Cancer-Stricken King Charles to Skip D-Day Commemoration With Biden

King Charles III will skip a gathering of international leaders including President Joe Biden to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings Thursday, in a move that will inevitably highlight his ongoing health struggles.

While Buckingham Palace declined to issue a formal, on the record statement to The Daily Beast clarifying that the king would not be attending the event on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, official sources said the decision had been made to “protect” the king’s “continued recovery.”

The king is, however expected to travel to Normandy on Thursday for a morning event with British veterans and did attend a ceremony Wednesday in Portsmouth, the British port from which many of the 156,000 Allied troops who landed in France in 1944 set off. The convalescing king arrived later than his son, the Prince of Wales, to the Portsmouth event, in a tweak to his schedule.

Read more at The Daily Beast.