker’s legal troubles are not over. She is waiting to be sentenced on Jan. 18 on charges of armed assault in a dwelling and other crimes in connection with the shooting of her estranged wife’s boyfriend.

TRENTON (AP) – HIV testing may soon become part of routine prenatal care and be required for some newborns in New Jersey as part of a bill that supporters contend will put the state in the forefront of the national fight against HIV transmission to babies.

Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey was to sign the measure into law Wednesday at University Hospital in Newark. Once signed, the law takes effect in six months.

“We can significantly reduce the number of infections to newborns and help break down the stigma associated with the disease,” Codey said. “For newborns, early detection can be the ultimate lifesaving measure.”

The Essex County Democrat sponsored the bill as the Senate president. He’s acting governor while Gov. Jon S. Corzine is out of the country this week for the holidays.

The bill would allow women to opt out of the HIV testing if they so desire, but critics contend the screening would deprive women of their right to make medical decisions.

According to the Kaiser Foundation, a nonprofit research organization focusing on U.S. health care, New Jersey would be the first state to push HIV testing for both pregnant women and newborns.

Arkansas, Michigan, Tennessee and Texas require health care providers to test a mother for HIV, unless the mother asks not to be tested, while Connecticut, Illinois and New York test all newborns for HIV, according to the foundation.

New Jersey law now requires providers only to offer HIV testing to pregnant women. Under the new law, HIV testing would be part of routine prenatal care for all pregnant women, and doctors would provide pregnant women with information about HIV and AIDS. It also would require newborns to be tested when the mother has tested positive or her HIV status is unknown.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended all pregnant women be tested for HIV, though it has said testing should be voluntary. The CDC also found medical intervention during pregnancy can cut mother-to-child HIV transmission from 25 percent to 2 percent.

New Jersey has about 17,600 AIDS cases, according to the Kaiser Foundation. Women represent 32.4 percent of the cases – the third highest rate in the nation. The national average is 23.4 percent.

The state has about 115,000 births per year and had seven infants born with HIV in 2005, according to state health department officials.

The American Civil Liberties Union and some women’s groups contend the bill deprives women of authority to make medical decisions.

“Women’s privacy rights and choices are as constitutionally valid as any other citizen, regardless of reproductive status,” said Maretta J. Short, New Jersey’s National Organization of Women president.

SANTA FE (AP) – A former Santa Fe High School counselor says in a civil complaint filed against the school district that he was fired because he is a white, gay male who complained about being discriminated against.

Thomas M. Williams claims that soon after being employed as a student counselor in August 2005, counseling department co-chairs Liz Legits and Linda Esquibel made negative comments about gays in front of him, according to the complaint filed in district court.

Santa Fe Public Schools denies the allegations.

“The district believes all its practices and procedures were appropriate regarding Mr. Williams, and we believe we will be vindicated in this case,” said Deputy Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez, a defendant in the case.

According to the complaint, Esquibel allegedly told Williams that she had trouble working with gay counselors because they set a negative example for students and that “gays should go to hell because they are sinful.” Legits allegedly called Williams a derogatory term for a gay person.

Williams also claims he was discriminated against for being a man. Esquibel allegedly told him she can’t stand working with men because “they think their ideas are the only ideas,” the complaint said.

Williams reported the problems to then principal Claudia Krause-Johnson, Santa Fe Public Schools Wellness director Tina Gervers, and superintendent Leslie Carpenter, who are all named as defendants in the suit, the complaint said. No investigation was undertaken in the matter, it said.

Williams’ contract was not renewed on May 16, 2006, due to “performance concerns” and the district’s uncertainty of its staffing needs for the next school year, the complaint said.

SALEM (AP) – The recent decision by a federal judge to block a law allowing gay couples to form civil unions in Oregon has cast a spotlight on whether a signature on a petition can be equated to a vote on the ballot.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman on Friday suspended the law, set to take effect with the new year.

Mosman has set a Feb. 1 court date for lawyers to argue whether elections officials wrongly threw out signatures on petitions that would have forced a referendum vote on domestic partnerships.

The outcome of the case will be closely watched by political activists, who claim Oregon elections officials are too quick to toss out petition signatures.

Elections officials are also paying close attention, concerned that an improbably high standard for verifying the validity of signatures could compromise their ability to carry out elections.

“This is not going to affect just this one referendum,” said Scott Moore, spokesperson for Secretary of State Bill Bradbury. “This is going to affect the entire system.”

Bradbury’s Elections Division is at the center of a controversy over how the state came to its decision last fall that a petition drive to force a referendum vote on the domestic partnership law, House Bill 2007, had failed to produce enough valid signatures.

Initially, petitioners turned in 62,000 signatures. Then the state’s signature verification process kicked in. In the first cut, the state tossed 2,500 signatures because they were collected on sheets that weren’t properly filled out.

Then, a computer program generated two random samplings of signatures that were sent to counties to check against those on registration cards.

The counties concluded that 54 signatures didn’t match. An additional 47 signatures weren’t counted because they came from voters who were considered “inactive” because of their failure to vote in the previous five years or because their voter registration information hadn’t been updated.

Statistical research cited by the Elections Division has concluded that for each invalid signature found in a random sampling, 20 more signatures are similarly unacceptable.

So the 101 discounted signatures from the random samplings led to the rejection of 2,020 signatures – dropping the total to 96 short of the 55,083 signatures required.

The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, which provides legal representation nationally on behalf of Christians’ religious liberties, took up the cause of domestic-partnership foes whose signatures were tossed out.

Thirty of the voters whose signatures were rejected joined in a federal lawsuit filed last month by the Alliance Defense Fund. The suit claimed that elections officials had violated their due-process and equal-protection rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Dan Meek, a Portland initiative-rights activist who supports the domestic-partnership law, said he thinks its opponents made a strong case to end the “chicanery” of elections officials whom Meek said have long been too quick to toss out signatures, and who have enforced standards unevenly.

One of the key questions for Mosman will be whether petition signers should have the same rights as Oregon voters when their signatures are deemed invalid.

In the case of voters, the state requires county elections offices to notify a voter when the signature accompanying her ballot did not match the signature on her voter-registration card.

The voter then has 10 days to “rehabilitate” their signature, either by having it reconsidered or by updating their registration card with a signature.

CANONSBURG (AP) – Washington Presbytery officials are expected in court on Friday to contest a claim to church property by a western Pennsylvania congregation that voted to leave the national church.

A property dispute arose after members of the Peters Creek Presbyterian Church voted in November to leave the Presbyterian Church USA and join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church based in Livonia, Mich.

Peters Creek church members say they joined the more evangelical church because it more closely follows biblical teachings on the Trinity, salvation and some social issues, including not allowing the ordination of gay clergy.

The head of the Washington Presbytery will soon leave to become pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Dearborn, Mich.