Carly Simon has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, treated for skin cancer
NEW YORK — Singer Carly Simon has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and was recently treated for skin cancer, the singer shared in a statement provided to the Associated Press.
“So many people have written to me, kindly wondering about my relative silence, asking how I am and what I have been doing. The truth is, I’ve been learning how to live with Parkinson’s disease,” Simon's statement on Monday read.
The singer, 83, had been experiencing arthritis in one of her hips and both her knees, resulting in replacement surgeries for those three joints. But her mobility continued to decline. At times, she said, she could not walk without “considerable help.”
“My family and I knew that something more was going on. After an extensive evaluation at the Mayo Clinic, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s,” she said.
“It has taken me some time to understand the diagnosis, to adjust to it, and to decide how much I wanted to say about it publicly,” she explained. “Parkinson’s is different for everyone, and it can be unpredictable. Some days I’m so tired I can’t get the day moving at all. On others, it gives me a little more room to move, think, work, and feel like myself.”
Parkinson’s is a neurologic disease that robs people of control over their movements. It typically starts with tremors and is characterized by slow movement, a shuffling gait, stiff limbs, balance problems and slurred speech.
About 1 million Americans are living with Parkinson’s, and 10 million people worldwide, the Parkinson’s Foundation estimates. It usually appears after age 60, though it sometimes develops before age 50.
The exact cause isn’t known, but Parkinson’s develops when cells that produce one of the brain’s chemical messengers — dopamine — begin to deteriorate and die.
There is no cure, but there are treatments including medications that affect dopamine levels and a surgically implanted tremor-blocking device. Patients also can benefit from physical and occupational therapy.
“I began treatment, including taking medication to help with stiffness and other symptoms,” Simon said. “There is no tidy or predictable schedule to the illness. It does not consult my calendar before deciding what kind of day I am going to have.”
She also shared that she was treated for basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer, on her face at the same time. She had surgery, and the cancer was removed, “but the surgery affected my appearance and made me more self-conscious about being seen in public,” she said.
She said music has been a salve, and on Aug. 14, she will release “Comes in Waves,” her first album of original songs since 2008.
“Working on the music gave shape to days that did not always have much shape. It gave me somewhere to go without having to leave the room,” she continued. “It reminded me that illness can change your life without becoming the whole of your life.”
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“Today” show host Savannah Guthrie says in a new video that her family is living an unending nightmare nearly six months after her mother’s disappearance and pleads with her kidnappers: “Tell us where to look for her.”
The video released Monday is the latest public plea from the journalist about 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie since her disappearance on Feb. 1 from her home just outside Tucson, Ariz. Savannah Guthrie said her family will never stop looking for her.
“The world can be a cruel and unforgiving place, and I know that you have tried to do things the right way,” she said. “So I’m asking you, begging you, to do the right thing now. Make the right choice. Help us find her. Tell us where to look for her. I truly believe it is never too late to do the right thing.”
Authorities believe Nancy Guthrie was kidnapped, abducted or otherwise taken against her will on Feb. 1. They found blood near the front doorstep of her home just outside Tucson, and the FBI later released surveillance videos showing a masked man on the porch that night.
Volunteers and search teams scoured the nearby desert terrain filled with cactuses, bushes and boulders in the weeks after she vanished. A volunteer group recently searched for her body near the Arizona-Mexico border. Authorities have not said how many purported ransom demands were made after Guthrie’s disappearance, though three news organizations reported receiving such notes and turned them over to investigators.
The FBI has discounted some of the ransom notes as nothing more than extortion attempts, but said it’s still evaluating others that might be legitimate. The federal agency hasn’t specified which ransom notes might be genuine.
Savannah Guthrie has previously made a series of social media postings about her mother after she went missing. In the days after the disappearance, Savannah Guthrie and her siblings acknowledged they were aware of media reports of a supposed ransom letter and were ready to talk and listen, but wanted proof their mother was alive. Weeks later, Savannah Guthrie said her family was offering a $1 million reward for information leading to the recovery of her mother. She also acknowledged for the first time that her mother might not be alive, but added that there was still hope.
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NEW YORK — Over a year after a federal New York judge tossed “It Ends with Us” director and star Justin Baldoni’s libel lawsuit against The New York Times, his studio has been ordered to pay over $171,000 to the paper.
The 42-year-old filmmaker, who also starred in the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s book of the same name, filed a $250 million suit against The Times in early 2025, alleging that its December 2024 feature, which laid out co-star Blake Lively’s allegations of sexual harassment and a retaliatory smear campaign, was “rife with inaccuracies [and] misrepresentations.” Judge Lewis Liman dismissed the filing in June 2025.
Now, Wayfarer Studios must pay $171,616 to The Times, according to legal documents obtained Monday by TMZ, with an insider close to the company saying they “fully understood the enormous risks involved in taking on” the paper.
Ultimately though, Wayfarer felt the filing “a significant victory” as it “was lost on journalistic privilege, not on the facts.”
The Times’ piece, “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Campaign,” detailed Lively’s civil rights complaint against Baldoni, which she then followed up — also in December 2024 — with a lawsuit against him.
Liman, in his decision, found The Times had “no obvious motive to favor Lively’s version of events,” merely the “available evidence” and her initial complaint.
In addition to suing The Times, Baldoni and co. filed a $400 million defamation suit against Lively and her camp, which was also tossed in June 2025. For that suit, Liman found the actress not liable as her allegations originated in a civil-rights complaint.
Baldoni missed the deadline to appeal Liman’s tossing of either suit, as reported by TMZ in late October.
Lively’s suit was still set to go to trial this May when news broke that she and the Wayfarer parties had settled in early May, by which point Liman had also dismissed 10 of her 13 claims against Baldoni, including those pertaining to sexual harassment and defamation. No money was awarded in the settlement.
Roughly a month later, Liman ordered Baldoni and the Wayfarer parties to pay $8 million toward Lively’s legal fees but denied her bid for punitive or treble damages.
Earlier this month, the Wayfarer parties called on Liman to “significantly reduce” the legal fees owed to Lively, citing the $181,622.70 sought by The Times. A Lively source at the time told People that discovery in the Times case was a significantly shorter one.
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From combined wire services
