A car crashed into a vehicle attached to Joe Biden’s motorcade on Sunday, with the security scare startling the US president as he left his campaign headquarters in Delaware.

After a loud bang caused by a sedan slamming into an SUV positioned in a nearby intersection about 40 meters (130 feet) from Biden, security personnel rushed the president into a waiting vehicle and he was whisked away from the building in downtown Wilmington.

“Both the president and first lady are fine,” a White House official told an AFP reporter who witnessed the incident. Further questions were referred to the US Secret Service.

Pool reporters had gathered on the sidewalk outside the campaign offices — where the president and First Lady Jill Biden had had dinner with staff — and had just finished shouting questions to Biden from a distance when they heard the crash and saw him with a surprised expression on his face.

Agents sprang into action, cornering the silver car with Delaware license plates and drawing weapons on the driver, who held his hands up.

Reporters were then quickly rounded up by staff to join the motorcade as it departed the rain-drenched scene.

“They’re evacuating, you guys gotta go,” a staffer told reporters as security personnel secured the area.

Biden arrived safely at his family home without further incident.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has said that Islamic culture and the values and rights of European civilisation have a “compatibility problem”. Meloni’s controversial remark came at an event organised by her right-wing, ultra-conservative Brothers of Italy party, which was attended by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and billionaire Elon Musk.

“I believe there is a problem of compatibility between Islamic culture or a certain interpretation of Islamic culture and the rights and values of our civilisation,” she said. “It does not escape my mind that most of the Islamic cultural centres in Italy are financed by Saudi Arabia.” 

Meloni also criticised Saudi Arabia’s rigid Sharia law under which apostasy and homosexuality are criminal offences. Sharia law, commonly referred to as Islamic law, constitutes a set of principles and regulations rooted in the Quran and the Hadith, representing the foundational religious texts of Islam.

🚨Watch: #GiorgiaMeloni: “I believe… there is a problem of compatibility between Islamic culture and the values ​​and rights of our civilization… Will not allow Sharia law to be implemented in italy…. values ​​of our civilization are different! pic.twitter.com/VGWNix7936

— Geopolitical Kid (@Geopoliticalkid) December 18, 2023

“Sharia means lapidation for adultery and the death penalty for apostasy and homosexuality. I believe that these should be raised, which does not mean generalising on Islam. It means raising the problem that there is a process of Islamisation in Europe that is very distant from the values of our civilisation,” she said. 

During his visit to Rome, Sunak backed Meloni’s migration approach. Sunak’s controversial plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda has been met with a barrage of legal challenges and accusations of inhumane treatment. Meloni, on the other hand, has drawn flak for her attempts to limit the activities of charity rescue ships operating in the Mediterranean Sea.

“If we do not tackle this problem, the numbers will only grow. It will overwhelm our countries and our capacity to help those who actually need our help the most,” he said. “Making that deterrent credible will mean doing things differently, breaking from consensus. And both Giorgia and I are prepared to do that.”

The two leaders also met Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to discuss migration.