Wellington - New Zealand opera diva Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, 65, suffered the theft of more than 650,000 US dollars by a bank manager who handled her retirement account in California, news reports said Friday.

The manager, Sokvoeun "Cindy" Sou, 27, admitted embezzlement and five fraud charges when she appeared in court Thursday, police detective Greg Ella, of Alameda, in San Francisco Bay, told Radio New Zealand.

He said that Sou was remanded in custody until a bail hearing before being sentenced.

Wellington  - The last prisoner on remote Pitcairn Island - where descendants of the famous mutiny on the Bounty were convicted of historic sex charges - has been released from the jail he helped to build, a newspaper reported Thursday.

Brian Young, 54, received the longest sentence of any of the 10 men convicted on charges of rape, incest and assaults against women and girls, committed over three decades on the British island in the Pacific.

Wellington, Apr 22 : Heart transplants may soon be history following the creation of a device that helps the heart pump blood more effectively.

William Peters, 43, calls the C-Pulse heart assist system a "turbo-booster" for people who have severe problems with their ticker.

"It''s for people whose pacemakers have failed them but they still have symptoms of heart failure," he told NZPA.

The heart surgeon started designing the device about 10-years ago, tinkering with a prototype in his garage.

Wellington - Fiji military strongman Voreqe Bainimarama's declaration that his country does not need free and open discussion about current issues placed his government "outside the community of civilized peoples," New Zealand's Society of Authors said on Wednesday.

The society, which includes the writers' organization PEN New Zealand, issued a statement saying its members joined a wide range of other freedom of speech advocates throughout the world in deploring the "vicious repression of media" by Fiji's military government.

Wellington - New Zealand's budget deficit is spiralling out of control as the country enters its sixth-consecutive quarter of economic contraction, Finance Minister Bill English warned Wednesday.

If growth in public expenditures is not checked, the deficits would hit 45 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in four years and an unsustainable 70 per cent by 2023, he told business leaders in Auckland.

Observers said the speech clearly paved the way for the conservative National Party-led government to cancel tax cuts for the next two years that it had promised in its successful campaign for election in November.