Breakfast news on Alt Tv/Fleet FM

Kiaora Aoeteroa, this is your news from the Alt Tv newsdesk for Tuesday the 29th of May

Your national headlines at 7.30am

Bikini girls banned from TV
Fast-food chain Burger King has withdrawn two television advertisements deemed sexually exploitative through their "cheesy" use of bikini-clad women. The Advertising Standards Complaints Board, in decisions issued yesterday, found both commercials breached an industry code of practice forbidding the use of sex appeal simply to draw attention to a product. Its decisions were in contrast to a board ruling last year that dismissed complaints against a Burger King advert featuring three young women on horses at a beach, and the food chain intends to appeal. Burger King's management was unavailable but its Auckland advertising agency, Y&R, said it hoped to win support from the Advertising Standards Complaints Appeals Board for resumed screenings. In one advertisement the women are depicted as wearing bikinis in professional jobs, and then dropping everything they are doing to ride to the nearest Burger King. Effectively the woman regardless of brains, money or executive positions, were simply bikini sluts to be used to sell meat, and we wonder why young women have a fucked up sense of themselves via the media images they are bombarded with every day.

In other national news
Lockout sparks unholy row
An international conference aimed at countering "religious radicals" opens at Waitangi today - with New Zealand's Christian radicals led by the Destiny Church consigned to the streets. Destiny's Bishop Brian Tamaki will lead what are expected to be hundreds of supporters in a protest outside the Asia-Pacific Interfaith Dialogue, which is being opened this morning by Prime Minister Helen Clark and Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The three-day, Government-sponsored meeting of "moderate" religious leaders from 15 nations is officially aimed at enhancing New Zealand's security by "having real potential to foster tolerance within our religiously diverse region and to counter religious radicalisation". But Bishop Tamaki, who said he applied to join an "observer" group only to be told it did not exist, plans to issue his own alternative "Waitangi Declaration" affirming that New Zealand is still "a Christian nation". And what a Christian nation it is, the self-proclaimed Bishop who hears God everyday, also believes homosexuals should be imprisoned and claims that a woman leading the country is proof that Satan, the prince of darkness is actually running things. How very Christian.

In International news at 7.30
US warns Iran over arming Iraqis
The US has called on Iran to stop arming militants in Iraq at their the first bilateral public talks between the two countries in almost 30 years. US envoy Ryan Crocker said his Iranian counterpart had rejected the charges at the four-hour talks in Baghdad, which focused exclusively on Iraq's security. Both countries agreed that a secure and stable Iraq was in their interests. The irony of America admonishing Iran after themselves illegally invading Iraq on a base of lies seems to have been lost on the Americans. Meanwhile more bodies were found tortured and dumped in Baghdad, those Iraqi’s are loving the Freedom and Democracy America has brought them.

And in other international news
Poland targets 'gay' Teletubbies
A senior Polish official has ordered psychologists to investigate whether the popular BBC TV show Teletubbies promotes a homosexual lifestyle. The spokesperson for children's rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head. "I noticed he was carrying a woman's handbag," she told a magazine. "At first, I didn't realise he was a boy." Ms Sowinska wants the psychologists to make a recommendation about whether the children's show should be broadcast on public television. Perhaps Poland would like to investigate why Donald Duck never wore pants or why Winnie the Pooh only had male friends.