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BOSTON (AP) — He insists he's not running for president a third time, but Mitt Romney is campaigning again in New Hampshire.

The former Republican presidential nominee is set to endorse Senate candidate Scott Brown on Wednesday, campaigning publicly in New Hampshire for the first time since the early hours of Election Day 2012 as he continues a larger effort to re-emerge as a force in Republican politics.

The day is supposed to be focused on Brown's quest to defeat Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen this fall. But Romney's return to the state where he began and ended his last presidential campaign looms over the Senate endorsement.

The afternoon rally is being held at Scamman's Bittersweet Farm in Stratham, New Hamphsire, the same location where the former Massachusetts governor formally launched his last presidential campaign.

Democrats attacked Romney in a conference call on the eve of the visit, reminding people that he lost New Hampshire to President Barack Obama in the last general election, despite owning a summer home in the state's Lakes Region.

"Scott, we have news for you," state Democratic Party chairman Ray Buckley said in a message aimed at Brown. "Mitt Romney has no credibility in New Hampshire. ... We haven't forgotten his '47 percent' comments."

Buckley referred to comments Romney made in the last campaign that Obama had the support of the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes and who consider themselves "victims" and don't "take personal responsibility and care for their lives." His campaign never fully recovered from the intense criticism his comments sparked.

Romney's loss to Obama effectively pushed him into political exile. But he has been playing a growing role in national Republican affairs ahead of the November midterm elections.

So far this year, he has endorsed more than 30 candidates running for statewide office or for Congress in two dozen states, although he has appeared publicly in only a handful. Despite the re-emergence, Romney has repeatedly said he will not run for president again in 2016.

"I think there are an awful lot of people who would love to see him run again," said longtime adviser Ron Kaufman. "Having said that, I think he has no intention to run."

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — With the July Fourth weekend on the horizon, the Atlantic hurricane season's first named storm plodded off Florida's coast early Wednesday, though Tropical Storm Arthur wasn't yet spooking too many in the storm's potential path.

"I think everybody's keeping one eye on the weather and one eye on the events this weekend," said Joe Marinelli, president of Visit Savannah, the city's tourism bureau.

A tropical storm watch was in effect for a swath of Florida's east coast. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami urged those as far north as parts of Virginia to monitor Tropical Storm Arthur's path. The center said Arthur was becoming better organized and predicted it would become a hurricane by Thursday.

Early Wednesday morning, forecasters said the storm was growing a little stronger as it moved slowly northward. It was about 95 miles (155 km) off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, and its maximum sustained winds had increased to about 60 mph (95 kph). The storm was heading north at about 4 mph (6 kph). A gradual increase in forward speed was expected Wednesday, followed by a turn to the northeast by Thursday, the Hurricane Center said.

Off Florida's Space Coast beaches — the closest to Arthur — the sky was cloudy and winds fairly normal, said Eisen Witcher, assistant chief of Brevard County Ocean Rescue.

Red flags warned of rough surf, and beachgoers were advised to get into the water only in areas with staffed lifeguard stands. But overall, Witcher said, "it's business as usual."

Red flags also flew at Daytona Beach. By midday, a dozen swimmers had been aided by lifeguards when they got caught in a rip current. On any given day, 15 to 20 swimmers need help, said Tammy Marris, spokeswoman for the Volusia County Beach Patrol.

Near the storm, 19 ill crew members were evacuated from a South Korean cargo ship after they showed signs of food poisoning. The cargo ship JS Comet was anchored 3 miles off Cape Canaveral, and the Coast Guard reported that deteriorating weather conditions were one factor in the decision to evacuate.

Outside Florida, there were no official storm watches or warnings, but forecasters started to warn of upcoming rain, heavy surf and swells, and rip tides.

In North Carolina's Outer Banks, officials said they would close Cape Lookout National Seashore at 5 p.m. Wednesday and reopen when it's safe.

The motel Shutters on the Banks was completely booked for the holiday weekend, general manager John Zeller said, despite forecasts for potentially heavy rain, gusty winds and isolated tornadoes late Thursday and Friday.

"We have received some cancellations but not too many," he said. "Basically we are telling people to kind of wait and see what happens."

The motel has a 72-hour advance notice on cancellations, but Zeller said it will be waived if the storm tracks toward the area or warnings are issued.

In Folly Beach, South Carolina, dozens of people fished from the pier under sunny skies Tuesday. Others surfed on gentle swells, sunbathed and looked for shells.

In Savannah, rooms in the downtown historic district were expected to be at least 80 percent full for the holiday weekend, when crowds pack the beach on neighboring Tybee Island.

Cancellations aren't uncommon when storms approach, but those calls weren't coming in Tuesday, Marinelli said.

Amy Gaster said her Tybee Island vacation rental company had more than 200 beach homes and condos booked for the weekend, likely to be the busiest of the year. If forecasts start to show a serious threat, Gaster said her staff was prepared to send alerts to guests' cellphones.

But as long as Arthur stays offshore, she said her biggest concerns are rip currents and possible thundershowers on Thursday, when thousands are expected to pack the Georgia coast's largest public beach for fireworks.

"Hopefully Mother Nature is going to cooperate with us this year," Gaster said.

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Associated Press writers Bruce Smith in Charleston, South Carolina, and Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida, contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite an improving U.S. economy, retirement plans covering roughly 1.5 million workers are severely underfunded, threatening benefit cuts for current and future retirees, a federal watchdog agency warned Monday.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) said multi-employer plans, which are collectively bargained retirement plans maintained by more than one employer, are most at risk. "Plan insolvencies ... are now both more likely and more imminent than in our last report," the report said.

At the same time, the agency said single-employer pension plans — covering just over 30 million participants — are on firmer financial footing and are likely to remain so at least over the next 10 years.

The report concluded that, as shaky as the situation is for the underfunded multi-employer plans, the outlook is slightly better than it was just a year ago as the nation's economy gradually improves from the severe 2007-2009 recession.

"In the past year, economic conditions have improved significantly and most plans are projected to remain solvent," said the agency, which was created under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

But, it added, that research over the past year had made clear that, for some multi-employer plans, "even the improving economy will not be sufficient to maintain their solvency."

If a company goes bankrupt and is forced to terminate its pension plan, the PBGC will generally take over making sure that retirees continue to draw pension benefits, at least up to certain limits. It's a form of insurance. The maximum guaranteed amount paid by PBGC in 2013 was $4,789.77 per month, or $57, 477.24 per year. The agency does not pay the benefits directly to people covered by failed plans, but provides financial assistance to the plans themselves to enable them to continue providing benefits.

Employers pay a fee to the PBGC for each employee.

As more and more baby-boomers retire and begin drawing pension benefits, the PBGC comes under increasing financial strain.

The agency noted that for many years, the single-employer program was more likely to be seriously underfunded than the multi-employer plans: "That situation is now reversing."

"Some multi-employer plans are deteriorating and PBGC's multi-employer program is more likely than not to run out of money within the next eight years," the agency said.

The agency said many participants in the troubled multi-employer plans are employed by small companies in the building and construction industries. Also many workers in retail food, garment manufacturing, entertainment, mining and truck and maritime industries could feel the consequences.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Jon Sacker was near death, too sick for doctors to attempt the double lung transplant he so desperately needed. His only chance: An experimental machine that essentially works like dialysis for the lungs.

But the device has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and there were none in the country. It would take an overnight race into Canada to retrieve a Hemolung.

Sacker rapidly improved as the device cleansed his blood of carbon dioxide — so much so that in mid-March, 20 days later, he got a transplant after all.

"That machine is a lifesaver," Sacker said from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Sacker's struggle highlights a critical void: There is no fully functioning artificial lung to buy time for someone awaiting a transplant, like patients who need a new heart can stay alive with an implanted heart pump or those with failing kidneys can turn to dialysis.

"It seems like it should be possible for the lung as well," said Dr. Andrea Harabin of the National Institutes of Health.

NIH-funded researchers are working to develop wearable "respiratory assist devices" that could do the lungs' two jobs — supplying oxygen and getting rid of carbon dioxide — without tethering patients to a bulky bedside machine.

It has proven challenging.

"The lung is an amazing organ for gas exchange. It's not so easy to develop a mechanical device that can essentially replace the function of a lung," said bioengineer William Federspiel of Pitt's McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, who helped invent the bedside Hemolung and is working on these next-step devices.

So when Sacker needed an emergency fix, Dr. Christian Bermudez, UPMC's chief of cardiothoracic transplants, gambled on the unapproved Hemolung. "We had no other options," he said.

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Cystic fibrosis destroyed Sacker's own lungs. The Moore, Oklahoma, man received his first double lung transplant in 2012. He thrived until a severe infection last fall damaged his new lungs, spurring rejection. By February, he needed another transplant.

The odds were long. Donated lungs are in such short supply that only 1,923 transplants were performed last year, just 80 of them repeats, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Still, the Pittsburgh hospital, known for tackling tough cases, agreed to try — only to have Sacker, 33, arrive too debilitated for an operation. A ventilator was providing adequate oxygen. But carbon dioxide had built to toxic levels in his body.

When a ventilator isn't enough, today's recourse is a decades-old technology so difficult that only certain hospitals, including Pittsburgh, offer it. Called ECMO, it rests the lungs by draining blood from the body, oxygenating it and removing carbon dioxide, and then returning it. Sacker was too sick to try.

"I didn't see any other alternative other than withdrawing support from this young man," Bermudez said.

Then he remembered the Hemolung, invented by Pittsburgh engineering colleagues as an alternative to ECMO. It was designed to treat patients with a different lung disease, called COPD, during crises when their stiffened lungs retain too much carbon dioxide, Federspiel said.

The Hemolung recently was approved in Europe and Canada; its maker is planning the stricter U.S. testing required by FDA. For Sacker to become the first U.S. Hemolung patient, hospital safety officials would have to agree and notify FDA.

"We had actually just almost decided to turn the ventilator off, because we were putting him through suffering," Sacker's wife, Sallie, recalled. Then the phone rang: The experiment was on.

But Pittsburgh-based ALung Technologies Inc. couldn't get a device shipped for a few days. Doctors feared Sacker wouldn't live that long. Late at night, ALung CEO Peter DeComo tracked down a device in Toronto, and started driving. It took some explaining to get the unapproved medical device past U.S. border officials. But the next day, Sacker was hooked up, and quickly improved.

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Federspiel, also an ALung co-founder, said researchers' ultimate goal is a fully functioning, portable artificial lung.

Varieties under development consist of small bundles of hollow, permeable fibers. As blood pumps over the fibers, oxygen flows outside to the blood and carbon dioxide returns, explained Dr. Bartley Griffith of the University of Maryland. He has reported success in sheep, and hopes to begin the first human tests within three years.

The idea: Small tubes would connect the fiber device, worn around the waist, to blood vessels, so that patients could move around, keeping up their muscle strength instead of being restricted to bed.

There's "at the least the inkling that we can dream of sending somebody home with an artificial lung," Griffith said.

A bridge to transplant isn't the only need, said Harabin of NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which is funding work by Griffith, Federspiel and others.

Thousands each year suffer acute lung failure from trauma or disease that hits too suddenly to even consider transplant. Researchers like Griffith want to test if these experimental technologies could offer them a better chance to heal than ventilators, which can further damage lungs.

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Back in Pittsburgh, Sacker is slowly gaining strength with his second set of transplanted lungs. He doesn't remember the fight for his life; he was sedated through it. But his wife has told him how touch and go it was.

"You get a call at the last second about a device that has never been used here in the United States — that's a miracle," he said.

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AP Video Journalist Joseph Frederick contributed to this report.