WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – Palm Beach County’s school board chair has apologized for referring to gays and lesbians as a “protected species.”

During an April 5 meeting, Tom Lynch used the phrase while discussing the school board’s anti-harassment policies. The Palm Beach County Human Rights Council demanded an apology and later called for Lynch’s resignation.

On April 18, Lynch sent an e-mail to the group apologizing for his remarks.

“The purpose in my remarks was in no way meant to be demeaning to any person or group,” Lynch wrote. “I was actually stating a premise that procedures needed to be in place to help protect any and all children that are being harassed or bullied.

“Again, if anyone was offended by this misunderstanding, I sincerely apologize.”

Council founder Rand Hoch said the apology still fell short.

“I just don’t think he understands how dehumanizing his comments were to gay and lesbian people and how hurtful they were to gay and lesbian students,” Hoch said. “This is the best we’re going to get from Tom Lynch. It’s more of an explanation than an apology.”

Lynch is up for re-election this year. He declined to say whether he planned to run.

ATLANTA (AP) – Human volunteers have begun signing up for an experimental HIV vaccine developed at Atlanta’s Emory University.

Twelve people are expected to take part in the trial at four participating research centers – St. Louis University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Maryland and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

It’s a phase one trial, in which healthy, uninfected volunteers are given low doses in a check for safety and immune response, said Don Hildebrand, the chief executive of GeoVax Inc., the Atlanta biotechnology firm that licensed the vaccine.

A second, higher-dose trial – with 36 people – is expected to begin in a few months.

If these trials are successful, future trials will be done to see if the vaccine actually prevents the virus from causing AIDS, he said.

The GeoVax product is one of more than 30 preventive AIDS vaccines in early stages of human clinical trials in approximately two dozen countries, according to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, a nonprofit organization devoted to AIDS prevention.

One of the furthest along is a Merck & Co. vaccine, which tries to build immunity using a modified cold virus. About 3,000 people are being enrolled in Merck’s phase two trial of the vaccine.

The GeoVax vaccine is administered in four doses, spread over the course of about two months. The first two doses contain fragments of HIV DNA, which prime the patient’s immune response system. The second two doses contain an altered poxvirus designed to boost the immune system, Hildebrand said.

It was developed by a scientific team led by Harriet Robinson of Emory’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Emory researchers began working on the vaccine in 1997. It worked in rhesus macaques, protecting 22 of 23 vaccinated monkeys from AIDS for more than three and a half years.

In 2003 and 2004, the DNA component of the vaccine was tested in 30 HIV-negative volunteers in Birmingham, Seattle and San Francisco. It was deemed safe, Hildebrand said. The new trials are testing both the components, he explained.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – State health officials say 113 new cases of HIV were diagnosed in Iowa last year, the highest total since records tracking new cases began in 1998.

The previous high was 108 cases in 2002, state health officials said.

“I would like this to be a wake-up call – a call to action,” said Randy Mayer, HIV/AIDS/Hepatitis program manager for the department. “It’s not a huge peak, but it’s an upward turn.”

The agency began tracking new HIV cases in 1998, when 100 cases were reported. After peaking in 2002, new cases declined, with 92 reported in 2003 and 106 in 2004.

Statistics show the increase the last two years was primarily among white men born in the United States.

Nearly 75 percent of new cases stemmed from men having sex with other men, a trend being seen in high population areas in other states, Mayer said. The youngest new case was reported by a 20-year-old male, while the median age was 41.

Almost 80 percent of the new Iowa cases were residents of the 10 most populous counties, particularly Polk, Johnson, Linn, Scott and Pottawattamie.

Mayer suggested complacency among men may be to blame for the increase in 2005.

“It’s a younger group that’s not [as] afraid as the older group used to be,” Mayer said.

The report also noted the trend in more Iowa HIV patients living longer. Steady diagnoses of HIV infection combined with widespread use of effective drug therapies have helped slow the onset of AIDS and decreased the number of deaths related to the illness.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) – The Michigan Court of Appeals weighed whether governments and public universities can provide health insurance and other benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian employees without violating the state constitution.

Republican Attorney General Mike Cox’s office told a three-judge panel that a 2004 voter-approved constitutional amendment bars the city of Kalamazoo, the University of Michigan and other public employers from continuing to provide same-sex benefits in future contracts.

Giving benefits to domestic partners that otherwise only spouses or children could receive gives gay and lesbian partners “special treatment” in violation of the constitution, state assistant attorney general Eric Restuccia said.

“That’s exactly what the amendment and the people of Michigan are trying to prevent,” he said during oral arguments.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Mr. Sulu beamed down to lend support to gay and lesbian student activists who tried to visit a private Christian university.

Actor George Takei, who played the helmsman in “Star Trek,” made a surprise appearance after a busload of Soulforce Equality Riders tried to talk about faith and gay rights with students at North Central University.

The 33 activists are traveling by bus to 19 U.S. colleges with religion-based policies opposed to homosexuality.

They were locked out of school buildings at North Central, which is owned and operated by the Assemblies of God.

The activists and supporters were rallying at a nearby park when Takei, who is gay, stopped by.

Takei, 68, praised the activists’ “equality trek.”

“They have shown courage and character in showing that most people of faith are not extreme reactionaries who oppose equal rights,” he said.

Nate Ruch, executive director of university relations at North Central, said the riders declined an offer to have a third party mediate a discussion.

Takei was in town to speak at a Pride event at the University of Minnesota.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – In many ways, Midge Potts is like other everyday citizens who feel the call of politics. The self-described fiscal conservative and Eisenhower Republican is running a one-person primary campaign against five-term Congress member and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt in southwest Missouri’s 7th District.

A few things set Potts, 37, apart from many Republican candidates. She thinks President Bush should be impeached over his domestic spying program, for example. And she used to be a he.

Potts, a Navy veteran who served in the early 1990s as Mitchell Eugene Potts, is a transgender person, a biological male who identifies as female.

Potts has been living that way full-time for about two and a half years, taking herbal supplements to make her body’s hormones more female, changing her legal name, dressing in women’s clothes and wearing makeup.

“Even though I have my own unique niche, being transgender, I really feel like I’m a candidate of the regular people, for the regular people,” Potts told The Associated Press.

Potts is one of Missouri’s first openly transgender political candidates. Nationally, transgender groups say there are a few others who have won local seats, including in Georgia and South Dakota, and at least two more who have campaigned unsuccessfully for state offices in Vermont and Arizona.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Rev. Jerry Falwell lost a Supreme Court appeal of a case that sought to shut down a Web site with a similar name but opposite views on gay and lesbian people.

Falwell claims that a gay New York City man improperly draws people to a site by using a common misspelling of the reverend’s name as the site’s domain name.

A federal judge sided with Falwell, who runs a conservative ministry in Lynchburg, Va., on grounds that Christopher Lamparello’s domain name was nearly identical to the trademark bearing Falwell’s name and could confuse Web surfers.

But last year, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and said that Lamparello was free to operate his “gripe site” about Falwell’s views on gays and lesbians at www.fallwell.com. Lamparello “clearly created his Web site intending only to provide a forum to criticize ideas, not to steal customers,” the court said.

The Supreme Court refused April 17 to take up the case.