TASS agyentstvo Sovyetskovo Soyuza") which was the central agency for news collection and distribution for all Soviet newspapers, radio and television stations. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the agency was renamed "Information Telegraph Agency of Russia" (ITAR-TASS) in 1992, but regained the simpler TASS name in 2014. The origin of TASS dates back to December 1902 when it began operations as the Commercial Telegraph Agency (TTA, Torgovo-Telegrafnoe Agentstvo) under the Ministry of Finance, with Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta's staff being the main supplier of journalists. As the demand for non-business began during the first battles of the Russo-Japanese War in February
Mehr News Agency has become OANA member since 2007, ranked second among the OANA member agencies in number of news and photos published on the organization's website. MNA initiated the OANA flag, and the 50-year-old OANA adopted the flag. MNA has so far signed contracts with more than 18 foreign news agencies including the Japanese Kyodo News Agency, the Spanish EFE, the Chinese Xinhua News Agency, Cuba's official Prensa Latina (PL), the Press Trust of India (PTI), Korea's YONHAP, the Vietnam News Agency (VNA), the Turkish Cihan News Agency, Malaysia's BERNAMA, Indonesia's ANTARA, the Azerbaijani Trend News Agency, Mongolia's MONTSAME, the Syrian Arab