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KIRKUK, Iraq -- Shattered glass, body parts, a blood-splattered blue sedan: the grainy video pans over the scene as Iraqi officers comb the site of a drive-by assassination. It's "Cops" Iraqi-style, minus the "Bad Boys" soundtrack but otherwise roughly modeled after the American TV show. Created to make government more transparent, "The Cops Show" featuring Kirkuk officers in action is the first of its kind in the country and is breaking new ground in Iraqi television. A live call-in portion gives the public the chance to praise the security forces or gripe about them. Screened weekly on Kirkuk Television, which...

Where politicians and a draft constitution have failed, a television show has succeeded. Iraq stands united in its enthusiasm for its own version of Pop Idol.Iraq Star has become a television phenomenon since it began six weeks ago and more than 2,000 hopefuls have risked the country's dangerous roads to audition. This week, in a studio in a corner of Baghdad's Babylon Hotel, a teenage girl attempted one of the Lebanese pop songs popular among young Iraqis only to be mercilessly ridiculed for her inability to dance. Then, in a musical critique rarely heard on the British version of the...

'Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?' Iraq TV's 'Cops' wins viewers, breaks new ground Monday, August 22, 2005 By Tini Tran The Associated PressKIRKUK, Iraq — Shattered glass, body parts, a blood-splattered blue sedan: the grainy video pans over the scene as Iraqi officers comb the site of a drive-by assassination. It's "Cops" Iraqi-style, minus the "Bad Boys" soundtrack but otherwise roughly modeled after the American TV show. Created to make government more transparent, "The Cops Show" featuring Kirkuk officers in action is the first of its kind in the country and is breaking new ground in Iraqi...

KIRKUK, Iraq (August 22) - Shattered glass, body parts, a blood-splattered blue sedan: the grainy video pans over the scene as Iraqi officers comb the site of a drive-by assassination. It's "Cops" Iraqi-style, minus the "Bad Boys" soundtrack but otherwise roughly modeled after the American TV show. Created to make government more transparent, "The Cops Show" featuring Kirkuk officers in action is the first of its kind in the country and is breaking new ground in Iraqi television. A live call-in portion gives the public the chance to praise the security forces or gripe about them. Screened weekly on Kirkuk...

The trial of Saddam Hussein will be shown on live television, Iraq's national security adviser said yesterday. The trial will show the Arab and Muslim world "that this is going to be a fair, just trial with a defence counsel in there, with a proper prosecuting counsel as well there," Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq Rubaie told CNN. "And everybody will watch this trial live on television." Earlier this month, an Iraqi tribunal filed the first charges against the deposed Iraqi leader over the 1982 killing of 143 residents of the village of Dujail, north-east of Baghdad, where he had...

BAGHDAD -- Reality TV shows are gaining popularity in Iraq, spreading material prosperity to the needy and giving Iraqis some escape from their war-torn world. The Sharqiya network is leading the way with shows that rebuild bombed houses and deliver money to poor elderly people, the Times of London reports. The popular show "Best Wishes" provides couples with lavish weddings - complete with white stretch limousine on streets where tanks and car bombs are more familiar sights. "We see the happiness on the faces of the people whose houses we have rebuilt and those still waiting because of the American...

The trial of Saddam Hussein will be shown on live television, Iraq's national security adviser said yesterday. The trial will show the Arab and Muslim world "that this is going to be a fair, just trial with a defence counsel in there, with a proper prosecuting counsel as well there," Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq Rubaie told CNN. "And everybody will watch this trial live on television." Earlier this month, an Iraqi tribunal filed the first charges against the deposed Iraqi leader over the 1982 killing of 143 residents of the village of Dujail, north-east of Baghdad, where he had...

A media watchdog organization has condemned the killing of an Iraqi television producer in northern Iraq. Khalid al-Attar, who worked for al-Iraqiya television, was abducted from a Mosul neighborhood by unidentified gunmen and was found shot to death July 1, the state-funded station said. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said it was the ninth killing of a journalist in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. The organization called on Iraqi and U.S. authorities to investigate, calling Mosul "Iraq's most dangerous city for the press after Baghdad." Al-Attar, 43, worked for a satirical program that poked fun of...

AMMAN -- A new US-funded cartoon series for Iraqi toddlers is being produced in neighboring Jordan in a bid to put a smile back on young faces prematurely inured to the horrors of war. Filfil the cat and his buddies Hassoun the bird and Thareef the dog are among the characters in the 120-episode series that is designed to be as Iraqi and un-American as possible. Eschewing the local versions of US hit show "Sesame Street" that dominate children's television in other Arab states, producers have sought to make the series as Iraqi as possible with typical Iraqi names for...

On January 6, 2005, the U.S.-funded Arabic satellite network Al Hurra broadcast an explosive exposé detailing the financial links between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Arab press. Al Hurra's documentary--so far overlooked in the West--aired previously unseen video footage, recorded by Saddam Hussein's regime during its murderous heyday, of Saddam's son Uday meeting with several Arab media figures and referring to the bribes they had received.Recipients of this Baathist largesse appeared to include a former managing director of the influential Qatar-based government-subsidized satellite network Al Jazeera, Mohammed Jassem al-Ali. The videotaped meeting between Uday and al-Ali occurred on March 13,...

Where has everyone gone in Iraq at 9:00PM each night? Why are the Iraqi Security Forces being overrun with new leads from the Iraqi Citizens on the insurgent and their activities. People all over Iraq are glued to the new TV program called "Terrorism and the Hand of Justice." The program started when an Iraqi Commander begain recording interviews with the captured insurgents. People are finding out that the ones doing the fighting are not doing it for the reasons they claim. The program is so popular that the country is shutting down during is broadcast.

Say the word mujahid — or holy warrior — these days and many inhabitants of Baghdad are likely to snigger. An appellation once worn as a badge of pride by anti-American insurgents has now become street slang for homosexuals, after men claiming to be captured Islamist guerrillas confessed that they were holding gay orgies in the popular Iraqi TV programme Terror in the Hands of Justice. For Iraqis opposed to the predominantly Sunni Islamist insurgency, Terror in the Hands of Justice, which airs twice daily on Iraqi public television, has broken the mystique of a force that used to strike...

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's wildly popular new television hit features a nightly parade of men, most with bruised faces, confessing to all kinds of terrorist and criminal acts. ''Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" is the Iraqi government's slick new propaganda tool; its televised confessions, police say, aim to discredit the armed resistance and advertise the government's success at cracking down on gangs.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The body of an anchorwoman for a U.S.-funded state television station - a mother of four who had been kidnapped last week - was found Saturday dumped on a street in the northern city of Mosul. The body of Raiedah Mohammed Wageh Wazan, the 35-year-old news presenter for the U.S.-funded Nineveh TV, was found six days after she was kidnapped by masked gunmen, according to her husband, who said she had been shot four times in the head. "This is a criminal act. She was an innocent woman who did not hurt anybody in all her life....

A female Iraqi television presenter kidnapped in the northern city of Mosul last week was found dead, her husband said Saturday. Raiedah Mohammed Wageh Wazan was abducted Feb. 20 by several masked gunmen. Her corpse was found Friday, said her husband, Salim Saad-Allah. She had been shot in the head. Wazan was working for local state TV in Mosul. It was unclear what prompted the kidnapping, but her TV station was attacked last week with mortar rounds that wounded three technicians. An Arabic-language Internet bulletin board recently carried a statement from al-Qaida's Iraq affiliate claiming responsibility for the mortar strike,...

BAGHDAD - U.S. officials tell NBC News American and Iraqi forces captured one of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi's inner-circle in a raid Feb. 20 near the border with Syria — just missing al-Zarqawi himself. The man arrested is known as Abu Qutaybah and he decided who, when and how other militants met al-Zarqawi. He told U.S. officials al-Zarqawi is on the run — never sleeping in the same place two nights in a row. Friday’s announcement comes as the Iraqi government this week launched an unusual new anti-terror campaign: A gritty TV show called “Terrorists in the Hands of Justice.”...

(IsraelNN.com) An Iraqi state television station has broadcast a confession by a man who said he was a Syrian intelligence agent who trained terrorists to kill American and Iraqi troops. Anas Ahmed al-Essa said on the American-funded station that his mission was to "cause chaos" in Iraq and keep America out of Syria. The station also broadcast similar stories from men who said they were Sudanese and Egyptian citizens.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The bearded man in a gray jacket and shirt who appeared on the U.S.-funded Iraqi state television station Wednesday had a stark message about the insurgency -- he was a Syrian intelligence officer who helped train people to behead others and build car bombs to attack American and Iraqi troops.``My name is Anas Ahmed al-Essa. I live in Halab. I am from Syria,'' he said by way of introduction -- naming what he said was his home in Syria.``What's your job?'' he was asked by someone off-camera. ``I am a lieutenant in intelligence.''Then a second question....

WASHINGTON (AP) - A journalist who helped Iraq form a new broadcast network in 2003 testified Monday that U.S. occupation officials were more interested in airing their own activities than stories essential to Iraqis. Don North, who served as a U.S. government adviser to the Iraqi Media Network, said the network became an irrelevant mouthpiece for the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority. The network was given "a laundry list of CPA activities" to cover instead of stories on security, the lack of electricity and jobs, said North, an independent journalist. North testified at a hearing of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee,...

BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Gunmen killed the Basra correspondent of the U.S.-funded television station Alhurra outside his house in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, police said on Wednesday. Abdul-Hussein Khazal was killed when several gunmen attacked his house, police said. Alhurra is an Arabic-language satellite station set up with U.S. funding last year in an effort to compete with other Arabic satellite channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. It is based in the state of Virginia. Dozens of foreign and Iraqi journalists have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.