Republican Scott Jensen announced his candidacy for governor on Thursday.

Jensen, a family physician and former state senator, unsuccessfully ran against Gov. Tim Walz in 2022 when he took 44% of the vote. He is the second high-profile Republican to announce in a 2026 bid, alongside Republican Kendall Qualls , who also ran in 2022.

“Minnesotans want their state back,” Jensen said in a statement on his candidacy. “We remember the days when our communities were safe, our schools were strong and our leaders put people — not politics — first. That’s the Minnesota we’re going to fight to bring back.”

Walz has yet to decide whether he will seek a third term as governor and is expected to announce a decision around the end of summer, his staff said. Walz has ruled out other offices, such as the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Tina Smith.

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By BOB THOMAS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Connie Francis, the wholesome pop star of the 1950s and ‘60s whose hits included “Pretty Little Baby” and “Who’s Sorry Now?” — the latter would serve as an ironic title for a personal life filled with heartbreak and tragedy — has died at age 87.

Her death was announced Thursday by her friend and publicist, Ron Roberts, who did not immediately provide additional details. Earlier this month, Francis posted that she had been hospitalized with “extreme pain.” Francis had gained renewed attention in recent months after “Pretty Little Baby” became a sensation on TikTok, with Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner among the many celebrities citing it.

“I’m flabbergasted and excited about the huge buzz my 1962 recording of ‘Pretty Little Baby’ is making all over the world,” she said in a video on TikTok, which she had joined in response to the song’s unexpected revival. “To think that a song I recorded 63 years ago is captivating new generations of audiences is truly overwhelming for me.”

Francis was a top performer of the pre-Beatles era, rarely out of the charts from 1957-64. Able to appeal to both young people and adults, she had more than a dozen Top 20 hits, starting with “Who’s Sorry Now?” and including the No. 1 songs “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” and “The Heart Has a Mind of Its Own.” Like other teen favorites of her time, she also starred in several films, including “Where the Boys Are” and “Follow the Boys.”

The dark-haired singer was just 17 when she signed a contract with MGM Records following appearances on several TV variety shows. Her earliest recordings attracted little attention, but then she released her version of “Who’s Sorry Now?” an old ballad by Ted Snyder, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.

It, too, had little success initially until Dick Clark played it on his “American Bandstand” show in 1958. Clark featured her repeatedly on “American Bandstand,” and she said in later years that without his support, she would have abandoned her music career.

Francis followed with such teen hits as “Stupid Cupid,” “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” and “Lipstick on Your Collar.” Her records became hits worldwide as she re-recorded versions of her original songs in Italian and Spanish, among other languages. Her concerts around the country quickly sold out.

Meanwhile, a romance bloomed with fellow teen idol Bobby Darin, who had volunteered to write songs for her. But when her father heard rumors that the pair was planning a wedding, he stormed into a rehearsal and pulled a gun on Darin, ending their relationship and seeming to set Francis on a pained and traumatic path.

She chronicled some of it in her autobiography, “Who’s Sorry Now?”

“My personal life is a regret from A to Z,” she told The Associated Press in 1984, the year the book came out. “I realized I had allowed my father to exert too much influence over me.”

Her father, George Franconero, was a roofing contractor from New Jersey who played the accordion. She was just 3 when her father presented her with a child-size accordion, as soon as she began to show an aptitude for music. When she was 4, he began booking singing dates for her, going on to become her manager.

Although her acting career had faded by the mid-1960s, Francis was still popular on the concert circuit when she appeared at the Westbury Music Center in Westbury, New York, in 1974. She had returned to her hotel room and was asleep when a man broke in and raped her at knifepoint. He was never captured.

Francis sued the hotel, alleging its security was faulty, and a jury awarded her $2.5 million in 1976. The two sides then settled out of court for $1,475,000 as an appeal was pending. She said the attack destroyed her marriage and put her through years of emotional turmoil.

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She suffered tragedy in 1981 when her brother George was shot to death as he was leaving his New Jersey home. Later that decade, her father had her committed to a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed as manic-depressive. At one point, she tried to kill herself by swallowing dozens of sleeping tablets. After three days in a coma, she recovered.

Around that time, she wrote to President Ronald Reagan and volunteered to help others, calling herself ″America’s most famous crime victim.″ Reagan appointed her to a task force on violent crime.

″I don’t want people to feel sorry for me,″ she told The New York Times in 1981. ″I have my voice, a gift from God I took for granted before. He gave it back to me.″

She was married four times and would say that only her third husband, Joseph Garzilli, was worth the trouble. The other marriages each lasted less than a year.

Concetta Rosemarie Franconero was born on Dec. 12, 1937, in Newark, New Jersey. At age 9 she began appearing on television programs, including “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” and “The Perry Como Show.” It was Godfrey who suggested she shorten her last name.

National Writer Hillel Italie contributed reporting from New York. Bob Thomas, a longtime Hollywood reporter for The Associated Press, was the principal writer of this obituary and died in 2014.

By MARIA CHENG and LAURA UNGAR

LONDON (AP) — Eight healthy babies were born in Britain with the help of an experimental technique that uses DNA from three people to help mothers avoid passing devastating rare diseases to their children, researchers reported Wednesday.

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Most DNA is found in the nucleus of our cells, and it’s that genetic material — some inherited from mom, some from dad — that makes us who we are. But there’s also some DNA outside of the cell’s nucleus, in structures called mitochondria. Dangerous mutations there can cause a range of diseases in children that can lead to muscle weakness, seizures, developmental delays, major organ failure and death.

Testing during the in vitro fertilization process can usually identify whether these mutations are present. But in rare cases, it’s not clear.

Researchers have been developing a technique that tries to avoid the problem by using the healthy mitochondria from a donor egg. They reported in 2023 that the first babies had been born using this method, where scientists take genetic material from the mother’s egg or embryo, which is then transferred into a donor egg or embryo that has healthy mitochondria but the rest of its key DNA removed.

The latest research “marks an important milestone,” said Dr. Zev Williams, who directs the Columbia University Fertility Center and was not involved in the work. “Expanding the range of reproductive options … will empower more couples to pursue safe and healthy pregnancies.”

Using this method means the embryo has DNA from three people — from the mother’s egg, the father’s sperm and the donor’s mitochondria — and it required a 2016 U.K. law change to approve it. It is also allowed in Australia but not in many other countries, including the U.S.

Experts at Britain’s Newcastle University and Monash University in Australia reported in the New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday that they performed the new technique in fertilized embryos from 22 patients, which resulted in eight babies that appear to be free of mitochondrial diseases. One woman is still pregnant.

One of the eight babies born had slightly higher than expected levels of abnormal mitochondria, said Robin Lovell-Badge, a stem cell and developmental genetics scientist at the Francis Crick Institute who was not involved in the research. He said it was still not considered a high enough level to cause disease, but should be monitored as the baby develops.

Dr. Andy Greenfield, a reproductive health expert at the University of Oxford, called the work “a triumph of scientific innovation,” and said the method of exchanging mitochondria would only be used for a small number of women for whom other ways of avoiding passing on genetic diseases, like testing embryos at an early stage, was not effective.

Lovell-Badge said the amount of DNA from the donor is insignificant, noting that any resulting child would have no traits from the woman who donated the healthy mitochondria. The genetic material from the donated egg makes up less than 1% of the baby born after this technique.

“If you had a bone marrow transplant from a donor … you will have much more DNA from another person,” he said.

In the U.K., every couple seeking a baby born through donated mitochondria must be approved by the country’s fertility regulator. As of this month, 35 patients have been authorized to undergo the technique.

Critics have previously raised concerns, warning that it’s impossible to know the impact these sorts of novel techniques might have on future generations.

“Currently, pronuclear transfer is not permitted for clinical use in the U.S., largely due to regulatory restrictions on techniques that result in heritable changes to the embryo,” Williams, of Columbia, said in an email. ”Whether that will change remains uncertain and will depend on evolving scientific, ethical, and policy discussions.”

For about a decade, Congress has included provisions in annual funding bills banning the Food and Drug Administration from accepting applications for clinical research involving techniques, “in which a human embryo is intentionally created or modified to include a heritable genetic modification.”

But in countries where the technique is allowed, advocates say it could provide a promising alternative for some families.

Liz Curtis, whose daughter Lily died of a mitochondrial disease in 2006, now works with other families affected by them. She said it was devastating to be told there was no treatment for her eight-month-old baby and that death was inevitable.

She said the diagnosis “turned our world upside down, and yet nobody could tell us very much about it, what it was or how it was going to affect Lily.” Curtis later founded the Lily Foundation in her daughter’s name to raise awareness and support research into the disease, including the latest work done at Newcastle University.

“It’s super exciting for families that don’t have much hope in their lives,” Curtis said.

Ungar reported from Erie, Pennsylvania.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

President Donald Trump signed his “big, beautiful bill” into law on July 4, making changes to health insurance coverage for millions of Americans.

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If you have a marketplace health insurance plan, sometimes also known as Obamacare or Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans, your premiums might go up, and you might need to do more work to stay eligible.

Here are a few key changes to marketplace health insurance in the new law — plus one thing that went unaddressed — and what to do about them.

» MORE: What the ‘big, beautiful bill’ means for your finances

1. Premiums might get much pricier

How it works now: Premium tax credits help taxpayers afford marketplace health insurance premiums. Since 2021, “enhanced” premium tax credits have been larger and available to more people.

In states using HealthCare.gov, enhanced tax credits made subsidized premiums about $624 less expensive per year in 2024. That’s according to estimates by KFF, a health policy nonprofit.

Enhanced subsidies are set to expire after 2025. Smaller tax credits — and therefore more expensive premiums — go back into effect starting in 2026.

What’s changing: The new law was an opportunity for Congress to extend the enhanced subsidies. It did not.

If the enhanced subsidies expire, marketplace health insurance members at all income levels will pay more. Net premiums would rise by 25% to 100%, depending on income, according to estimates by the Commonwealth Fund, a health care policy think tank.

Expiring subsidies would lead to 4.2 million more people without health insurance by 2034, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

What to do about it: It’s still possible for Congress to extend the enhanced subsidies before they expire. You can contact your members of Congress about potential changes.

If subsidies expire, you might need to budget for higher premiums. You could also consider other ways to get health insurance if marketplace plans are no longer affordable.

2. You’ll need to re-enroll for subsidies every year

How it works now: Currently, people with marketplace health insurance are automatically re-enrolled for the next year. You can also stay eligible for premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions. Eligibility is automatically checked using your original application information and updated tax data.

Nearly 11 million people were automatically re-enrolled in health insurance marketplace plans for 2025, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That’s about 44% of total members.

What’s changing: Under the new law, your eligibility for premium tax credits and/or cost-sharing reductions doesn’t carry over from year to year.

To keep those subsidies, you’ll need to re-verify your eligibility. Otherwise, your premiums and/or out-of-pocket costs will go up — potentially by hundreds of dollars per month.

Changes go into effect starting in tax year 2028.

What to do about it: Take action each year during open enrollment, even if you want to keep the same plan. To keep your subsidies, be ready to provide information about:

Household income.
Family size.
Address.
Immigration status.
Other health coverage you have or are eligible for.

3. Enrollment will be more restricted for people with low income

How it works now: If your income is at or below 150% of the federal poverty level (FPL), you have a year-round special enrollment period. That means you can sign up for marketplace health insurance any time without waiting for open enrollment. You can also qualify for premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions.

What’s changing: Under the new law, if you apply during this income-based special enrollment period, you can’t qualify for premium tax credits or cost-sharing reductions. (Other types of special enrollment periods are unchanged.)

The change takes effect starting in the 2026 plan year.

What to do about it: If possible, plan to apply for coverage during open enrollment. Open enrollment in most states runs from Nov. 1 to Jan. 15. (Some state marketplaces use different dates.)

If you enroll under a different kind of special enrollment period, you could get subsidies. For example, you might qualify if you’ve lost other health coverage, moved, gotten married or divorced, or had a baby.

4. Some immigrants will lose premium tax credits

How it works now: Lawfully present immigrants can get marketplace health insurance plans. They can also qualify for subsidies.

What’s changing: Under the new law, only certain categories of immigrants qualify for marketplace coverage and subsidies:

Lawful permanent residents (green card holders).
Certain Cuban and Haitian immigrants.
Immigrants covered by a Compact of Free Association.

Others no longer qualify, even if lawfully present. Examples could include refugees, asylees and people with temporary protected status. Changes take effect starting in tax year 2027.

What to do about it: Check whether your immigration status makes you eligible for coverage and subsidies. If not, you might need to find another source of insurance.

5. Advance premium tax credits will be riskier

How it works now: Advance premium tax credits pay for some or all of your health insurance premiums. Credit amounts are based on your estimated annual income.

It’s possible for your actual income to end up higher than the estimate. If that happens, you qualify for smaller tax credits and have to pay the IRS back for the difference.

You might not have to repay the full amount. There are caps based on income. For example, an individual with income below 200% of the FPL would repay no more than $375 for 2024, according to the IRS.

What’s changing: Under the new law, there’s no cap on premium tax credit repayments. People with low or no income will have to repay the full difference in amounts starting in tax year 2026.

What to do about it: Provide the best information you can on your application about your expected income. The more accurate your estimated income, the less you might have to repay.

You can choose not to take the premium tax credit in advance. Instead, you can get the credit when you file taxes. In that case, you’d avoid the possibility of needing to repay it later. But paying full, unsubsidized premiums each month could be very expensive.

“You should be aware that the IRS routinely works with taxpayers who owe amounts they cannot afford to pay,” according to the IRS website. Consider contacting the IRS to make a payment arrangement.

Alex Rosenberg writes for NerdWallet. Email: arosenberg@nerdwallet.com.

The article 5 ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Changes to Marketplace Insurance originally appeared on NerdWallet.