Correspondent / behind the news

From stuffed mice to naked cowboys, AFP's outgoing New York correspondent Sebastian Smith looks back on his five years covering the Big Apple. (AFP Photo/Getty Images/Spencer Platt)

Journalists do a lot of waiting in Cannes. Until we rush frantically like someone trying to catch the last train to Salvation. Then we wait some more. And that’s the way it is during the world’s most glam film festival: bouts of downtime punctuated by adrenaline-pumping excitement of the highest caliber. Anne Chaon, AFP's cinema correspondent until earlier this year, looks back on what it's like to cover Cannes.

"#boston", "#watertown" and '#bostonmarathon" are among the top hastags cited on 'the e-diplomacy hub', an application that follows real-time conversations among top-tier officials, experts and activists in the realm of digital diplomacy. Here's what they are saying. (AFP Photo/Stan Honda)

AFP Correspondent Frankie Taggart looks back on 18 months covering Nepal while bureau chief in Kathmandu. There were, to be sure, a lot of stories focused on mountains and Maoists, but living near the roof of the world was a truly rich and, sometimes, otherworldly experience, he reports. (AFP Photo/Prakash Mathema)

AFP correspondent Beatriz Lecumberri covered Venezuela -- which is another way of saying she covered Hugo Chavez -- between 2008 and 2011. Elsewhere, she had described for Correspondent what it was like working in the long shadow of the outsized personality that was "El Jefe". Here, she reflects on the Chavez legacy, and the vacuum created by his death. (AFP Photo/Juan Barreto)

Opportunities for journalists to travel in Sudan are rare, so when the government unexpectedly offered AFP’s Khartoum-based correspondent Ian Timberlake a chance to visit a war-ravaged region in the south – to inspect a dam project – he’s jumped. Fortunately, he didn’t pack a lunch. (AFP Photo / Ebrahim Hamid)

Whatever history’s judgment on the virtues and effectiveness of Turkey’s current leadership, for a reporter covering the day-by-day evolution of this gateway nation – the tectonic plate between Europe and the Middle East – they are certainly newsworthy. AFP senior correspondent Michel Sailhan, winding down a four-year tour of duty as our bureau chief in Ankara, reflects on Turkey’s recent past and possible futures. (AFP Photo/Adem Altan)

"I met him for the first time in 2007, while he was on the run from the secret police," recalls Hong Kong-based AFP reporter Anuj Chopra, speaking of a Burmese political activist long at odds with his country's military regime. They met in a Japanese restaurant in one of the swankiest hotels in Yangon, the country’s largest city. "It was an improbable venue for a rendezvous with someone atop the government's 'most wanted' list..." (AFP PHOTO / Mizzima News)

Foreign correspondents arriving in Seoul quickly realize to what extent the divided Korean peninsula's northern half – held in Stalinist-style thrall by the Kim dynasty for more than six decades – casts a long and dark shadow over the bustling, vibrant south. AFP’s Simon Martin, winding down a six-year tour of duty, reflects on the Korean quandary. (AFP Photo/Saeed Khan)

Never, arguably, has a French president slid so far so fast towards unpopularity as Nicolas Sarkozy, who failed this year in his bid to win a second five-year term in office. Philippe Alfroy, one of AFP's two “Elysee” correspondents, describes what it was like covering France’s hyperactive “hyper-president,” whose ambivalence toward the media vacillated between charm offensives and outbursts of contempt. (AFP Photo Gerard Cerles)

AFP came under intense attack from some French-based hactivists recently over an article on the Syrian government’s bombardment of opposition stronghold Homs that cited conversations with sources there identified by pseudonyms. The Internet-based activists charged that the news agency was endangering its sources by communicating with them via Skype, even if they were identified with fictitious monikers. AFP countered that it takes every precaution to protect its sources. Here’s a blow-by-blow of how the firestorm erupted and, finally, died down.

“What possessed you to ask that question?  Honestly, I can’t believe that this problem interests you more than, say, world hunger.  I bet you were forced to ask that question. Pathetic.” So begins, in 2008, the relationship between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and AFP’s newly appointed bureau chief in Caracas. Beatriz Lecumberri tells us what it was like living with Hugo. (AFP Photo/Thomas Coex)