Father’s appeal elicits Facebook tribute video

Father’s appeal elicits Facebook tribute video

ST. LOUIS

A grieving father’s personal appeal to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has prompted the social network to release a retrospective video tribute of the man’s deceased 21-year-old son.

John Berlin, 46, of suburban St. Louis posted a YouTube message to Zuckerberg on Wednesday seeking a copy of Facebook’s new “look back” video feature for his late son, Jesse, who died in his sleep in January 2012 of unknown causes.

The automated tool creates a 62-second video using photos and comments previously posted by Facebook users. The YouTube plea has since drawn more than 1.25 million views.

Facebook typically disables the accounts of people who have died. But the company said in a statement Thursday that it granted Berlin’s request and suggested Facebook might alter its policies on information posted by users who later died.

Syrian rebels free hundreds at prison

BEIRUT

A suicide bomber blew himself up at the gates of a Syrian prison Thursday and rebels stormed in behind him, freeing hundreds of inmates as part of an offensive aimed at capturing key government symbols around the northern city of Aleppo, activists said.

Government forces, meanwhile, dropped crude “barrel bombs” in deadly airstrikes as both sides escalated their fight for the strategic city ahead of a second round of peace talks set for next week. Opposition leaders threatened to suspend the talks over the barrel bombings.

In the past six days alone, the makeshift weapons — containers packed with explosives, fuel and scrap metal — have killed more than 250 people in Aleppo, including 73 children, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

They include at least 11 who died Thursday — six of them from the same family — in the opposition-held neighborhood of Masaken Hanano.

LaGuardia is like a ‘Third World country,’ Biden says

PHILADELPHIA

Vice President Joe Biden says New York’s LaGuardia Airport could use some major improvements — and that’s putting it mildly.

Biden says if he blindfolded someone and took him to LaGuardia, he’d think he was in “some Third World country.”

Biden made the comment as part of a comparison with the Hong Kong airport. He says Hong Kong has the type of modern facility travelers would expect to see in the United States.

His remarks came during an event Thursday in Philadelphia in which he stressed the need for infrastructure improvement.

MLK’s children battling over estate

ATLANTA

A generation after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, his children are fighting among themselves again, this time over two of their father’s most cherished possessions: his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize medal and the Bible he carried.

The civil-rights leader’s daughter Bernice King has both items, and her brothers, Dexter King and Martin Luther King III, asked a judge last week to order her to turn them over. She said her brothers want to sell them.

In a blistering statement this week, Bernice said their father “MUST be turning in his grave” over the idea. She said that while she loves her brothers dearly, she was “appalled and utterly ashamed” of the plan, and added: “It reveals a desperation beyond comprehension.”

Associated Press