4, March 2023
US: President Biden had cancerous skin lesion removed in February 0
US President Joe Biden, 80, had a cancerous skin lesion successfully removed from his chest in February, his doctor said Friday.
The lesion, detected during a routine medical examination, was a basal cell carcinoma, which “do not tend to ‘spread’ or metastasize,” Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, said in a report made public by the White House, adding that “no further treatment is required.”
The lesion was removed during Biden’s annual medical checkup on February 16, after which the president was declared “fit for duty.”
“The site of the biopsy has healed nicely and the president will continue dermatologic surveillance as part of his ongoing comprehensive healthcare,” O’Connor said in the Friday report.
He noted that basal cell carcinoma were generally more innocuous than “more serious skin cancers such as melanoma or squamous cell carcinoma.”
“President Biden remains a healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those of as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” O’Connor said in February following Biden’s medical examination.
The checkup was the final one before an expected announcement by Biden, the oldest person ever to be US president, to declare he is running for reelection in 2024.
At the February appointment, Biden completed a series of tests that he began last year at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, a complex in the Washington suburbs with a presidential facility.
O’Connor at the time wrote that the president had spent “a good deal of time in the sun in his youth” and that he had already been treated regularly for removal of localized, non-melanoma skin cancers.
Source: AFP
15, March 2023
Assad meets Putin in Moscow 0
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad offered Russian President Vladimir Putin his support in the Ukraine conflict during a visit to Moscow on Wednesday. The meeting between the two leaders in Moscow came as thousands of Syrians demonstrated in rebel-held northwestern Syria to mark 12 years since the start of pro-democracy protests in 2011, which the Assad regime brutally crushed with Russian help.
In a televised meeting with Putin in the Kremlin, Assad said Russia was fighting neo-Nazis and “old Nazis” in Ukraine, according to a Russian translation.
Without offering evidence, Assad said the West had taken in “old Nazis”, and was now supporting them.
Kyiv and the West say Russian accusations that Ukraine has become a hotbed of Nazism are a baseless pretext for an unprovoked war of aggression in Ukraine.
Welcoming Assad at the start of the meeting that came on the anniversary of Syria’s 12-year uprising-turned-civil war, Putin emphasised the Russian military’s “decisive contribution” to stabilising the country.
Assad thanked Putin for backing Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, noting that the Kremlin’s support has remained strong despite the fighting in Ukraine.
“Even though Russia now is also conducting the special operation, its position has remained unchanged,” Assad said, using the Kremlin’s “special military operation” term for the war in Ukraine.
Moscow has provided robust political support to Assad at the UN and actively mediated to help repair his government’s ties with regional powers. Russia’s military support for Assad also helped him to turn the tide in a civil war that began in 2011 as a pro-democracy movement.
Source: France 24