Top secret: a mobile basketball hoop specially installed for Barack Obama to enjoy during next week’s Group of Eight summit of world leaders is strictly off-limits to unauthorised personnel, the heavily armed Italian police guards warned.

Such is the chaotic state of preparations for the July 8-10 summit in a police barracks on the edge of the quake-torn city of L’Aquila that scores of reporters were kept penned for hours outside in a temporary press centre waiting for Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister and host, to speak.