DETROIT — A new winter misery index confirms what many Americans in the Midwest and East know in their all-too-chilled bones: This has been one of the harshest winters of our lifetimes.

And nowhere has been hit harder, relatively, than Detroit.

Sure Chicago, Indianapolis and Philadelphia and Moline, Ill., are in the midst of their third most extreme winters in more than 60 years. But Detroit, a city that is trying to crawl out of bankruptcy, is also slogging through what so far is the most extreme winter it has had since Harry Truman was president, at least, according to a winter extremity index created by a National Weather Service meteorologist Barbara Mayes Boustead.

The index is based on cold temperatures and snowfall. And so far Detroit has had more than 6½ feet of snow and 100 days when the thermometer plunged below the freezing mark. Of two dozen cities studied, Detroit is in the middle of its harshest winter since 1950.

WASHINGTON — Frustrated with his Afghan counterpart, President Barack Obama is ordering the Pentagon to accelerate planning for a full U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of this year. But Obama is also holding out hope that Afghanistan's next president may eventually sign a stalled security agreement that could prevent the U.S. from having to take that step.Obama spoke Tuesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The White House has become increasingly frustrated with Karzai, who has refused to sign a security pact the White House says is crucial to keeping a U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan after the war formally concludes at the end of this year.