Female gorilla Fatou, the oldest of Berlin’s zoo and also believed to be the world’s oldest gorilla, enjoys her birthday basket on Friday with a “gorilla food surprise,” as the zoo celebrates her 68th birthday in Berlin, Germany. The Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A firing squad has executed a South Carolina man who killed an off-duty police officer decades ago.

Three volunteers fired bullets at 42-year-old Mikal Mahdi’s heart on Friday, killing him at a Columbia prison. Mahdi was sentenced to die 20 years ago. He’s the fifth inmate executed by South Carolina in less than eight months as the state makes its way through death-row prisoners after an unintended 13-year pause on executions in the state. Mahdi chose a firing squad over lethal injection and the electric chair.

Florida

Plane crashes near major highway

BOCA RATON — Officials say three people were killed and one was injured when a small plane crashed Friday morning in near a major interstate highway and pushed a car onto railroad tracks.

Fire Rescue officials say the plane crash that killed all three people on board emitted a fireball when it hit the ground, injuring a person in a nearby car. The FAA says the Tallahassee-bound Cessna aircraft went down about 10:20 a.m. after departing from Boca Raton Airport.

District of Columbia

Doctors remove woman’s pig kidney

WASHINGTON — An Alabama woman who lived with a pig kidney for a record 130 days had the organ removed and is back on dialysis. Towana Looney’s doctors removed the organ on April 4 after her body began rejecting it.

A rigorous study of pig kidneys is set to begin this summer, an attempt to shore up the dire supply of transplantable organs.

China

Tariffs on US goods raised to 125%

BEIJING — China has announced that it will raise tariffs on U.S. goods from 84% to 125%. It was the latest salvo in an escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies that has rattled markets and raised fears of a global slowdown.

A Chinese Finance Ministry spokesman said in a statement announcing the new measures Friday that Washington’s repeated raising of tariffs “will become a joke in the history of the world economy.”

Spain

NYC crash victims well known at home

BARCELONA — Condolences are pouring in for relatives of the Barcelona family that perished in a helicopter crash an ocean away.

Agustín Escobar, Mercè Camprubí Montal, as well as their three children died in the crash. Escobar was an executive for Siemens Mobility and Camprubí Montal worked for Siemens Energy, a separate company. The family of five had meant to celebrate one of their children’s birthdays in the United States.

Greece

Bomb explodes near railway offices

ATHENS — A bomb planted near the offices of Hellenic Train, Greece’s main railway company, has exploded in a busy district of central Athens, authorities say, causing limited damage but no injuries. The explosion comes amid widespread public anger over a 2023 railway disaster, Greece’s worst, in which 57 people were killed and dozens more injured when a freight train and a passenger train heading in opposite directions were accidentally put on the same track.