Zimbabwe has signed a secret deal to supply Iran with the raw materials needed to develop a nuclear weapon, in breach of international sanctions, The Times reported on Saturday.

"I have seen [a memorandum of understanding] to export uranium to the Iranians," Zimbabwean Deputy Mining Minister Gift Chimanikire told the British newspaper.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that Russia has adopted a more anti-American attitude reminiscent of the Cold War since Vladimir Putin returned to office as president.

Obama said relations had thawed somewhat while Dmitry Medvedev was Russian president, but that when Putin returned to the Kremlin he "saw more rhetoric on the Russian side that was anti-American, that played into some of the old stereotypes about the Cold War contest between the United States and Russia."

U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon recommended to the Security Council Friday that sanctions be taken against elements of the Seleka coalition responsible for reprisal attacks in the Central African Republic.

In a report that the Council is supposed take up on Wednesday, Ban said he was deeply concerned by "a total breakdown of law and order" since the rebel coalition took power in March.

Nelson Mandela, who has been lying critically ill in hospital for just over two months, is becoming more alert and more responsive by the day, his youngest daughter said Friday, adding that the anti-apartheid hero is "not going anywhere anytime soon".

"Tata (father) now manages to sit up, like now he is able to sit up in a chair for a few minutes in a day. Everyday you know, he becomes more alert, more responsive, and so on," Zindzi Mandela told South Africa public television SABC.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday pledged an overhaul of government surveillance, acknowledging rising concerns over citizens' privacy.

Obama said he would ask Congress to review a controversial section of the Patriot Act that allows collection of telephone records and would provide for greater outside oversight.

Lawyers for Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's party filed a legal challenge Friday against the outcome of a crunch election which gave veteran President Robert Mugabe another five-year term.

Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) charge in a court appeal that the July 31 vote was a "farce" that was riddled with fraud and should be declared invalid.

Argentine rescue workers recovered the bodies of two more people early Friday from the ruins of an explosion-shattered apartment building, raising the confirmed death toll in the disaster to 13.

Eight other people remain missing, four days after a gas leak caused a devastating blast in the three-tower complex in Rosario, the country's third-largest city, situated northwest of the capital Buenos Aires.

Shock waves from the threat of new attacks by al-Qaida's Yemen wing have reached the cells of Guantanamo Bay, where dozens of Yemeni detainees are waiting to be sent home.

Of the 166 detainees remaining at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo -- where a prison camp holds detainees from the "war on terror" -- 84 are from Yemen, and 56 of these have been cleared for release.

President Barack Obama met at the White House with leaders of IT and telecoms giants, including Apple, Google and AT&T, to discuss controversial electronic surveillance programs, Politico reported Friday.

The White House confirmed the meeting, which was not mentioned on the president's agenda for Thursday, but it did not identify the participants.

Two people were killed and five others missing on Friday as torrential rain hit northern Japan, local media reported.

A 91-year-old woman was found dead after being buried by a rain-triggered mudslide in Hanamaki, Iwate prefecture, according to Japan's national broadcaster NHK and Jiji Press.