US vice president Joe Biden's son suffers a stroke

The elder son of US vice president Joe Biden was recovering in hospital today after suffering a stroke.

Beau Biden, 41, the Delaware attorney general, was transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, where he was said to be alert and talking with his family.

The White House said Mr Biden, who was expected to make a full recovery, would undergo further observation and examination.

An ambulance arrived at the university hospital last night, escorted by more than a dozen Delaware and Pennsylvania state police and Philadelphia police cars.

Mr Biden returned last year from a year-long deployment to Iraq with his army National Guard unit, where he was a captain and military lawyer in the 261st Theatre Tactical Signal Brigade.

He had considered running this year for the US Senate seat his father held before becoming vice president, but decided instead to run for re-election as attorney general.

When he announced his decision in January, he said he needed to focus as attorney general on the high-profile criminal case against a paediatrician suspected of molesting more than 100 children over the past decade.

But his decision was a surprise, given that his father's long-time confidant and former Senate chief of staff Ted Kaufman was appointed to the seat essentially to keep it warm for Beau Biden until this year's election.

But Republican Rep Mike Castle, a two-term governor and one of the most successful politicians in Delaware history, entered the Senate race in October, dramatically increasing the likelihood of a fierce contest.

Beau Biden's decision left the seat his father held for 36 years vulnerable.

Joe Biden was away from that seat for seven months in 1988 after undergoing surgery for brain aneurysms.

More than a decade earlier, in 1972, he lost his wife and baby daughter when a tractor-trailer smashed into their estate car when they were getting a Christmas tree.

Beau and his brother Hunter were critically injured, but recovered.

The vice president devoted himself to caring for his two sons as a single father and still will not work on December 18, the date of the accident.

Beau Biden recalled the accident when introducing his father at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

"I was just short of four years old. One of my earliest memories was being in that hospital, Dad always at our side. We, not the Senate, were all he cared about," Mr Biden said.

His father was sworn in to the US Senate at Beau's hospital bedside, he said.

At the convention, the vice president said in return: "Beau, I love you. I am so proud of you. I'm so proud of the son you've become. I'm so proud of the father you are."

Beau Biden, who is married with two young children, has worked as a lawyer in private practice. He also worked for the Department of Justice between 1995 and 1997 and as an assistant US attorney from 1997 to 2002.