CHICAGO (AP) – A Chicago youth group has tested more than 1,000 teenagers for HIV.

The Metropolitan Area Group for Igniting Civilizations held a teen test day Saturday on Chicago’s South Side, providing saliva swab HIV tests with results available in 20 minutes.

Participating teens received a T-shirt, candy or a pen. Last year 650 teens participated in the same event.

Teens also had their blood pressure and blood sugar checked to test for hypertension, high blood pressure and diabetes.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) – An area pastor has teamed up with a designer to create a comic book hero whose purpose is to fight social problems such as HIV and domestic and gang violence.

The character is called Wichita Man, and he will make his debut at the end of the month.

The Kansas Health Foundation has granted New Day Christian Church pastor Reuben Eckels nearly $24,000 to illustrate, print and distribute the comic magazine. Eckels developed the comic hero with his 11-year-old son, Sam, and then teamed with illustrator and designer Dante Davis.

“I attended a lot of meetings on HIV/AIDS and violence in the community,” Eckels said. “But I saw the same faces at all of the meetings. The information was only going to the same people.”

So the pastor decided to create a superhero with hopes of reaching males age 12 to 45 – a group he felt had missed out on getting the information.

“We want to reach the victims of gang violence and the perpetrators,” Eckels said.

He’s hoping the comic magazine, which has been a year in the making, will attract this group.

“It’s going to be funny, interesting and informative,” the pastor said.

The comic book hero, Wichita Man, is based on a City Council member who becomes mayor. Then, after a run-in with a gang that leads to him falling into a chemical vat, he starts to take on his superhero form at night. He still runs the city during the day.

“He’s like Superman with a cause,” said Davis, who owns Dante Davis Design Group and teamed with Eckels after the pastor received the Health Foundation grant last month.

Davis said Wichita Man is “always looking out to help the people, during the day and night.”

The monthly comic magazine will be free and available at barber shops, car dealerships and other businesses. Eckels and Davis are trying to reach about 150 people in their target audience each month.

The comic will not only address social issues in Wichita. It will also promote the city’s attractions, placing Wichita Man at various spots around town.

“I hope the comic will spark conversation through the community,” Eckels said.

HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) – A 17-year-old who told police that he and his brother strangled a high school choir teacher said the teacher made him uncomfortable with sexual advances the night the teens killed him, according to an arrest report.

The juvenile and his 18-year-old brother were being held Dec. 30 in the Dec. 21 slaying of Matthew Cox, 32, who taught at Basic High School in Henderson. Cox had family in western Michigan.

The youth told police that he and his brother were at Cox’s home in Henderson, with his brother downstairs playing video games while he was upstairs with Cox.

The 17-year-old told investigators that while upstairs Cox “started to get sexual with him,” making him uncomfortable.

The youth said in the report that he and his brother strangled Cox in his Volkswagen Beetle after Cox drove the boys home.

The boys then bound Cox, put his body in the back of the car and drove back to his home, where they stole electronics, including a Wii video game system, an iPod and a laptop, the report said.

The boy told police that he kissed the teacher on the cheek before leaving his body. He said he did not mean to hurt Cox, only to rob him.

The 17-year-old and his brother were arrested Dec. 23 on suspicion of murder and robbery. They were being held in separate facilities in Henderson and were expected to be transferred to Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas after an initial hearing, Henderson police spokesman Keith Paul said. Officials did not know if the two had retained a lawyer.

A telephone message left with the Clark County district attorney’s office was not immediately returned Dec. 30.

The Associated Press previously named the boy and his brother but later removed their names because the arrest report raises the possibility the youth had been sexually abused and the AP does not typically identify such victims.

Cox was found dead on a couch with a blanket over his head in his home Dec. 22 by a friend who had gone to check on his pets. The report said Cox was supposed to be in Hopkins, Mich., visiting family during his school’s winter break.

Hopkins is about 25 miles south-southwest of Grand Rapids.

The police report indicates Cox had a close relationship with a student at the time of his death, although the nature of the relationship is unclear.

A friend of Cox, 27-year-old Jamie Quashnock, told police that Cox has “been in a relationship with one of his students” who had admitted to Cox that he was gay. The student’s name was redacted from the report.

Quashnock told investigators that Cox said he would have pursued a relationship with the student if he were not his teacher.

Caralee Beynor, a co-worker of the 17-year-old at a doughnut restaurant, told police that the boy confessed to her that he killed his teacher the day after the slaying, the report said.

LAS VEGAS (AP) – State officials say an outpatient surgery center has notified them that it inadvertently failed to properly disinfect instruments it uses during procedures.

But officials say the problems at Specialty Surgicare of Las Vegas pose minimal risk to patients.

The errors were discovered by staff during a routine inspection of a machine that disinfects scopes used in endoscopies and colonoscopies. The machine was not programmed to manufacturer specifications.

Authorities say the staff corrected the problem on Dec. 18 and notified the State Health Division.

State health officials are not recommending that patients at Specialty Surgicare get tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. A spokesman for clinic said the facility will provide counseling and screening for infectious diseases to any patients free of charge.

SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – A woman who knowingly spread HIV to her sexual partners in Bedford and Marshall counties 10 years ago has been released from prison.

Pamela Denise Wiser of Lewisburg was sentenced to 26 and a half years in prison in 1999 after pleading guilty to 22 counts of knowingly exposing partners to the virus that causes AIDS.

The Shelbyville Times-Gazette reports Wiser was released from a state prison in Memphis on Dec. 22 and is living in Tullahoma, where she will be under state supervision for the next 12 years.

When arrested in 1998, Wiser said an ex-boyfriend gave her HIV and that she slept with up to 50 men to get revenge, although she later changed the story to less than half that number.

She has maintained she told all her sexual partners about her medical condition, but some of the men denied that. At least one man contracted the virus.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Federal regulators said Dec. 30 they have approved a new HIV test that screens for two, less common forms of the virus.

The Food and Drug Administration said the TaqScreen MPX Test is the first to simultaneously detect HIV-2 and HIV-1 Group O strains. Both types of HIV are mainly found among patients in Africa, but the FDA said they have recently been detected in the U.S.

The test, which is made by a division of Swiss drugmaker Roche, also screens for the most common forms of HIV and hepatitis.

The MPX test is designed to screen for infectious diseases in human blood and tissue samples from donors.

“Blood donor testing laboratories will be able to use nucleic acid technology to screen for additional HIV strains, further assuring that donated blood and tissue are free from infection,” FDA division chief Jesse Goodman said in a statement.

Other companies offering HIV tests include Abbott Laboratories and Gen-Probe Inc.

Roche Molecular Systems Inc. is based in Pleasanton, California.