The RAI’s in-house hypnotist, Giucas Casella, has beguiled rabbits on air, had himself locked into a Plexiglass coffin and submerged in water for half an hour, and – most notoriously – entranced a model into thinking she was a striptease artist and got her to remove her clothes on camera.Whatever the future of Mr Berlusconi’s empire, some things look set to stay. He has, for example, introduced viewers irredeemably to the cult of the breast. The female chest is by all accounts a passion of his; he fell in love with his well-endowed second wife after seeing her perform topless in a trial for one of his television programmes.Big breasts now pop up regularly on the news, on chat shows and on satirical programmes. They even featured on a Right to Reply programme the other day in which the Independent also took part. The busty woman in question, wearing a gold lame body-suit, was defending her wish to sacrifice her virginity to Gianfranco Fini, the leader of the far-right National Alliance party The camera never once wavered from her midriff. No wonder Italy’s legislators on broadcasting sometimes seem a touch distracted..

PHIL DAVISON

Latin America Correspondent
They called him “The Chess Player”, a banker who turned the so-called Cali cartel into the world’s biggest supplier of cocaine. Last night, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, 56, one of two brothers who run the cartel, was behind bars in Cali, in south-west Colombia.It was the biggest anti-narcotics breakthrough for the Colombian government since Pablo Escobar, leader of the rival Medellin cartel, was tracked down and shot while trying to flee in 1993. His death crushed the Medellin cartel, notorious for its terrorist bombings, but the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers moved in to monopolise the cocaine business.Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela have also been indicted in cocaine- trafficking cases in the United States, including one in Miami this week which led to the arrest of several prominent US lawyers. But Colombian law prevents their extradition.Miguel is thought to be still in hiding in the Cali area.. DAVID ORR

Bujumbura
Hundreds of people were fleeing down the road as we drove towards Rubirizi, a district on the northern outskirts of Bujumbura. Some carried bundles but most were empty-handed, as if they had set out in a hurry They streamed past, in a panic One woman was crying.

Her mother had just been shot dead, said a man walking alongside her.It was clear another army “action” was taking place and that more civilians were being killed. The soldiers had entered Rubirizi shortly after dawn, they said, and started shooting. One man reported hearing shots and seeing bodies of adults and children in the marketplace. Another said he saw soldiers handcuffing young men and driving them off. He had hidden in the bushes, then run away.The people on the road were all Hutus. Many of them were from Kinama, one of the capital’s slum districts which was “swept” by Burundi government security forces on Wednesday.Thousands of Hutus fled the northern suburbs this week as the largely Tutsi army and police moved in to flush out militiamen. Scores of civilians have been killed.Fearing an encounter with the military, we proceeded slowly until we were certain the shooting was over and the soldiers had withdrawn.

We had seen no traffic apart from a government armoured vehicle. Turning off the main road, we went down a lane into the centre of Rubirizi. There, in a small marketplace, we discovered the ghastly evidence of the army’s latest security operation.Beside an overturned market stall the body of a little boy lay in the dirt, his skull split open and his brains splattered on the ground beside him Nearby, his older brother leant against a tree, crying. Their mother, said a local man, had been injured when soldiers came into the village and opened fire with automatic rifles. In a house near the marketplace, the corpse of a man was stretched out under a sheet In the undergrowth layother bodies. More than half a dozen people had been wounded in the shooting, we were told.Officially, the killings in Rubirizi yesterday did not happen.