Global news agency AFP and Hong Kong’s French Chamber of Commerce have launched a mobile site connecting executives to the chamber’s news, services, and AFP’s economic coverage.

AFP is launching its iPad application in English at the annual conference of the Online News Association; a new offering, free of charge, providing access to a selection of fast, accurate news from around the world.

New guidelines on coverage of violence against women and increased use of women expert sources are among the topics included in a set of initiatives launched by AFP’s Global News Director Michèle Léridon, aimed at improving the way women are represented in the Agency’s content.

The jury praised a series of pictures shot by 35-year-old Carl for AFP. They included a series of pictures of the student riots in London, another shows a demonstrator calling for the release of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and another is of a policeman caught in the act of moving a cat away from the doorstep of 10 Downing Street with his boot.

AFP’s global news coverage in text, photos, and graphics will continue to be made available to Japanese clients via JIJI Press, under an agreement signed in Paris by AFP Chairman and CEO Emmanuel Hoog and JIJI President Masahiro Nakato last wednesday.

“We must secure public funding for the Agency”

AFP will supply the Chinese news agency Xinhua with photos for its multimedia telco products in the fast growing Chinese mobile market, under an agreement signed by the two agencies.

Agence France-Presse and Indonesia's national news agency Antara signed an agreement Tuesday to launch multimedia services in the Indonesian language.

Christophe Vogt, 45, has been appointed deputy chief news editor. He joined AFP in 1995 as correspondent in Frankfurt where he covered the Bundesbank. As a reporter in Paris over the next decade, he covered economics, including notably the birth of the euro currency.