That, though, turned out to be the least of my problems.

Using my home Wi-Fi connection, I checked my email and discovered a notification that $20,000 was being transferred from my credit card to an unfamiliar Discover Bank account.

I thwarted that transfer and reported the cell phone issues, but my nightmare was just starting. Days later, someone managed to transfer $19,000 from my credit card to the same strange bank account.

I was the victim of a type of fraud known as port-out hijacking, also called SIM-swapping. It’s a less-common form of identity theft. New federal regulations aimed at preventing port-out hijacking are under review, but it’s not clear how far they will go in stopping the crime.

Port-out hijacking goes a step beyond hacking into a store, bank or credit card account. In this case, the thieves take over your phone number. Any calls or texts go to them, not to you.

When your own phone access is lost to a criminal, the very steps you once took to protect your accounts, such as two-factor authentication, can be used against you. It doesn’t help to have a bank send a text to verify a transaction when the phone receiving the text is in the hands of the very person trying to break into your account.

Even if you’re a relatively tech-savvy individual who follows every recommendation on how to protect your tech and identity, it can still happen to you.

Experts say these scams will only increase and become more sophisticated, and the data show they are on the rise.

I am not the most tech savvy person, but I am a law-school educated journalist who specializes in finance reporting. Due to the very online nature of my job, I was taught all the methods of staying safe online: constantly changing my passwords with multi-factor authentication, signing out of apps that I don’t use regularly and keeping my personal information off the internet.

Still, despite being safe, I was vulnerable to criminals. And it took a lot of time and legwork before I got my money and phone number back.

The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center reports SIM-swapping complaints have increased more than 400% from 2018 to 2021, having received 1,611 SIM swapping complaints with personal losses of more than $68 million.

Complaints to the FCC about the crime have doubled, from 275 complaints in 2020 to 550 reports in 2023.

Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security, an online security company, says the rate of the crime is likely much higher since most identity thefts are not reported.

She also says two-factor authentication is an outdated way of keeping consumers safe, since it’s possible to find anyone’s phone number, birthday and social security number through any number of public or private databases on the web.

The ability of thieves to obtain your personal information was again made clear Friday when AT&T said the data of nearly all of its customers was downloaded to a third-party platform in a security breach two years ago. Although AT&T claims no personal information was leaked, cybersecurity experts have warned breaches involving telephone companies leave customers vulnerable to SIM swapping.

As of now, switching numbers from one phone to another is easy and can be done online or over the phone. The process takes less than a few hours so long as a criminal has your personal information on hand.

While consumers need to be smart about having a variety of different passwords and protections, consumers need to “put pressure on companies where its their job to protect our data,” Tobac said.

“We need them to update consumer protection protocols,” she said, since two-factor authentication is not enough.

FCC rules have recently changed to force companies to do more to protect consumers from this type of scam.

In 2023, the FCC introduced rulemaking that require wireless providers to “adopt secure methods of authenticating a customer before redirecting a customer’s phone number to a new device or provider” among other new rules. Companies could require more information when a customer tries to port over a phone number to another phone — from requiring government identification, voice verification or additional security questions.

The rules were scheduled to take effect on July 8, but the FCC on July 5 granted phone companies a waiver that delays implementation until the White House Office of Management conducts a further review.

The wireless industry had sought the delay, stating among other reasons that companies need more time to comply. CTIA, which lobbies on behalf of the companies, said the new rules will require major changes in technology and procedures both within the wireless companies and in their interactions with phone manufacturers.

But if the FCC rules had been in place, my phone number might have been harder to steal, experts say.

Ohio State University Professor Amy Schmitz says the new FCC rules make it easier for consumers to protect themselves, but it is still reliant on action and awareness of the consumers.

“I still question whether consumers will be aware of this, and will take action to protect themselves,” she said.

It took ten days to get my number back from Cricket Wireless — and that wasn’t until I told company representatives that I was writing a story about my experience.

In that period of time the scammer was able to access my bank account three times and eventually successfully transferred $19,000 from my credit card— even though I removed my number from the bank account, froze my credit, changed all my passwords, among other measures.

Bank of America worked to reverse the $19,000 wire after I visited a branch near the AP bureau in Washington.

Cricket apologized for the error and said in an email that its “expectation is to deliver a much better customer experience.”

“Fraudulent port-outs are a form of theft committed by sophisticated criminals,” reads a company statement that was emailed to me. “We have measures in place to help defeat them, and we work closely with law enforcement, our industry and consumers to help prevent this type of crime.”

An AT&T representative told me in an email that “all providers are working to implement the FCC’s new rules on port-outs and SIM swaps.”

I’m still unsure of how this person got access to my accounts, whether through my social security number, phone number or date of birth, or possibly a recording of my voice.

It was a hard lesson in how vulnerable we are when you lose control of our personal information that is so publicly available.

The post What’s worse than thieves hacking into your bank account? When they steal your phone number, too appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.

Sophisticated overseas criminals are stealing tens of billions of dollars from Americans every year, a crime wave projected to get worse as the U.S. population ages and technology like AI makes it easier than ever to perpetrate fraud and get away with it.

Internet and telephone scams have grown “exponentially,” overwhelming police and prosecutors who catch and convict relatively few of the perpetrators, said Kathy Stokes, director of fraud prevention at AARP’s Fraud Watch Network.

Victims rarely get their money back, including older people who have lost life savings to romance scams, grandparent scams, technical support fraud and other common grifts.

“We are at a crisis level in fraud in society,” Stokes said. “So many people have joined the fray because it is pretty easy to be a criminal. They don’t have to follow any rules. And you can make a lot of money, and then there’s very little chance that you’re going to get caught.”

A recent case from Ohio, in which an 81-year-old man was targeted by a scammer and allegedly responded with violence, illustrates the law enforcement challenge.

Police say the man fatally shot an Uber driver after wrongly assuming she was in on a plot to extract $12,000 in supposed bond money for a relative. The driver fell victim to the same scammer, dispatched to the home midway between Dayton and Columbus to pick up a package for delivery, according to authorities.

Homeowner William Brock was charged with murder in the fatal March 25 shooting of Lo-Letha Hall, but the scammer who threatened Brock over the phone and set the tragic chain of events in motion remains on the loose more than three months later.

Brock pleaded not guilty, saying he was in fear for his life.

Advantage scammers
Online and telephone rackets have become so commonplace that law enforcement agencies and adult protective services don’t have the resources to keep up.

“It’s a little bit like drinking from a fire hose,” said Brady Finta, a former FBI agent who supervised elder fraud investigations. “There’s just so much of it, logistically and reasonably, it’s almost impossible to overcome right now.”

Grifts also can be difficult to investigate, particularly ones that originate overseas, with stolen funds quickly converted into hard-to-track cryptocurrency or siphoned into foreign bank accounts.

Some police departments don’t take financial scams as seriously as other crime and victims wind up discouraged and demoralized, according to Paul Greenwood, who spent 22 years prosecuting elder financial abuse cases in San Diego.

“There’s a lot of law enforcement who think that because a victim sends money voluntarily through gift cards or through wire transfers, or for buying crypto, that they’re actually engaging in a consensual transaction,” said Greenwood, who travels the country teaching police how to spot fraud. “And that is a big mistake because it’s not. It’s not consensual. They’ve been defrauded.”

Federal prosecutors typically don’t get involved unless the fraud reaches a certain dollar amount, Greenwood said.

The U.S. Justice Department says it does not impose a blanket monetary threshold for federal prosecution of elder financial abuse. But it confirmed that some of the 93 U.S. attorneys’ offices nationwide may set their own thresholds, giving priority to cases in which there are more victims or greater financial impact. Federal prosecutors file hundreds of elder fraud and abuse cases annually.

The Federal Trade Commission says the “vast majority” of frauds go unreported. Often, victims are reluctant to come forward.

A 74-year-old woman recently charged with robbing a credit union north of Cincinnati was the victim of an online scam, according to her family. Authorities say they believe the woman was preyed on by a scammer, yet there is no record she made a formal police report.

“These people are very good at what they do, and they’re very good at deceiving people and prying money out of them,” said Fairview Township, Ohio, police Sgt. Brandon McCroskey, who investigated the robbery. “I’ve seen people almost want to fist fight the police and bank tellers because they … believe in their mind that they need to get this money out.”

A devastating scheme
Older people hold more wealth as a group and present a ripe target for scammers. The impact can be devastating since many of these victims are past their working years and don’t have much time to recoup losses.

Elder fraud complaints to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center rose by 14% last year, with losses increasing by 11% to $3.4 billion, according to a recent FBI report.

Other estimates put the annual loss much higher.

A 2023 AARP study calculated that Americans over 60 lose $28.3 billion each year to fraud. The Federal Trade Commission, seeking to account for unreported losses, estimated fraudsters stole a staggering $137 billion in 2022, including $48 billion from older adults. The authors of that study acknowledged a “considerable degree of uncertainty.”

In San Diego, 80-year-old William Bortz said criminals stole his family’s nest egg of almost $700,000 in an elaborate scheme involving a nonexistent Amazon order, a fake “refund processing center” in Hong Kong, doctored bank statements and an instruction that Bortz needed to “synchronize bank accounts” in order to get his money back.

Bortz’s scammer was relentless and persuasive, harassing him with dozens of phone calls and, at one point, taking control of his computer.

Even though he was the victim of a crime, Bortz struggles with self-blame.

“I understand now why so much elder abuse fraud is never reported. Because when you look back at it, you think, ‘How could I have been so stupid?’” said Bortz, who retired after a career in banking, financial services and real estate.

His daughter, Ave Williams, said local police and the FBI were diligent in trying to track down the overseas scammer and recover the money, but ran into multiple dead ends. The family blames Bortz’s bank, which Williams said ignored multiple red flags and facilitated several large wire transfers by her father over the course of eight days. The bank denied wrongdoing and the family’s lawsuit against it was dismissed.

“The scammers are getting better,” Williams said. ”We need our law enforcement to be given the tools they need, and we need our banks to get better because they are the first line of defense.”

The Justice Department contends industry needs to do more, saying the U.S. can’t prosecute its way out the problem.

“Private industry — including the tech, retail, banking, fintech, and telecommunications sectors — must make it harder for fraudsters to defraud victims and harder to launder victim proceeds,” the agency said in a statement to The Associated Press.

A way forward
Banking industry officials told a Senate subcommittee in May they are investing heavily in new technologies to stop fraud, “and some hold great promise.” The American Bankers Association says it’s working on a program to coordinate real-time communication among banks to better flag suspicious activity and reduce the flow of stolen funds.

But industry officials said the banks cannot singlehandedly prevent fraud. They said the U.S. needs an overarching national strategy to combat scammers, calling the federal government’s current efforts disjointed and uncoordinated.

Law enforcement agencies and industry need to join forces to fight fraud more quickly and efficiently, said Finta, the former FBI agent, who launched a nonprofit called the National Elder Fraud Coordination Center to cultivate better cooperation between law enforcement and major corporations like Walmart, Amazon and Google.

“There’s very, very smart people and there’s very powerful, wealthy companies that want this to stop,” he said. “So we do have the ability, I think, to make a greater impact and to help out our brothers and sisters in law enforcement that are struggling with this tsunami of fraud.”

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The Lone Star State led all others in new Hispanic, Asian and Black residents in 2023. Among U.S. metro areas, Houston added the most Hispanic residents, and Dallas the most Asian and Black residents, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.

Texas also the had the biggest jump last year in the overall population, adding 473,000 people.

“We are adding more people, and that would include all different kinds of people, and more diversity,” said Xiuhong “Helen” You, associate director and senior demographer of the Texas Demographic Center. “Whether it’s people who are looking for job opportunities or whether it’s people who are beginning to establish families and are looking for affordable homes.”

Nationwide, Hispanic residents propelled U.S. growth last year, accounting for almost three-quarters of the nation’s population gain, according to the bureau’s population estimates from 2022 to 2023.

Hispanic people, who can be of any race, are now the nation’s second-largest demographic group, and births outpacing deaths made up most of the Hispanic growth last year.

“The Hispanic population is expanding at a substantially faster rate than the non-Hispanic population,” said Kristie Wilder, a Census Bureau demographer.

The Hispanic population grew by about 1.2 million people last year, out of a total U.S. gain of more than 1.6 million residents, raising the number of Hispanics in the country to 65.2 million people, or almost a fifth of the total U.S. population, according to the bureau’s estimates.

The largest racial or ethnic group in the U.S., non-Hispanic white people, representing 58% of the population, was the only one to experience a year-over-year drop — 461,000 people — because of deaths outpacing births. Its numbers would have declined further if not for immigration. With a median age of 43.2, it is the oldest demographic group. South Carolina added the most non-Hispanic white residents among states, and Nashville had the biggest gain among metro areas.

The Asian population grew by more than 585,000 people last year. Unlike Hispanic growth, Asian growth was driven by immigration as opposed to natural increase. The Asian population was more than 20.6 million people last year.

The Black population grew by a half-million people last year, driven by natural increase, and totaled 42.3 million people in 2023.

The American Indian and Alaska Native population grew by 8,227 people, mostly through natural increase, and now stands at 2.4 million people.

The median age in the U.S. grew slightly from 38.9 in 2022 to 39.1 last year. Among metro areas, The Villages retirement community in central Florida had the highest median age of 68 last year, while Provo, Utah had the youngest at 26.1.

Among states, Texas had the biggest Hispanic gain last year, an increase of 242,000 residents, with 30% of the increase in metro Houston. The Lone Star State added almost 92,000 new Asian residents and 91,000 new Black residents, with metro Dallas accounting for almost half of the state’s gain of Asian residents and 40% of its increase in Black residents.

“Our state is a younger state than the rest of the nation, and our Hispanic population also is a younger group, and at the same time, we have an aging white population,” said Coda Rayo-Garza, research and data director at Every Texan, an advocacy and research group. “We are only going to experience more and more growth in the nonwhite demographic group.”

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Looking for cricket played by locals, not professionals, he found inspiration in another game.

Here’s how he made this extraordinary photo.

Why this photo?
I was looking for daily life scenes involving cricket in Guyana. A few days earlier, I had found some children playing cricket in the street, but after several more days of searching for another scene, I couldn’t find any other cricket activities. After asking around, I learned that people used to play cricket in the sand on Sundays on a beach about 45 minutes by car. This sounded like an interesting and fun story to cover. Full of hope, I took a taxi and began the trip.

When I arrived, I was surprised to see a large ship docked at the edge of the beach that was no larger than 100 (yards) meters. The oversized ship on such a small beach created a Gulliverian feeling of being tiny. The ship seemed to be accepted as just part of the scenery by the locals, who had fun using it for climbing acrobatics – trying to shimmy aboard and then jumping into the water.

How I made this photo
Making the most of my trip, I decided to take photos of people having fun on the beach because I hadn’t found what I was originally looking for. A child started climbing the mooring rope as high as he could and then jumping into the water. Other children began tugging on the line to make it more challenging, causing the child to fall into the water before reaching his goal.

I used a 28mm lens, which emphasized the immense strength of the scene, with the ship in the background and the children seemingly pulling it toward the shore. The beautiful sunset light added to the ambiance. From my position, I waited for a child on the right to enter the frame. When he finally did, I took several shots, varying only in the position of his feet. One of these shots, where his feet were positioned perfectly, gave me the greatest sense of strength and captured the essence of the moment.

Why this photo works
Sometimes, when you take a picture and it turns out well, you feel a surge of energy in your chest that tells you this is the image, without a doubt. That’s exactly how I felt with this photo. Everything I saw was out of the ordinary: a large boat on the shore, people bathing and playing around it as if it were a normal part of their environment. This sense of normalcy juxtaposed with the extraordinary scene is what makes the image so compelling.

The children pulling on the ropes to make their friend fall from above also created an added layer of intrigue. Their actions, seemingly aimed at both play and exerting force on the “metal monster,” gave the moment a palpable sense of strength. The light at sunset enhanced the scene beautifully. The rope starts from the right of composition the frame and leads the viewer’s eye into the image, inviting them to follow the path and engage with the scene. This allows the viewer to feel as though they are part of the action, understanding the playful yet powerful dynamics at play. The positioning of the lens at the beginning of the rope helps to narrate the entire situation effectively.

In any circumstance, I always strive to capture the beauty in people’s actions by relying on light.

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They represent West Coconut Grove when it was a vital majority-Black neighborhood hidden among some of the most affluent areas in Miami that boomed with family businesses, local hangouts and sporting events. Some call it West Grove, Black Grove or Little Bahamas in a nod to its roots. Most just call it The Grove — a place steeped in cultural history transformed by the decades.

“When you talk about what is The Grove, you’re talking about true history of South Florida,” said Charles Gibson, grandson of one of the first Black members of the Miami City Commission, Theodore Gibson.

Sports was its heartbeat. It nurtured the early careers of Olympic gold medalists and football stars like Cooper, national champions and future football Hall of Famers like Gore, all of whom trace their first sports memories to this close-knit community.

Today, few remnants of that proud Black heritage exist. Years of economic neglect followed by recent gentrification have wiped out much of the neighborhood’s cultural backbone. Robust youth leagues and sports programs have dwindled. Now, the community that once created an environment for young athletes to succeed — a trusted neighbor watching out for a young football player on his walk to practice, a respected coach instilling discipline and persistence in a future track star — is at risk of extinction.

“I think in two or three years, if something’s not done, Black Grove is going to be totally eradicated,” said Anthony Witherspoon, a West Grove native and founder of the Coconut Grove Sports Hall of Fame.

Witherspoon, known as “Spoon” by everyone in town, is a former college basketball player and coach who returned to West Grove in 2015 after nearly 30 years in Atlanta and found a neighborhood far different from the one that raised him.

Witherspoon recalled the late 1970s, when he would walk down the aptly named Grand Avenue — once the economic epicenter of West Grove — after a Friday night high school football game, grab dinner at a local mom-and-pop place and hang out at the popular Tikki Club.

The neighborhood’s earlier generations died, many of their families moved elsewhere and disinvestment led to poverty and neglect. Then redevelopment moved in, replacing longtime locals with non-Black newcomers. The mom-and-pops are largely gone. So is the Tikki Club, now an empty building, its last bit of vibrancy the Bahamian-inspired colors lingering on its walls.

“I was here. I lived in the community. I felt the impact of sports,” Witherspoon said. “I came back from Atlanta, Georgia, and I ran into the gentrification. And this was in the back of my mind: We still need to preserve this history.”

Witherspoon founded the Hall of Fame as a way to keep that legacy alive. A time capsule of about 90 athletes and coaches from the area, it starts with figures like Colzie, a World War II veteran who played baseball for the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues, and continues with the former pro running back Gore and Cooper, a receiver with the Cleveland Browns.

“Coconut Grove is the nesting place for all of us athletes from this neighborhood,” said Gerald Tinker, a West Grove native who won a gold medal at the 1972 Olympics as a member of the U.S. 4×100 meter relay team. “They would always expect us to be just as good (as earlier generations), and just as humble as well. And it’s always been that way.”

The community’s reputation for athletics was birthed at George Washington Carver High School, a segregated Black school. Carver was a football powerhouse in the 1950s and 1960s, winning five state championships under Powell, who helped shape the landscape of Miami’s high school sports scene.

Harold Cole, a former coach and athletic director at nearby Coral Gables High School who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2019, said Powell’s influence has lasted generations.

“He was a coach; he was a mentor,” Cole said. “He was responsible for so many of the athletes that have come out of Coconut Grove.”

Cole said West Grove still has youth sports programs, but since many families have moved out and kids have dispersed to other school districts, “it isn’t quite the same.”

Integration in the 1970s forced Carver to close. It’s a middle school now, located in the wealthy nearby town of Coral Gables.

“That division broke the fabric of the community to a degree in the ‘80s,” Witherspoon said.

Nichelle Haymore’s family hopes to preserve some of the old neighborhood by reopening the Ace Theater, a popular spot for Black residents during the Jim Crow era. Haymore’s great-grandfather, businessman Harvey Wallace Sr., bought the theater on Grand Avenue in the 1970s. Born in West Grove, Haymore spent years in Texas before moving back in 2007 to help maintain the theater.

“The feel of the neighborhood is different,” Haymore said. “Neighbors who may have looked out for your house in the beginning, they don’t say hello, they don’t speak. People walk their dogs in your yard. That neighborly respect is different because the neighborhood is different.”

Shotgun-style homes belonging to Black residents have been torn down for sleek, boxy estates — called ice cubes by some — and condominiums far too expensive for the middle-class people that built the community. Abandoned, boarded-up buildings sit where landmarks used to draw crowds. Giant real estate advertisements are plastered on the fences of vacant lots.

“They’re knocking down homes that’s been in people’s families for years and they’re building townhomes,” said Denzel Perryman, a Coconut Grove native and former University of Miami star who is a linebacker for the Los Angeles Chargers. “So, it does affect the community because some kids who are from there, they end up going to different places, different parks because they don’t live in the Coconut Grove area.”

Perryman, who lived in Miami’s historic Black neighborhood of Overtown as a kid, spent most of his time in West Grove playing football at Armbrister Park or participating in the many after-school activities the community had to offer.

Some still exist today. Perryman watched his childhood football team, the Coconut Grove Cowboys, win a Pop Warner championship in December. Youth teams still hold practices at Armbrister Park, though some of them look different from teams of years past.

“It’s unfortunate because you lose so much, the character,” said Gibson, a football and lacrosse coach. “There’s certain things in a community that has family ties to it. When you lose that, I think that it’s a sadness.”

Gibson is determined, like many other residents, to foster the same family environment that nurtured him.

“You can’t put a dollar sign on saying, ‘Go to grandma’s house. She (lives) next door,’” Gibson said. “You don’t even have to look outside because you know that it’s just 10 steps away and they’re inside the house. How can you put a value on that?”

In The Grove, that is the question people are struggling to answer — before it’s too late.

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Friends and family watched her kids when they could during her treatment last year for colon cancer. But Davis had gaps with no help because she couldn’t afford child care and didn’t know where to look for assistance.

“I did not have the strength nor the energy to try to navigate these things myself,” the San Antonio, Texas, resident said.

Patients are not getting enough help dealing with a healthcare system that is growing increasingly complex, according to researchers and other experts in care delivery. They say more frequent insurance complications, doctor and drug shortages, and a lack of communication all make life harder for people with serious or chronic illnesses.

“Just about anything you can think of, it’s now harder to get it done, basically,” said Elisabeth Schuler, founder and president of Patient Navigator, a business that helps people get through the system.

More care providers and employers are offering help guiding people, a practice the federal Medicare program has started to cover. But that assistance has limits.

Patients with serious or chronic illnesses face a web of challenges. They include:

— Coordinating doctor appointments and tests, often while working or undergoing treatment.

— Dealing with coverage denials or care delays due to insurer pre-approval requirements.

— Figuring out how to fill a prescription if they can’t get coverage or their medication lands on a growing list of drugs in shortage.

— Acting as a go-between for doctors and specialists who don’t talk to each other.

— Paying medical bills and getting help with rent or utilities. That assistance has been harder to find since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Beth Scott of the non-profit Patient Advocate Foundation.

All of this can be compounded for patients who don’t speak English or have no experience navigating the health care system, noted Gladys Arias, a policy principal with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

Davis, the San Antonio cancer patient, said she was in the hospital when she asked for help finding community resources.

She said a case manager set a book of available resources on her bedside table and did nothing else. Davis, a nursing professor, found the book confusing. The programs it detailed had different qualifications based on things like income or diagnosis. The 44-year-old wound up losing her car and leaving her home after care bills piled up.

“I feel like there was some type of help out there for me,” she said. “I just didn’t know where to look.”

Ali DiGiacomo said she wishes that she learned in college how to deal with insurance companies. She often has to do that while coping with side effects from rheumatoid arthritis treatments.

The 30-year-old personal trainer said she’s spent years trying to get a diagnosis for bouts of intense chest pain, which doctors think may be tied to her condition. That requires imaging tests that insurers often decline to cover.

“Dealing with them with brain fog and fatigue and being in pain is just like the cherry on top,” DiGiacomo said.

DiGiacomo said her formulary, or list of covered drugs, has changed three times. That can force her to hunt for a place that carries the newly covered drug, which puts her behind on her medication schedule.

She figures she talks to her insurer at least four times a month.

“I have to hype myself up,” she said. “Then you talk to a million different people. I wish I just had like one person that helped me deal with all this.”

Care delays due to insurer pre-approval requirements have grown more common, many experts say. More plans also have made it challenging to get coverage outside their networks of doctors and hospitals.

A typical appeal for a denial can easily involve 20 to 30 phone calls between the patient, the insurer and the doctor’s office, said Scott, director of case management for Patient Advocate Foundation, which helps people with chronic or debilitating illnesses.

She said some patients give up.

“Sometimes you are sick, and you don’t want to fight it anymore,” she said.

Case managers at hospitals are often overworked, which limits how much help they can provide, noted Schuler, who became a patient advocate about 20 years ago after her 2-year-old daughter went through cancer treatment.

Overall, help for patients is “very patchy everywhere,” according to Harvard Medical School researcher Michael Anne Kyle.

“I think we have a lot of Band-Aids that are necessary,” she said.

Many cancer centers offer patient navigators who can help coordinate appointments, get answers to coverage questions, find rides to the doctor and provide other support. Some insurers provide similar assistance.

And more employers are offering navigation or advocacy help for people on their insurance plans, according to the benefits consultant Mercer.

But these services still aren’t widespread. Alzheimer’s disease patients and their caregivers lack consistent access to such help, said Sam Fazio, a senior director with the non-profit Alzheimer’s Association.

“People are having trouble finding their way,” he said.

Making the system better for patients requires big change, said Dr. Victor Montori, a Mayo Clinic researcher who studies care delivery.

He said the system must focus more on minimally disruptive medicine, which makes care fit into patient lives. That means things like cutting unnecessary paperwork and surveys, making appointments more flexible and giving patients more time with doctors.

He noted that the burden that falls on patients is not just the time and effort they spend navigating the system. It’s also what they give up to do that.

“If you waste people’s time on silly things, you are being unkind to (their) main purpose, which is to live,” he said. “We have to stop thinking of the patient as a part time employee of the healthcare system that we don’t get to pay.”

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Instead of counting calories or measuring portions, dieters just have to pay attention to the clock, said Courtney Peterson, a nutrition researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

“You have this really simple rule: Eat or don’t eat,” Peterson said.

The technique has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years, becoming a leading trending topic on social media.

But does time-restricted eating, a form of intermittent fasting, really help people shed pounds and boost health?

Here’s what you need to know about the practice:

WHAT IS INTERMITTENT FASTING?
Intermittent fasting is a meal strategy where people switch between fasting and eating on a regular schedule, defined as at least 14 hours with no food, Peterson said. That can mean variations such as eating every other day, eating five days a week and then fasting for two days or limiting daily eating to certain hours.

Time-restricted eating, where people condense all of their eating into a daily window of 10 hours or less, is the most popular form of intermittent fasting. Diners will delay breakfast until 10 a.m. or noon and then eat dinner by 6 p.m. or 8 p.m., forgoing food the rest of the time.

HOW IS IT SUPPOSED TO HELP?
The theory behind time-restricted eating is that it supports the circadian rhythm, or the body’s internal clock. Spending more time in a fasting state may boost the body’s processes that govern blood sugar and fat metabolism, for instance, scientists say.

Early studies in mice starting in 2012 seemed to show health benefits from time-restricted eating. Small studies in people with obesity suggested that the practice might help them lose weight and improve other health markers.

IS TIME-RESTRICTED EATING EFFECTIVE FOR WEIGHT LOSS?
Research has shown that people on time-restricted eating plans tend to eat fewer calories, which could explain weight loss.

Results from combined studies suggested that adults with obesity who limited their eating hours without focusing on calories naturally reduced their energy intake by 200 to 550 calories a day, losing 3% to 5% of their baseline body weight.

But a larger study of people observed over a longer period of time showed that the time restrictions alone might not matter.

A 2022 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine tracked 139 people with obesity for a year. Participants either followed a calorie-restricted diet during a certain time window or ate the same number of calories throughout the day. Both groups lost weight — 14 to 18 pounds on average — but there was no significant difference between the strategies.

“Our data right now suggests that time-restricted eating isn’t any better or worse than cutting calories,” Peterson said. Nor does the technique help burn more calories, she added.

Still, Peterson said, the simplicity of time restriction might be easier to maintain than a typical diet.

“Almost no one likes calorie counting,” she said.

IS INTERMITTENT FASTING SAFE?
Early clinical trials with eating windows of six to 10 hours found that time-restricted eating was “generally safe,” researchers reported in the journal Obesity.

But headline-grabbing research presented this year at an American Heart Association scientific session suggested that people following an 8-hour time-restricted diet had a much higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease than those who ate over 12 to 16 hours.

That research hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal, noted Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, of the Mayo Clinic.

But he said there is reason to be cautious. Longstanding evidence suggests that skipping breakfast may be linked to cardiovascular disease and death. People should check with their health care providers before they try restricted eating, especially if the fasting window lasts until midday.

“It’s a call for pausing before you just recommend a particular diet,” Lopez-Jimenez said.

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But in 158 days, voters across America will decide whether he will return to the White House to serve another four years as the nation’s president.

Trump’s conviction in his New York hush money trial on Thursday is a stunning development in an already unorthodox presidential election with profound implications for the justice system and perhaps U.S. democracy itself.

But in a deeply divided America, it’s unclear whether Trump’s status as someone with a felony conviction will have any impact at all on the 2024 election. Trump remains in a competitive position against President Joe Biden this fall, even as the Republican former president now faces the prospect of a prison sentence in the run-up to the November election.

In the short term at least, there were immediate signs that the unanimous guilty verdict was helping to unify the Republican Party’s disparate factions as GOP officials in Congress and in state capitals across the country rallied behind their presumptive presidential nominee, while his campaign expected to benefit from a flood of new fundraising dollars.

Standing outside the courtroom, Trump described the verdict as the result of a “rigged, disgraceful trial.”

“The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people,” Trump said, referring to Election Day. “This is long from over.”

The immediate reaction from elected Democrats was muted by comparison, although the Biden campaign issued a fundraising appeal within minutes of the verdict suggesting that the fundamentals of the election had not changed.

“We’re THRILLED that justice has finally been served,” the campaign wrote. “But this convicted criminal can STILL win back the presidency this fall without a huge surge in Democratic support.”

Strategists predict a muted impact

There has been some polling conducted on the impact of a guilty verdict, although such hypothetical scenarios are notoriously difficult to predict.

A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found that only 4% of Trump’s supporters said they would withdraw their support if he’s convicted of a felony, though an additional 16% said they would reconsider it.

On the eve of the verdict, the Trump campaign released a memo from its polling team suggesting that the impact of the trial is “already baked into the race in target states.”

Trump campaign advisers argued the case would help them motivate their core supporters. So many donations came into WinRed, the platform the campaign uses for fundraising, that it crashed. Aides quickly worked to set up a backup platform to collect money pouring in.

Trump headed Thursday night to a fundraising event scheduled before the verdict, according to a person familiar with his plans who was not authorized to speak publicly.

His two most senior campaign advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, were not with him in New York, but in Palm Beach, Florida, where the campaign is headquartered.

And while it may take days or weeks to know for sure, Trump’s critics in both parties generally agreed that there may not be much political fallout, although some were hopeful that the convictions would have at least a marginal impact in what will likely be a close election.

Sarah Longwell, founder of Republican Voters Against Trump, who conducts regular focus groups, suggested the guilty verdict may help Biden on the margins by pushing so-called “double haters” — a term used to describe voters who dislike Trump and Biden — away from Trump.

But more than anything, she suggested that voters simply haven’t been following the trial very closely.

“The best thing about the trial ending is that it ended,” Longwell said, describing the courtroom proceeding as a distraction from more serious issues in the campaign. “There will now be an opportunity to focus the narrative on who Trump is and what a second Trump term would look like.”

Republican pollster Neil Newhouse predicted that the trial may ultimately have little impact in a lightning-fast news environment with several months before early polls open.

“Voters have short memories and even shorter attention spans,” Newhouse said. “Just as the former president’s two impeachments have done little to dim Trump’s support, this guilty verdict may be overshadowed in three weeks by the first presidential debate.”

A plan to campaign after sentencing

The judge set sentencing for July 11, just four days before the scheduled start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Each of the falsifying business records charges carries up to four years behind bars, though prosecutors have not said whether they intend to seek imprisonment. Nor is it clear whether the judge — who earlier in the trial warned of jail time for gag order violations — would impose that punishment even if asked.

Trump will be able to vote in Florida, where he established residency in 2019, if he is not in prison on Election Day.

And imprisonment would not bar Trump from continuing his pursuit of the White House.

Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who was with the former president in court this week and also serves as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said in a Fox News Channel interview before the verdict that Trump would still try to campaign for the presidency if convicted.

If Trump is given a sentence of home confinement, she said, “We will have him doing virtual rallies and campaign events if that is the case. And we’ll have to play the hand that we’re dealt.”

There are no campaign rallies on the calendar for now, though Trump is expected to hold fundraisers next week.

Biden himself has yet to weigh in.

He was spending the night at his family’s beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, after marking the anniversary of his son Beau’s death earlier in the day at church.

Voters grapple with the verdict

Texas voter Steven Guarner, a 24-year-old nurse, said he’s undecided on who he’ll vote for in the upcoming election.

Guarner, an independent, said the verdict will be a deciding factor for him once he studies the details of the trial. He didn’t think it would sway the many voters who are already decided on the Biden-Trump rematch, however.

“I think his base is the type that might not care much or might agree with him about the court system,” Guarner said of Trump.

Indeed, Republican officials from Florida to Wisconsin to Arkansas and Illinois condemned the verdict as a miscarriage of justice by what they described as a politically motivated prosecutor and blue-state jury.

Brian Schimming, chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s executive committee, called the case against Trump a “sham” and a “national embarrassment.”

“There was no justice in New York today,” Schimming charged.

And Michael Perez Ruiz, a 47-year-old who was ordering food shortly after the verdict at Miami’s Versailles restaurant, an icon of the city’s GOP-leaning Cuban American community, said he would continue to stand by Trump.

“I would vote for him 20 times,” Perez Ruiz said.

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The Social Security Administration annually tracks the names given to girls and boys in each state, with names dating back to 1880. The agency gathers the names from applications for Social Security cards.

Based on cultural and population trends, the list shows how names can rise and fall in popularity. The latest was released Friday.

Liam has reigned supreme seven years in a row while Olivia has topped the girls’ list for five, after unseating Emma, previously No. 1 for five years.

After Liam, the most common names for boys are, in order: Noah, Oliver, James, Elijah, Mateo, Theodore, Henry, Lucas, and William.

And after Olivia, the most common names for girls are Emma, Charlotte, Amelia, Sophia, Mia, Isabella, Ava, Evelyn and Luna.

The Social Security Administration’s latest data show that 3.58 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2023. That’s a slight decrease from last year’s 3.66 million babies, representing an overall decline in the American birthrate.

Social media stars and popular television shows are having some impact on the rising popularity of certain names, Social Security says. The fastest rising name for boys is Izael while the second fastest rising, Chozen, shot up to number 813 in 2023.

The character Chozen was a protagonist in the last season of the Netflix show Cobra Kai.

For girls, one of the fastest rising baby names is Kaeli, which rose 1,692 spots. “Parents must have really smashed the ‘like’ button for YouTube and TikTok star Kaeli McEwen, also known as Kaeli Mae, who routinely promotes a clean, tidy, and neutral-aesthetic lifestyle,” Social Security said in a news release.

The complete, searchable list of baby names is on the Social Security website.

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The rebrand is another seismic shift for an organization steeped in tradition that did not allow gay youths or girls to begin joining its ranks until relatively recently. Seeking to boost flagging membership numbers, the Irving, Texas-based organization announced the name change Tuesday at its annual meeting in Florida.

“In the next 100 years we want any youth in America to feel very, very welcome to come into our programs,” Roger Krone, who took over last fall as president and chief executive officer, told The Associated Press in an interview before the announcement.

The change will officially take effect on Feb. 8, 2025, timed to the organization’s 115th birthday.

The organization began allowing gay youth in 2013 and ended a blanket ban on gay adult leaders in 2015. In 2017, it made the historic announcement that girls would be accepted as Cub Scouts as of 2018 and into the flagship Boy Scout program — renamed Scouts BSA — in 2019. Over 6,000 girls have now achieved the vaunted Eagle Scout rank.

The Girl Scouts of the USA, a separate organization, has clashed with the Boy Scouts in recent years over its recruitment of girls. The Girl Scouts did not respond to requests seeking comment Tuesday.

A wave of reaction to the change on social media included criticism that the word “boy” will no longer appear in the name, including from Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Like other organizations, the Boy Scouts of America lost members during the pandemic, when participation was difficult. After a high point over the last decade of over 2 million members in 2018, the organization currently serves just over 1 million youths, including more than 176,000 girls and young women. Membership peaked in 1972 at almost 5 million.

Generations of scouts have included eventual presidents (among them Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford), astronauts (Buzz Aldrin) and celebrities (actor Harrison Ford, filmmaker Steven Spielberg). Krone said the organization must continue to attract newcomers.

“Part of my job is to reduce all the barriers I possibly can for people to accept us as an organization and to join,” he said.

There were nearly 1,000 young women in the inaugural class of female Eagle Scouts in 2021, including Selby Chipman. The all-girls troop she was a founding member of in her hometown of Oak Ridge, North Carolina, has grown from five girls to nearly 50, and she thinks the name change will encourage even more girls to join.

“Girls were like: ‘You can join Boy Scouts of America?’” said Chipman, now a 20-year-old college student and assistant scoutmaster of her troop.

Rebranding can risk alienating supporters who think the change is unnecessary, said David Aaker, vice chairman of the national branding and marketing firm Prophet. But he described the Boy Scouts’ rebranding as savvy, saying it kickstarts a new conversation about the organization while not being so drastic that it strays too far from its original scouting mission.

“It’s a one-time chance to tell a new story,” said Aaker, who also is a professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley Haas business school.

The move to accept girls throughout the Boy Scout ranks strained a bond with the Girl Scouts of the USA, which sued, saying it created marketplace confusion and damaged its recruitment efforts. They reached a settlement agreement after a judge rejected those claims, saying both groups are free to use words like “scouts” and “scouting.”

Past pressure to allow girls into the Boy Scouts had come from those including the National Organization for Women, which applauded Tuesday’s announcement.

Much of the online criticism invoked the word “woke,” including Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Georgia Republican, who said on X: “Wokeness destroys everything it touches.”

But Lois Alvar, a 20-year-old Eagle Scout and assistant scoutmaster from the Dallas area, said the new name helps all scouts feel accepted. “Having it nationally recognized that girls are being welcomed and included in scouting allows it to be a more safe space, just in general,” she said.

The Boy Scouts’ $2.4 billion bankruptcy reorganization plan took effect last year, allowing the organization to keep operating while compensating the more than 80,000 men who say they were sexually abused as children while in scouting.

Although the organization won’t officially become Scouting America until next year, Krone said he expects people will start immediately using the name.

“It sends this really strong message to everyone in America that they can come to this program, they can bring their authentic self, they can be who they are and they will be welcomed here,” Krone said.

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