The US Postal Service has issued a souvenir commemorating Barack Obama's election as US president which features a portrait of the president-elect taken by an Agence France-Presse photographer.

The Agence France-Presse board on Friday elected Pierre Louette to a second three-year term as chairman and chief executive of the international news agency.

TOKYO - Top Japanese fashion school Bunka Gakuen and Agence France-Presse on Tuesday launched a service providing global news and archive material to Japanese universities and higher learning institutions.

Agence France-Presse and its South Korean partner Thursday launched a website which seeks to become the leading news community site in one of the world's most wired nations.

AJDABIYA/SIRTE/TRIPOLI (AFP) - <br>The first shots rang out as ominous but faint pops while the Libyan army Land Cruiser was still several hundred metres away but, as it roared down upon us, the gunfire built into an insistent volley of sharp, earsplitting cracks.

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.

Follow all the latest news from Cannes on AFP's special Facebook page <a href="http://www.facebook.com/AFPCinema" target="blank">http://www.facebook.com/AFPCinema</a>, with stories, videos, pictures and graphics in English and French.

AFP reporter Emmanuel Duparcq was awarded the prestigious Albert Londres prize Saturday for his coverage of events in Pakistan and Afghanistan focusing on the activities of the Taliban.