Pennsylvania

Two teens arrested after counselor killed

Two teenagers killed their counselor at a juvenile detention center Monday and escaped in his pickup, but turned themselves in at a high school hours later, authorities said.

Wayne Lamont Urey Jr., 43, was strangled in one of the boy’s bedrooms shortly after midnight at George Junior Republic, a private residential school and treatment center about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh, authorities said.

About the same time, Anthony Machicote, 17, and Jeremy Melvin, 16, escaped in Urey’s truck, police said. They approached a security guard at a Pittsburgh high school Monday afternoon and surrendered.

Washington, D.C.

Group’s ad campaign promotes gay unions

Gay marriage is shaping up as a hot-button issue for the Republicans in 2004 — which is why one gay rights group is spending as much as $1 million on advertising to frame the issue in positive terms.

“We want to educate people about what marriage is,” says spokesman Mark Shields of the Human Rights Campaign.

The ads, to be placed in major national newspapers, try to humanize the issue of same-sex unions. “Why Are ‘Pro-Family’ Groups Attacking This Family?” says one ad featuring a Maryland couple, Jo and Teresa, and their three young children: Between “skinned knees” and “soccer practice … they face all the same joys and frustrations as other parents — but without the same protections.”

Some GOP members of Congress are promoting a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, and President Bush has said that “we ought to codify” the idea that “marriage is between a man and a woman.”

Washington, D.C.

Bush OKs money for Truman statue

Efforts to erect a statue of Harry S. Truman at Union Station in Kansas City, Mo., got a $50,000 boost from President Bush.

The money is part of an Interior Department spending bill that Bush signed into law on Monday.

Truman’s likeness would stand atop a 20-foot limestone pedestal originally designed to support the likeness of a city father, or perhaps a reflection of the city’s spirit. It has stood empty since 1914.

“Union Station is honored to provide the backdrop for this respected local and national icon,” said Turner White, Union Station’s CEO.

Few other statues of the nation’s 33rd president exist. One is in front of the Jackson County, Mo., courthouse, one in Seoul, Korea, and one at the Truman Library in Independence.

There is also one in Athens, Greece, a country revived by the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe during Truman’s presidency.

Los Angeles

Company offers e-mail for the afterlife

From: The great beyond

To: Loved one

Subject: Don’t bother to hit the reply button

With MyLastEmail.com, you can communicate after you’re gone. The service, which started Monday, charges $9.99 for a three-year subscription (no refund if you don’t need it that long) for post-mortem delivery of farewell e-mails.

The service received mixed reviews in market-research tests, said Karen Peach, a spokeswoman for the company behind it, Lifetouch of Tampa, Fla.

“It’s a bit of a strange subject,” Peach said. “After thinking about it for some time, though, people come back and say it’s a perfectly good idea.”

There is, in fact, a long tradition of the well-organized writing old-fashioned paper letters to be read after their passing.

“This service is much more convenient,” Peach said. “No one can come across your letters by accident if you left them lying around the house.”