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Polar adventurers, scientists and the prime minister of Norway gathered at the bottom of the world Wednesday to mark the 100th anniversary of explorer Roald Amundsen becoming the first to reach the South Pole.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama will begin a media campaign this week to seek support for his nomination of banking industry critic Richard Cordray to head a new financial watchdog agency.
The White House strategy will be to try to pressure Senate Republicans to confirm Cordray by making an appeal directly to voters in the home states of those politicians.
"We intend to aggressively take the case for Mr. Cordray's confirmation directly to the American people," White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.
With a Senate vote on Cordray tentatively scheduled for Thursday, Obama and his aides will give a series of media interviews on the nomination of the former Ohio attorney general to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Republicans opposed creation of the consumer agency, which was created under the 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation overhauling Wall Street regulation.
Its mission is to protect consumers from practices such as abusive mortgage lending and hidden credit card fees. But Republicans have warned of the risk of regulatory overreach that could make the financial industry less competitive.
They have demanded changes before agreeing to confirm Cordray, who was nominated by Obama in July.
In his former role as attorney general in Ohio, Cordray was known as a leader among state attorneys general in a probe of dubious mortgage foreclosure practices. He lost his re-election bid last year and in December, he worked alongside outspoken consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren to help set up the new consumer agency.
FOCUS ON SEVEN STATES
The White House will focus its attention on seven states, including Maine, home to two moderate Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and Tennessee, represented by Republican Bob Corker, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee and is up for re-election in 2012.
In addition to Maine and Tennessee, the White House will also target Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada and Utah.
Earnest said that administration officials would hammer a message on the impact on middle-class families of confirming Cordray and getting the consumer agency fully up and running.
Without a confirmed director in place, there are some constraints on the consumer agency's regulatory powers. For example, it is limited in its ability to regulate non-bank players in the financial system, including so-called "pay-day" lenders, some mortgage lenders, debt collectors and credit reporting agencies.
Earnest said putting in place Obama's selection for the consumer bureau would help protect Americans who are "being gouged by hidden fees and other unscrupulous tactics."
Alabama Senator Richard Shelby said in a statement that it was crucial for the consumer agency and other financial regulators to be accountable and pressed his case for changes to the bureau.
"The CFPB is unaccountable by design. We will continue to fight for accountability from regulators," added Shelby, who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee.
The Obama administration on Sunday released a report detailing what it said were regulatory gaps left open by the lack of oversight of non-bank players in the financial arena.
The White House cited a study that said payday lenders, which offer short-term loans to help people cover monthly bills, charge interest rates that can average 400 percent on an annualized basis.
"Our economy and our financial system can't afford a situation in which consumers are left in the dark about the risks they take, particularly when dealing with these non-bank financial institutions," said Brian Deese, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council.
Warren had been considered the leading candidate for the consumer bureau job but was considered a lightening rod for controversy on Wall Street. Obama sidestepped that controversy by picking Cordray, who shared many of Warren's views but is not as high-profile.
Cordray is a close ally of Warren, who left the Obama administration to run for a Senate seat in Massachusetts.
(Reporting by Caren Bohan and Dave Clarke, Editing by Chris Wilson and Philip Barbara)
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THURSDAY, Dec. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Despite decades of public health efforts aimed at snuffing out cigarette smoking, 20 percent of Americans still light up. New research suggests it might be because of their genes.
While anti-smoking campaigns are credited with slicing cigarette use drastically over the past 40 years -- from 42 percent of all Americans in 1965 to just under 20 percent in 2010 -- the number of people who haven't been able to nix their nicotine habit has flatlined in recent years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Two out of three adults who smoke want to quit, a CDC report out earlier this month said, and more than half (52 percent) had attempted to quit in the past year.
The authors of the new study, released online in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of Demography, say new tactics may be needed to help the remaining smokers.
"Federal and social policies may be somewhat less effective now because maybe the composition of those at risk [those who smoke] has changed," said study co-author Fred Pampel, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a research associate at the Institute of Behavioral Science there. Those who can quit easily have probably done so, the authors said.
Study lead author Jason Boardman, an associate professor of sociology, said anti-smoking messages, higher taxes and restrictions on smoking have made a difference. "But for hard-core smokers, there may be something else going on," he said. That "something else" is likely genetics, he added.
The researchers drew this conclusion after analyzing the smoking habits between 1960 and 1980 of nearly 600 pairs of twins who answered an extensive health questionnaire -- 363 were identical sets of twins and 233 were fraternal twins. Identical twins come from the same fertilized egg before it splits into two embryos and they share the same genes or DNA, while fraternal twins come from two separately fertilized egg cells and only share some genetic similarities.
In the identical twin group, 65 percent of both individuals quit within a two-year period of each other, while only 55 percent of the fraternal twins quit within that same stretch of time.
"The logic here is that the identical twins share genes, so if they act alike it probably reflects a genetic component," said Pampel.
The new research adds to a growing body of literature suggesting there is probably a substantial genetic influence when it comes to nicotine addiction, said Dr. Aditi Satti, an assistant professor of medicine and director of the smoking cessation program at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. But scientists are still trying to pinpoint the gene or genes involved, she said.
"There has not been one specific gene linked to nicotine addiction," said Satti.
She noted that while numbers of smokers have decreased over the years, smoking is up among women and black Americans, possibly another clue as to who is genetically at risk. Inner city, low socioeconomic and less-educated populations are more likely to be smokers, too, Satti added.
"I think the combo of finding better medications and educating people, even if doctors just spend five minutes talking with your patient about smoking, will lead to higher quit rates," Satti said.
Boardman said a policy shift might be in line. Instead of government anti-smoking campaigns focusing on high taxes and splashy advertisements, he said current smokers may discover more success using medication aimed at nicotine addiction, as well as counseling.
"I'd argue that nicotine replacement therapies may be far more effective with existing smokers still trying to quit than the posters showing images of smokers that are not cool. Behavior-changing efforts -- I don't think that's going to help the two-pack a day smokers," said Boardman, who is also a research associate at the Institute of Behavioral Science.
Smoking-related diseases lead to approximately 443,000 deaths a year in the United States, including babies born prematurely to women who smoke while pregnant and those harmed by secondhand smoke, according to the American Lung Association.
Satti is concerned that cigarette addiction isn't taken seriously enough by some.
"Maybe we don't see smoking as being as important as alcohol and drug addiction, but I'm a pulmonologist and I see chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema and lung cancer every day," she said. "And we know tobacco smoke is linked to cardiovascular disease and stroke. It's one of the most preventable things you can do. If you quit smoking, you'll see a huge impact on health."
More information
The American Cancer Society can help you determine if you need help to quit smoking.
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FILE - In this undated file photo, country singer Mindy McCready performs in Nashville, Tenn. A missing persons report has been filed for McCready and her 5-year-old son Zander. The Department of Children and Families says the report was filed with Cape Coral Police Tuesday night after McCready took Zander from McCready's father's home. McCready doesn't have custody of her son ? her mother does ? and was allowed to visit the boy at her father's home. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, file)
FILE - In this undated file photo, country singer Mindy McCready performs in Nashville, Tenn. A missing persons report has been filed for McCready and her 5-year-old son Zander. The Department of Children and Families says the report was filed with Cape Coral Police Tuesday night after McCready took Zander from McCready's father's home. McCready doesn't have custody of her son ? her mother does ? and was allowed to visit the boy at her father's home. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, file)
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) ? Country singer Mindy McCready is pushing her luck with the legal system by not following a judge's order to return her 5-year-old son to the care of her mother in Florida, her ex-boyfriend and father of the boy said Friday.
McCready said Thursday she would not bring her son back from Tennessee, despite violating a custody arrangement.
McCready took the boy during a recent visit at her father's Florida home, and a judge signed an order Thursday ordering authorities to take the boy into custody and return him. It's not yet clear whether the singer could face criminal charges.
"I'm doing all this to protect Zander, not stay out of trouble," McCready wrote in an email to The Associated Press on Thursday. "I don't think I should be in trouble for protecting my son in the first place."
McCready says she is in Tennessee and cannot travel because she's nearly seven months pregnant with twins.
The judge's order means law enforcement anywhere can pick up the boy and bring him back to Florida.
The boy's father, Billy McKnight, told the NBC "Today" show Friday he spoke on the phone with McCready and their boy after the judge's deadline expired.
"He did sound healthy and ok. He wasn't crying or scared," McKnight said about their son.
"I think she believes she has a case and doesn't realize she's pushing her luck on this one," he said.
McCready and her mother have had a long custody battle over the boy. The boy was living with McCready's mother, who was awarded guardianship in 2007. McCready says her son has suffered abuse at her mother's house; her mother, Gayle Inge, denies the abuse allegations.
"Once the child is located, we will pick him up and bring him back to Florida," said Terri Durdaller, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Children and Families. "Although these circumstances are unfortunate for a young child, his safety and well-being are our number one priority."
McCready provided a series of emails to the AP with Lee County Judge James Seals' ruling to return the boy.
"Mom has violated the court's custody order and we are simply restoring the child back into our custody," the judge wrote. "Nothing more. Nothing less. The court makes no judgment about whether Mom will or will not competently care for the child while in her custody. It only wants the child back where the court placed him."
McCready found fame in the mid-1990s and has lived a complicated life in recent years.
In August, she filed a libel suit against her mother and the National Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc., over a story published in the tabloid newspaper that quoted Inge.
And in 2008, McCready was admitted to a hospital after police said she cut her wrists and took several pills in a suicide attempt.
During the TV show "Celebrity Rehab 3" in 2010, McCready came off as a sympathetic figure, and host Dr. Drew Pinsky called her an angel in the season finale.
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