Fiji

FBC News reports the Legal Aid Commission is representing Kiala Marcellino Penakoy Henri Lusaka.

The commission requested a psychiatric evaluation of its client citing his history of mental illness.

Forty-four year-old Jennifer Downes was found dead in her Suva home on the 23rd of August.

Mr Lusaka, who is 39, has been given time to file applications for bail and the psychiatric evaluation.

They have received help from villagers to search the rugged area at the bottom of steep cliffs.

Police said they were still seeking clues to establish the circumstances surrounding the mysterious family deaths.

Post mortem results indicated the five died after ingesting an unknown substance and further tests are being conducted by scientists.

A one-year-old found crawling at the scene was admitted to Lautoka Hospital and the baby's mother has returned from Australia where she was at the time of the tragedy.

Fiji police said the man is a person of interest in their investigations.

Police have also said the post mortem examination conducted Wednesday are “consistent with an alleged substance ingested by all five victims which resulted in their deaths.”

Further tests are being conducted the Fiji Police Force Chemistry Scientific Lab in Suva following the post mortem examination.

The bodies of a couple, their daughter and her two daughters were found on the edge of a cliff at Nausori Highlands about 30km out of Nadi.

A man riding his horse in the area Monday morning found the bodies after he saw a toddler crawling on the side of the road close to where the bodies were.

A relative has identified the deceased who include 3 adults and 2 children.

The victims from Nadi are a carpenter and his wife, their 34-year-old daughter and her two daughters.

The toddler is reported to be the child of the 34-year old woman’s sister who lives in Australia.

The child is being kept under observation in hospital.

The family’s car was recovered from a supermarket carpark Monday night.

The decision was made yesterday following 13 days of searching in Natewa Bay in Vanua Levu.

The investigator in charge of the search Andrew McGregor said his team has done everything they can to find the pair and the wreckage of the helicopter, but conditions in Natewa Bay have proved too difficult.

Australian pilot Gilbert Parker was transporting the sick toddler and his mother to a hospital when the incident happened on 2 August.

The mother's body was recovered by villagers from the Natewa Bay shoreline the next day.

Illicit drug discoveries have increased by 13 percent on the same time last year according to Mr Seruiratu.

The minister told parliament that in the past two years, nearly $US30-million worth of hard drugs had been seized at the border.

Only last week, he said, the navy and police were deployed to an outer island, where they found shipping containers packed with drugs.

That's just the latest in a string of recent finds in Fiji, including a large bust in the hull of yacht, and bricks of cocaine that started washing up on beaches.

Shin Ok-ju was jailed for six years for enslaving hundreds of followers in Fiji, and forcing them to work in cult-run businesses.

In the wake of the sentencing, opposition leader Sitiveni Rabuka called for the permanent secretary of the Office of the Prime Minister, Yogesh Karan, to resign for saying it didn't need to be investigated.

Mr Karan said he stands by his August statement, because none of the cult members in Fiji had breached their visa conditions.

He also accused the government of turning a blind eye to Grace Road to preserve business links.

The founder of Grace Road Church, Shin Ok-ju, will spend the next six years in prison.

As many as 400 of Shin's followers moved to Fiji, where their passports were seized, and they were forced to endure violent rituals.

The church believes Fiji is the centre of a promised world and will be the one place to escape a looming apocalypse.

But many were forced to work on a plantation or at several church-run businesses, which South Korean prosecutors said were a front for the cult.

The Business Link Pacific Portal is an innovative online platform designed to connect quality business advisors with small and medium-sized growing businesses in the Pacific.  

To mark the launch of the Portal, Business Link Pacific are co-hosting four launch events, one in each country, which are open to small and medium sized businesses and free to attend.  

New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said it is an important opportunity to deepen partnerships within the Pacific family.

He said this will include strengthening Pacific regionalism, responding to climate change, advancing the Boe Declaration on regional security, and fisheries and oceans issues.

Mr Peters said his government is committed to advancing security, well-being, prosperity and resilience in its Pacific neighbourhood.