US president Joe Biden landed in Rome's Fiumicino airport in the early hours of Friday morning ahead of the G20 Leaders' Summit hosted by Italy this weekend. The president will join the heads of the world's most powerful nations at a two-day summit in the capital's Nuvola conference centre on 30-31 October.

Before he attends the talks, centred on 'People, Planet, Prosperity', Biden will meet Pope Francis in the Vatican where topics up for discussion are set to include tackling poverty, covid-19 and climate change. The latter subject is also central to the G20 talks which take place just before the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. Biden, a regular church-going Catholic, is the second Roman Catholic US president after Kennedy.