Samoa beat Fiji with a 27-7 victory at a sold-out Eden Park on Sunday, securing the Pacific heavyweights a chance of qualifying for the last eight if they can beat South Africa next Friday.
South Africa’s Springboks sent the message that they were intent on holding on to their title with a methodical 49-3 win over Fiji at the Rugby World Cup on Saturday in Wellington.
Thousands of people fled to evacuation centres as a powerful cyclone with winds of 175 kilometres an hour smashed into Fiji on Monday. The storm was reported to generate seven metre-high waves, and shipping has been warned away from the area.
The Commonwealth has suspended Fiji, where a military ruler took power in a bloodless coup in December 2006, for failing to meet a deadline on taking steps toward holding "credible" elections by October of next year.
Fiji has been suspended from the 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum after its military coup leader Voreqe Frank Bainimarama (pictured) refused to meet the forum's May 1 deadline to set a date for democratic elections.
Fiji's President Ratu Josefa Iloilo reappointed former coup leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama to head the
interim government on Saturday, less than two days after a court ruled his 2006 coup illegal.
Fiji's President Ratu Josefa Iloilo (photo) announced that he had taken over the country's government Friday following a court ruling that the interim government headed by Commodore Frank Bainimarama was illegal.
Images of the floods that overwhelmed the Fiji islands, and which have caused several deaths so far, have been widely disseminated by internet users with videos showing the damage done to what they call an "unprepared" group of islands.
Fiji 
