Agence France-Presse's Somalia correspondent Mustafa Haji Abdinur has been awarded the CNN Multichoice African Journalist of the Year Award in the Free Press category.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) has rolled out a new high performance real time delivery system to further boost the quality of its services to clients.

The Board of Directors at its meeting of 27 January 2011 took note of the estimated 2010 results and unanimously adopted the budget for 2011.

AFP has signed up to a technical and commercial partnership in Asia, the Middle East and Africa with BlueFox, a content integrator specialized in Digital Signage (video, photo and text for public screens).

Estrade, who covered wars, conflicts and revolutions around the world for over four decades, has died in Paris following a long illness. He was 65.

AFP is to strengthen its permanent staff in Tunisia and Morocco in the wake of the uprisings in the Arab world in recent months.The Tunis bureau will be reinforced with a new staffer while a new bureau chief in Rabat will be named.Agence France-Presse currently has six journalists in Tunis and seven in Rabat as part of its workforce of more than 2,900 in 165 countries, of 80 different nationalities.

AFP has recently begun using forensic software to alert photo editors to manipulated images produced by third party sources and amateur witnesses.

Agence France-Presse was the only international media organisation to be able to get in to Deraa after a 10-day siege by Syrian security forces.

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DAVID MILLIKIN, CHIEF NEWS EDITOR FOR NORTH AMERICA, HAS BEEN APPOINTED DIRECTOR FOR NORTH AMERICA FROM APRIL 1.