A man with a pistol tried to enter Brazil's presidential palace on Thursday and threatened to kill himself if he was not allowed to meet with President Dilma Rousseff, officials said.

The man did not get past security and was arrested.

South Korea's ruling-party chief Friday began a rare visit to North Korea by a senior Seoul politician, saying he hopes to break a long stalemate in cross-border relations.

Hong Joon-Pyo, chairman of the conservative Grand National Party (GNP), crossed the closely guarded border to pay a one-day visit to a jointly run industrial estate at Kaesong in the North.

President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday denied that the fate of Russia's elections was predetermined by his decision to step down in favor of his political mentor Vladimir Putin.

"How can they be predetermined," news agencies quoted Medvedev as saying in a Russian television interview to be aired on the country's main channels on Friday evening.

The United States is China's "committed partner and friend," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday as she sent greetings to Beijing ahead of its National Day celebrations.

"Together, our two countries are seizing this moment in history and developing the positive, cooperative, and comprehensive relationship envisioned by our presidents," Clinton said in a statement.

There were hopes Friday there could be survivors from an Indonesian plane that crashed with 18 people aboard, the government said, after rescuers spotted the fuselage intact and a door open.

The Casa 212 turboprop plane, carrying 14 passengers including four children, and four crew, went down in Sumatra Island on Thursday after departing Medan city, in Sumatra, for the nearby province of Aceh.

A gunman walked into a Catholic church and killed a pregnant woman Thursday, then committed suicide, but emergency crews performed a C-section on the woman inside the church and saved the baby, a police official said.

Another woman sitting near the victim was wounded by a stray bullet in the shooting, which occurred just before a Mass at St. Mary's Church in an upper-middle class neighborhood of Madrid, the National Police official said.

The U.S. Treasury hit a "key" commander in the powerful Haqqani network with sanctions Thursday, raising pressure on Pakistan to do more against the Al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked group.

The Treasury said Abdul Aziz Abbasin, an Afghan native, was appointed by the Pakistan-based Haqqani group as "the Taliban shadow governor" in Orgun district of Afghanistan, aiding the fight against NATO coalition forces in the country.

A gas cylinder exploded on the top floor of a Pakistani hotel in Islamabad late Thursday, injuring three women and a child in a city always on guard against feared terror attacks, police said.

The blast struck the Citi Hotel in the Blue Area, the Pakistani capital's ordinarily bustling district of shops and restaurants around 11 pm (1800 GMT) at a time when people still linger over dinner in the cool breeze of evening.

Suspected leftist guerrillas have attacked a pipeline in northeastern Colombia, the army said, in the latest assault on the country's vital oil sector.

The attack on Wednesday was believed to have been carried out by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) or the National Liberation Army (ELN), which are active in the area, an army brigade spokesman told Agence France Presse.

A small aircraft with 18 people on board crashed on Thursday in Indonesia's Sumatra island, officials said.

The Casa 212, carrying 15 passengers and three crew, left Medan city in North Sumatra at 7:18 am (0018GMT) bound for the nearby province of Aceh, before losing contact with air traffic control, transport ministry aviation head Herry Bakti told Agence France Presse.