Agencia EFE Launches New English Web Site ‘Efenews.com’.

International news service Agencia EFE announces the launch of EFENEWS, the new web site for its English Language News Service (www.efenews.com), to focus principally on the U.S. market.

The new site will highlight news on Latin America and on U.S. Hispanics, while continuing to provide coverage of major news developments around the world.

Agencia EFE, headquartered in Madrid, has offered a Web site for several years in Spanish. EFE was recently recognized in Spain as one of the companies that has best developed its information technology and Internet capacity.

On the occasion of the launch of its new English-language site, EFE President Miguel Angel Gozalo said that “Agencia EFE demonstrates its interest in the Americas and in representing Hispanics around the world, both in Spanish and in English.

“On this Internet site, EFE will offer in English the brunt of its news related to Latin America and with everything that affects Hispanics around the globe. There will be economic news, sports, politics and entertainment written in English with a focus on and a touch of the Hispanic,” Gozalo added.

The launch of the English-language news site will be followed in several months by a new Agencia EFE service in Portuguese, to be based in Rio de Janeiro, that will aim to serve the Brazilian press in its own language with a full range of news and information generated in the Americas and the rest of the world.

Gozalo emphasized that these initiatives allow EFE to consolidate its presence in the Americas, not only as the world’s leading Spanish-language news provider, but also as a necessary referent in the region’s two other most important languages: English and Portuguese.

EFE moved its English Language News Service (ELS) to Miami in 1997 from Manila, in the Philippines, after a previous stint in Madrid.

In Miami, a team of 25 translators and editors, aided by a satellite office in Madrid, work 24 hours a day, seven days a week to translate from Spanish to English, then edit Agencia EFE stories with a clear vision of the service’s defined readership.

This team will keep the web site stocked with up-to-the-minute information, with special emphasis on the Americas and on the burgeoning Hispanic community in the United States.