Allawi group slips cash to reporters

After a meeting held by Mr Allawi's campaign alliance in west Baghdad, reporters, most of whom were from the Arabic-language press, were invited upstairs where each was offered a "gift" of a $100 bill contained in an envelope.
Many of the journalists accepted the cash -- about equivalent to half the starting monthly salary for a reporter at an Iraqi newspaper -- and one jokingly recalled how Saddam Hussein's regime had also lavished perks on favoured reporters.
Giving gifts to journalists is common in many of the Middle East's authoritarian regimes, although reporters at the conference said the practice was not yet widespread in postwar Iraq.