Wellington  - A 15-year-old New Zealand boy was sent to prison for a minimum of 12-and-a-half years on Thursday for beating a Scottish tourist to death with a softball bat as she walked home after a night out in the lakeside tourist town of Taupo on North Island.

Jahche Broughton earlier pleaded guilty to murdering of Karen Aim, 27, on January 27 last year, when he was 14.

Under New Zealand law, murder carries an automatic life sentence, but a judge sets a period of non-parole.

Wellington  - A 29-year-old Samoan woman who gave birth on a flight to New Zealand was charged Wednesday with abandoning her baby girl in an aircraft toilet.

The woman was remanded in custody when she appeared in the Manukau District Court. She faces a maximum seven-year prison sentence for abandoning the baby, who is now in custody of the government's child welfare department.

The woman, whose name was suppressed by the court, faced a second charge of assault on a child, Radio New Zealand reported.

Wellington - Helen Clark, prime minister of New Zealand from 1999 until defeated in last November's elections, has been appointed to head the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), unconfirmed news reports said on Wednesday.

A spokesman for Clark, who was known to be on a short-list of three for the job, would not confirm the appointment and said that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had not made his preference public but an announcement was close.

Wellington - A New Zealand teenage whizz-kid who admitted developing software that infected a million computers around the world has been hired by telecommunications company TelstraClear to advise companies how to avoid hackers.

Owen Walker, 19, who was tracked down by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, is advising on "botnets" - networks of computers infected by malicious software - TelstraClear spokesman Chris Mirams told Radio New Zealand on Wednesday.

Wellington - New Zealand's watchdog Commerce Commission said Wednesday that the country's two main telecommunication companies, Telecom and Vodafone, charged too much for mobile phone calls.

Their rates were "significantly above current international cost- based benchmarks," chairwoman Paula Rebstock said.

She said reduced price offers by the companies, which are trying to avoid government regulation forcing them to cut charges, were not acceptable.