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.
Except, that is, for two frustrated correspondents of the Financial Times and The Guardian, who found an unguarded side entrance into the sprawling complex of the Ministry of Finance Police College and spent an hour mingling with workers before finally being captured at the hoop.
“Excuse me. What are you doing?” asked one of two guards, armed with submachineguns and pistols strapped to their thighs. Identities checked and digital photographs of the sensitive hoop deleted, the two reporters were escorted back to the pen.
With an attention to detail that Italy’s billionaire premier also devotes to his lavish private parties, Mr Berlusconi is personally supervising the near-impossible logistics of hosting 39 heads of government and international organisations at L’Aquila – along with 3,500 journalists, 15,000 guards and thousands of accompanying staff.
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d74e61fe-67f5-11de-848a-00144feabdc0.html
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