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EPDP Phase 2 Team Publishes Final Report

Country Code Top-Level Domain Participation in ICANN’s Domain Abuse Activity Reporting System

The Asia Pacific Regional Plan for FY21-25 is Ready

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News and Announcements

ICANN68 By the Numbers and Survey Report

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The ICANN68 By the Numbers and Survey Report is now available, which contains information about participation in ICANN68 by session, region, and more. It also includes results of the ICANN68 Survey, which focused on what worked best during the second virtual meeting and what areas can be improved. Click the link above to explore the report.

Nomination Opens for Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for Capacity Building

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Nominations are open for the Dr. Tarek Kamel Award for Capacity Building. The award recognizes ICANN community members for significant efforts in developing capacity in areas related to ICANN’s mission. Submit nominations by Friday 21 August. Click the title above to learn more.

Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Phase 2 Team Publishes Final Report

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The Final Report sets out the EPDP Team's recommendations for a System for Standardized Access/Disclosure (SSAD) to nonpublic gTLD registration data and recommendations and conclusions for so-called "Priority 2" topics, which include topics such as city field redaction, among others. Click on the title above to learn more.

New Government Engagement Publication

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Read the latest Government Engagement publication that provides an update of the proceedings within the working groups of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), where discussions of Internet- and cybersecurity-related issues take place. Click the title link above to learn more.

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."