FORENSIC experts fear a missing German yachtsman was “hacked to pieces and burned” by cannibals while visiting a remote island in French Polynesia on the trip of a lifetime.

THREE teenage boys who spent 61 days adrift in a tiny boat in the South Pacific walked ashore on shaky legs yesterday after their chance rescue — celebrated on their home island hundreds of kilometres away as a miracle that brought them back from the dead.

Fiji’s military-led government said today that its suspension from the 53-nation Commonwealth is the price it must pay for its reform of the country’s political system, and insisted that it will not hold elections before 2014.

Fiji's military regime will appoint new top judges early next week to replace justices sacked two weeks ago when the president abolished the nation's constitution, an official said.