Message in bottle returns to author

A message in a bottle has turned up in New Zealand, forty-four years after it was thrown from a ship into the Indian Ocean.

The author of the message left Austria in 1956 to travel the world, and threw five bottles into the sea containing "lonely hearts" messages, which appealed "for a woman from the Pacific".

He eventually settled in Wellington -- seventy-kilometres from where his message was found.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service