Short answers, pulled from the story.
Agence France-Presse traces its origins to 1835, when Charles-Louis Havas founded the Agence Havas in Paris, making it the world's oldest news service. After German occupation turned the agency into a propaganda tool during World War II, journalists from the French Resistance seized its offices on the 20th of August 1944 and relaunched it under the name Agence France-Presse.
AFP maintains an editorial presence in 260 cities across 150 countries, with staff from more than 100 nationalities. The agency employs approximately 2,600 people across its global network.
AFP receives partial state funding structured as compensation for fulfilling its public-interest mission; in 2022 this amounted to 113.3 million euros. Two-thirds of AFP's revenue comes from commercial activities, and the agency operates under a 1957 law that mandates its editorial independence from the French government.
AFP publishes stories, videos, photos, and graphics in six languages: French, English, Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, and German. Its AFP Forum platform offers over 6,000 new documents daily in those languages, with digital archives of around 40 million items.
AFP photographers have won the World Press Photo of the Year on three occasions. Hocine Zaourar won in 1998 for a photograph taken in Algiers, Ronaldo Schemidt won in 2018 for an image from Caracas, and Yasuyoshi Chiba won in 2020 for a photograph from Khartoum.
Paul Guihard was a French AFP editor and journalist based in New York, born in 1932. He was killed by a bullet in the back on the 22nd of September 1962 while covering the Ole Miss riot, which erupted in response to James Meredith's attempted enrollment at the University of Mississippi. His murder has never been solved.