World/Nation

Pentagon chief Hagel is leaving under pressure

WASHINGTON - Under pressure from President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel submitted his resignation Monday amid White House concerns about his effectiveness and broader criticism from outside about the administration's Middle East crisis management.

The president said he and Hagel had determined it was an "appropriate time for him to complete his service."

Hagel, a former Republican senator, never broke through the White House's notably insular national security team. Officials privately griped about his ability to publicly communicate administration policy and more recently questioned whether he had the capacity to oversee new military campaigns against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

Hagel is the first high-level member of Obama's national security team to step down in the wake of both a disastrous midterm election for the president's party and persistent criticism about the administration's policies in the Middle East and elsewhere. It's unclear whether Hagel's forced resignation signals the start of a broader shake-up of the president's team; White House officials said it was possible there could be more departures.

Among the leading contenders to replace Hagel is Michele Flournoy, who served as the Pentagon's policy chief for the first three years of Obama's presidency. Flournoy, who would be the first woman to head the Pentagon, is now chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security, a think tank that she co-founded.

Negotiators fail to reach Iran nuclear deal

VIENNA - A yearlong effort to seal a nuclear deal with Iran fizzled Monday, leaving the U.S. and its allies little choice but to declare a seven-month extension in hopes that a new deadline will be enough to achieve what a decade of negotiations have failed to do - limit Tehran's ability to make a nuclear weapon.

Pushback from critics in Congress followed almost immediately, with powerful Republicans saying that Iran is merely trying to buy time.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and other Western foreign ministers defended the add-on time as the best way forward. "We would be fools to walk away," Kerry declared.

But a week of tough maneuvering appeared to have achieved little more than agreement to keep on talking. Negotiators will now strive to nail down by March 1 what Iran and the six world powers it is negotiating with must do, and by when. A final agreement is meant to follow four months later.

Members of the new Republican-controlled Congress to be sworn in early next year threatened to impose additional sanctions on Iran and may well have enough votes to overturn an expected veto by President Barack Obama.

Japan's young fret over uncertain future

TOKYO - When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe responded to Japan's surprise recession by delaying a sales-tax increase, it was a cause for worry, not celebration, for many young Japanese. This generation, barely aware of their country's economic heyday, frets that putting off tough decisions now could make the future even worse.

Despite Abe's unprecedented stimulus efforts - almost everything short of dropping money from helicopters - Japan has slipped into recession less than two years after the last one. With the country's debt rising, population aging and job security fading, young people in particular wonder when, and if, Japan will bounce back.

"This is our children's future," said Mai Yamaguchi, a 29-year-old trading company employee heading into the gaudy Shibuya shopping area for an outing with her 4-month-old son and two other young moms and babies. "Child care, elder care, social welfare are all going to be even bigger burdens for us."

Under pressure to reduce the developed world's heaviest per-capita debt burden, at over a quadrillion yen ($8.5 trillion), Abe raised the sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent in April, and was supposed to increase it to 10 percent next year. But after the economy, already fragile after two decades of malaise, shrank for two quarters in a row, he put off the second increase until 2017.

Yamaguchi was unimpressed by that decision. "I'm grateful to Mr. Abe for his policies to improve child care, but putting off the tax increase, well, they say the pension system is on the verge of bankruptcy. I think it would have been better to go ahead and raise the tax as planned," she said.

Israel resumes razing homes of attackers

JERUSALEM - Enas Shalodi, a Palestinian mother of six, has been severely punished by Israel for something she didn't do.

A wrecking crew gutted her family's apartment in Jerusalem last week, tearing down inner walls and leaving behind a thick layer of debris.

The demolition came a month after her oldest son, 21-year-old Abdel Rahman, drove a car into a crowd waiting for a train in Jerusalem, killing a 3-month-old girl and an Ecuadorean tourist before being shot and killed at the scene.

Israel says it needs tougher tools to stop recent "lone wolf" attacks on Jews by Palestinians. But critics say the practice is strikingly at odds with basic notions of justice, fairness and legality in a democracy - and that it is bound to bring on more hatred rather than serve as a deterrent.

Israel has given house demolition notices to families of six Jerusalem assailants, including the Shalodis and the relatives of two cousins who killed five people in a synagogue last week.

Discovery of long-lost letter delights poet

LOS ANGELES - When a letter credited with inspiring Jack Kerouac to create a new literary genre suddenly surfaced, no one was happier than an 86-year-old poet and playwright from New Jersey.

For more than 50 years, Gerd Stern had been wrongly accused of tossing what Kerouac called "the greatest piece of writing I ever saw" over the side of a houseboat.

"Yes, I'm the guy who dropped the letter off the boat, but of course I didn't," Stern, laughing heartily, said after The Associated Press reported Sunday that the 16,000-word screed to Kerouac from his friend and literary muse Neal Cassady was found intact last week in a house in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"At least 12 literary publications through the years have accused me," Stern said. "People have written to me and damned me for this. After 50 years, it's a blessing to be vindicated."

Cassady, who wrote the letter over three amphetamine-fueled days in 1950, sent it to Kerouac just before Christmas.