Family: Willis’ dementia condition worsens
Nearly a year after Bruce Willis’ family announced that he would step away from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia, his family says his “condition has progressed.”
In a statement posted Thursday, the 67-year-old actor’s family said Willis has a more specific diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.
“While this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis,” the statement read. “FTD is a cruel disease that many of us have never heard of and can strike anyone.”
Last March, Willis’ family said his aphasia had affected his cognitive abilities. The condition causes loss of the ability to understand or express speech.
In Thursday’s statement, his family said communication challenges were just one symptom of frontotemporal dementia.
Court hears Duggar’s appeal of child porn conviction
An attorney for Josh Duggar asked a federal appeals court panel on Thursday to reverse the former reality TV star’s conviction for downloading child pornography, saying investigators violated his rights by seizing the phone he was using to try to call his lawyer during the search that found the images.
Attorneys for Duggar and the U.S. Justice Department appeared before a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a hearing. The panel did not indicate when they planned to rule.
Duggar, 34, was arrested in April 2021 after a Little Rock police detective found child porn files were being shared by a computer traced to Duggar. Investigators testified that images depicting the sexual abuse of children, including toddlers, were downloaded in 2019 onto a computer at a car dealership Duggar owned. He was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 121⁄2-year prison sentence.
Justin Gelfand, Duggar’s attorney, said federal agents violated Duggar’s rights when they executed a search warrant of the car dealership in 2019, looking for his computers and phone. Duggar’s attorneys have argued statements he made to agents during the search should have been suppressed. Prosecutors said Duggar asked the agents if someone had been downloading child pornography and that he declined to say whether he had looked at child pornography online, comments that were later used as evidence in the