ROME - The popular journalist Esma Cakir has been elected as President of the Foreign Press Association in Italy for a second time, the association said Wednesday.

  Ms Cakir was previously the first Turkish reporter to head the illustrious association, which was founded in 1911 and is the most active foreign press club in Europe with headquarters on Rome's Humility Street, just a stone's throw from the Quirinal Palace.

 British journalist Christopher Warde Jones was elected Secretary of the Association, a post he has held several times before as a safe pair of hands.

 Other well-known members of the foreign press club's new Governing Council include the respected north American journalists Megan WIlliams, an author and broadcaster from Canada, and Patricia Thomas, from APTV. Ms Thomas also was recently elected twice as president of the Association as it moved away from traditional male dominance in its higher echelons in recent years.

 Also on the new Governing Council was Chilean correspondent Patricia Majorga, one of a dedicated group of scribes who help arrange the association's prestigious Globo d'Oro cinema awards each year.

 Veteran Spanish journalists Rossend Domenech, from Catalonia, and Antonio Pelayo, another former president, also were elected to the Governing Council as well as Italian reporter Gustav Hofer and Albana Kepi of Albania while Gianfranco Nitti was elected as representative of publicist members.

 Elections were held while a number of intrepid press club members from Argentina, Chile and other countries were covering the war in Ukraine from Kyev at considerable personal risk.

 jf