NEW YORK: The Associated Press (AP) and Yahoo have announced the release of AP Archives, a fee-based news archive on Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com).

An official release states that the agreement integrates AP's archives into Yahoo! News' powerful news search. Users can access AP Archives via Yahoo! News by conducting keyword searches for news articles dating back to 1 January 1998.

Users will be able to see available AP archived articles, based on relevance defined by Yahoo!'s search technology, on any search being conducted at Yahoo! News. The listed AP archived news articles are also available for purchase at a cost of US $1.50 per article, the release says.

The release also adds that nearly one million archived AP stories are currently available at Yahoo! News. Top AP news such as headlines, stories, photos, interactive round-ups, slideshows, audio cuts and video clips will continue to be available for free for 15 days from publication on Yahoo! News. The alliance greatly increases the time that each AP story is accessible on Yahoo! News, as per the claims made by the release.

AP Digital, a division of The Associated Press, offers news services containing text, photos, audio, graphics and video on a wide variety of topics to the Web and wireless markets.

The Associated Press, founded in 1848, is the world's oldest and largest newsgathering organisation. It provides news content in text, audio, video, graphics and photos to more than 15,000 news outlets with a daily reach of more than one billion people worldwide. AP's multimedia services are distributed by satellite and the Internet to more than 120 nations.

Yahoo!'s global network includes 25 world properties and is available in 13 languages.