Commercial service The commercial service of APP provides currency and commodity rates from Reuters, financial and economic services, banks and large business houses. APP planned to expand this service, but suffered a setback in the mid-1980s when Reuters bypassed APP and began to sell its financial services directly to business houses and newspapers in Pakistan. Photo service APP has its own photographic section equipped with photo receivers and photo transmitters in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Quetta respectively. Islamabad is the head office to receive photographs from within Pakistan and aboard, and transmits them to the agency's bureaux and stations which distribute them to local newspapers. Urdu service The agency's Urdu language service started in the 1980s to cater for the needs of the growing number of Urdu language dailies in Pakistan. The idea behind the setting-up of the service was to avoid errors and ensure accuracy. As a practice, Urdu speech was often translated into English by the APP and then back into Urdu by newspaper editor – greatly increasing the chances of translation, emphasis or context errors. The Urdu Service, while still small, has been effective in producing text in both languages. Feature & Write Up Service APP editorial staff regularly contribute English and Urdu feature and write ups on socio-economic issues including education, health, business which are well carried by national dailies. Video News Service The Visual News Service (VNS)was launches during 2007 with a special focus to provide electronic news coverage of President, Prime Minister, Parliament House to private media national and international channels The project was initiated on an idea to launch APP's own news channel but financial restraints have hindered the idea and confined it to VNS service only. References Bibliography External links Associated Press of Pakistan official website Companies based in Islamabad News agencies based in Pakistan State media Pakistan federal departments and agencies Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (Pakistan)