Iran on Wednesday welcomed a British court ruling against the extradition of former Iranian ambassador Nosratollah Tajik, wanted by Washington for allegedly conspiring to smuggle arms to the Islamic republic.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes the court ruling, even though it was delayed for six years," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said, quoted by state broadcaster IRIB.

U.S. President Barack Obama will host his defeated Republican foe Mitt Romney for a conciliatory private lunch at the White House on Thursday in their first encounter since a bitter election.

Obama's press secretary Jay Carney said the meeting would take place in the president's private dining room next to the Oval Office and would be closed to the press.

The U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan is stepping down, an official said Tuesday, in yet another shake-up of President Barack Obama's foreign policy team.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, herself set to leave office early next year, had pulled envoy Marc Grossman out of retirement to take on the difficult job shortly after the sudden death of veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke in December 2010.

A former Iranian ambassador on Tuesday won his court battle against extradition from Britain to the United States for allegedly conspiring to smuggle arms to Iran.

Nosratollah Tajik, Iran's former ambassador to Jordan, is wanted by Washington over claims that he conspired to export U.S. night-vision equipment to Iran without a license.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department are being sued for allegedly allowing American aid money meant for the Palestinian Authority to be used by terror groups like Hamas.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday in Washington on behalf of 24 U.S. citizens living in Israel by the Israel Law Center, a Tel Aviv-based legal group that specializes in fighting "terrorist organizations and the regimes that support them," according to its website.

A U.S. announcement that a conference on a Middle East free of nuclear weapons cannot be held as foreseen is a "serious setback," Iran said Monday, accusing Washington of protecting Israel.

"The U.S. cannot unilaterally decide for the sake of Israel to announce that the conference cannot be held. This is a very serious setback for the non-proliferation regime,"Iran's ambassador to the U.N. atomic agency told Associated France Press.

Philippine police said they had charged four men Monday over the stabbing death of a U.S. diplomat's husband during a brawl just outside an exclusive compound in the nation's capital.

The father of three was walking into the compound early on Saturday morning when he saw security guards at its gates checking the identification of the suspects, who were inside a luxury sports utility vehicle, police said.

Two more U.S. servicemen were arrested in Japan on Friday, police said, as anti-American sentiment runs high following the rape of a woman in the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.

Police in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, arrested 23-year-old U.S. sailor Oscar Hayes Wiygul III on suspicion of public indecency after he allegedly walked around naked in an Internet cafe.

Two people died and more than 80 people were hurt Thursday when at least 140 vehicles collided in Southeast Texas in a pileup that left trucks twisted on top of each other and authorities rushing to pull survivors from the wreckage.

The collision occurred in extremely foggy conditions at about 8:45 a.m. Thanksgiving Day on Interstate 10 southwest of Beaumont, a U.S. Gulf Coast city about 80 miles east of Houston.

American troops are celebrating Thanksgiving Day with food and football at a U.S.-led coalition base in the Afghan capital.

Huge hunks of beef greeted the estimated 2,500 diners on Thursday as soldiers lined up at the base in Kabul. Red-white-and-blue decorations filled the room while brochures about combat stress served as table centerpieces.