Agence France-Presse

Agence France-Presse, usually shortened to AFP, is a French international news agency with its headquarters in Paris. It traces its roots to 1835, when Charles-Louis Havas founded the Agence Havas, which is regarded as the oldest news agency in the world. After the Liberation of Paris in August 1944 the service was reorganized under its present name. AFP supplies text, photographs, video, graphics and audio to radio and television broadcasters, newspapers, websites, large companies and public administrations, and publishes in French, English, Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish and German. It keeps correspondents in roughly 150 countries, with regional hubs in Nicosia, Hong Kong, Washington and Montevideo. A statute passed by the French Parliament in 1957 secured its independence from the state, and today most of its revenue is commercial, with the remainder paid by the French government as compensation for its public interest mission.