Former US president Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, and is reviewing treatment options, a statement from his office said Sunday.

On Friday, the 82-year-old Democrat was diagnosed with the cancer after he experienced increasing urinary symptoms and was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule, the statement said.

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management. The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians,” it continued.

Cancer cells are commonly found in the prostates of men of Biden’s age, though in most cases they grow slowly. Hormone therapy is a common treatment that can shrink tumors and slow cancer growth, but is not a cure.

According to the statement, Biden’s cancer was found to have “a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5).”

Prostate cancer that looks “very abnormal” is assigned the highest rating, Grade 5, according to the American Cancer Society. The Gleason Score often indicates the sum of the grades from the two areas in the prostate that make up most of the cancer, but can also be calculated other ways.

Biden left office in January this year as the oldest serving US president in history, and was dogged by questions over his health and age for much of his presidency.

For years he had faced questions, including from Democratic voters, over whether he was too old — lacking in mental acuity or physical endurance — for a job as trying as the presidency.

His response to doubters was a brisk: “Watch me.”

But in July last year he was forced to drop his reelection bid after a disastrous debate against Republican Donald Trump in which fears about his decline and cognitive abilities came surging to the fore.

His vice president, Kamala Harris, eventually lost to Trump.

Biden maintains that he could have won the election, but questions have long swirled over the responses of staff and key Democrats to evident signs of his decline.

They have flared with the release, set for this Tuesday, of “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” by CNN journalist Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios.

Last week a newly published recording of Biden speaking hesitantly and struggling to remember key events and dates fueled renewed debate over his mental capabilities while still in office.

Biden’s life has been marked by personal tragedy. In 1972 his wife and baby daughter were killed in a car crash, days after he had been elected as a US senator at the age of 29.

Biden underwent surgery twice in 1988 for brain aneurysms. In 2023 he had a skin lesion — a basal cell carcinoma — removed from his chest. He had previously had non-melanoma skin cancers removed.

Biden’s son Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015.

AFP

Several people died Saturday when two helicopters carrying a total of five collided mid-air in Finland and crashed to the ground, police said.

“The accident has resulted in several fatalities. The exact number of victims and the identities of the passengers are still being determined,” the police said in a statement.

Media reported that the helicopters had taken off from Estonia and were carrying businessmen, with three people in one and two in the other.

Reports said they collided west of the capital Helsinki around midday. Officials gave no indication of what caused the collision.

Finnish newspaper Iltalehti quoted a witness, Antti Marjanen, as saying they saw one of the helicopters hit the other during a manoeuvre.

“One of them dropped like a stone and the other one more slowly. I didn’t hear any sound,” Marjanen was quoted as saying.

AFP

Severe storms that swept through the US states of Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia left more than 25 people dead, laying waste to local communities and cutting off electricity to nearly 200,000, authorities said Saturday.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said on X that at least 18 people had died in the storms Friday night, while local officials in Missouri said another seven were dead there.

Two people were also killed by falling trees in Virginia, local media reported.

Jamie Burns, 38, who lives with her husband and son in a trailer home in the town of London, Kentucky, had to seek shelter in the basement of her sister’s brick house while the storm destroyed 100 to 200 houses in the area.

“Things that have been here longer than I have, things that have been here for 30-plus years, are just flat. It’s wild, because you’ll look at one area and it’s just smashed… totally flattened, like, not there anymore,” Burns told AFP in a phone interview, her voice quavering.

Drone footage published by local media showed scenes of devastation in London, with houses leveled and reduced to splinters and tree trunks standing bare, completely shorn of branches.

Beshear added that more than 100,000 people have been left without power in the state, and five counties have declared a state of emergency.

Eastern Kentucky, an area historically known for its coal mines, is one of the poorest regions in the country.

“A lot of us live in manufactured homes that aren’t safe for tornado weather,” said Burns.

‘One Of The Worst Storms’

In Missouri, five people were killed in the major city of St. Louis, in what authorities said was one of the worst storms in its history, and two in Scott County, the State Highway Patrol said in a statement to AFP.

More than 80,000 people were left without power, and three shelters were opened in the area, the statement added. More severe weather was forecast for Sunday night and Monday.

Asked Saturday by a reporter whether it was the worst storm ever to hit St. Louis, Mayor Cara Spencer replied, “I would describe this as one of the worst storms — absolutely. The devastation is truly heartbreaking.”

She said 38 people in the city were injured and some 5,000 buildings damaged.

In one St. Louis neighborhood, a church was heavily damaged, according to CBS footage, and rescue workers continued to treat victims near the building Saturday morning.

“It’s horrific for a tornado to come through here and cause this much damage to the residents and also to the church. “Our hearts are broken,” Derrick Perkins, a pastor at the Centennial Christian Church, told CBS.

Bruce Madison, who also works at the church, said the community was coming together in the face of the tragedy.

While there were warnings ahead of the severe weather — Beshear had protectively declared a state of emergency Friday — the death toll may raise questions about whether sharp cuts by the Trump administration have left National Weather Service forecasting teams dangerously understaffed.

An estimated 500 of the 4,200 NWS employees have been fired or taken early retirement this year, according to the Washington Post.

The US saw the second-highest number of tornadoes on record last year, with nearly 1,800, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), trailing only 2004.

AFP