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Biden did not receive prostate cancer diagnosis before last week

WASHINGTON (NYT) — Former President Joe Biden had never received a diagnosis of prostate cancer before last week, his spokesperson said Tuesday, pushing back against speculation that there had been some sort of cover-up around the illness.

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Spokesperson Chris Meagher also said Biden’s last-known prostate-specific antigen test, the most common way to screen for prostate cancer, was in 2014. Biden would have been 71 or 72 years old at the time.

The new details help provide some clarity about Biden’s health records, but they still do not directly give an answer on why Biden was not regularly screened for prostate cancer throughout his presidency.

Meagher did not respond to that question, and Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s doctor in the White House, did not respond to inquiries. But allies of Biden, 82, and medical experts point to guidelines that advise against PSA screening for men older than 70. The guidelines vary slightly across different medical organizations, but doctors generally agree that men of an advanced age should not automatically be screened for prostate cancer.

But Biden was not just the average American man, and his diagnosis of Stage 4 prostate cancer has raised the question: Should the oldest president in American history have gone beyond those guidelines? Biden, until July, was also running for a second term in office, and had he won, he would have been 86 at the end of his second term.

Comic actor George Wendt, Norm from ‘Cheers’, dies at 76

(Reuters) — Comic actor George Wendt, best known for his Emmy-nominated supporting role as the beer-bellied barfly Norm on the long-running hit NBC television sitcom “Cheers,” died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 76.

The passing of the Chicago-born performer was announced in a statement from his publicist, Melissa Nathan, who said his family confirmed that he died peacefully in his sleep in the early morning at home.

No other details about the circumstances or cause of his death were given.

“George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him,” the statement said. “He will be missed forever.”

Wendt got his showbiz start in the Second City improvisational comedy troupe of his native Chicago in the 1970s and went on to appear in small roles in various prime-time TV series during the 1980s, including “M*A*S*H,” “Taxi,” and “Soap.”

He landed his first gig as a TV series regular in 1982 on the short-lived CBS comedy “Making the Grade,” which lasted just six episodes before it was canceled.

But he was most famous for his signature role as the beer-quaffing accountant Norm Peterson — as amiable as he was portly — during the entire run of “Cheers,” which aired in U.S. prime time from 1982 to 1993.

Set in a fictional Boston neighborhood bar “where everybody knows your name,” the series launched the careers of such stars as Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson, and spun off another long-running NBC sitcom, “Frasier,” starring Kelsey Grammer.

Norm was often the good-natured comic foil of his bar-stool companion and drinking buddy, the know-it-all mailman Cliff, played by John Ratzenberger. The Norm character earned Wendt six consecutive Emmy Award nominations.