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.

Wellington - Hackers who attacked Microsoft New Zealand's news website left it with a cream pie on founder Bill Gates' face, Wellington's Dominion Post newspaper reported Wednesday on its website.

Visitors to www. msn. co. nz on Tuesday found a blacked-out page with the words "Microsoft New Zealand hacked by Peace Crew," over a photo of a pie-decked Gates, the report said.

The paper quoted a source as saying the hackers attacked a server belonging to web-hosting company Domainz, which redirected traffic to a fake website.

Wellington  - Nearly 250 flight attendants employed by an Air New Zealand subsidiary will go on strike for four days on May 7 after what their union says is a seven-month fight for equal pay with the airline's other cabin crew.

The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union said all Air New Zealand flights to Australia and Pacific island destinations serviced by the airline's Airbus A320 fleet would be affected.