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ICANN to Participate in the 2018 Africa Internet Summit (AIS)

Data Protection/Privacy Issues Update: Summarizing our Recent Meeting with Article 29

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News and Announcements

Summarizing Today’s Meeting with the Article 29 Working Party

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Read the latest blog from Göran Marby, ICANN President and CEO, on our ongoing discussions relating to the GDPR and today’s meeting in Brussels with the Article 29 Working Party Technology Subgroup and representatives of the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content & Technology and Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers.

ICANN to Participate in the 2018 Africa Internet Summit (AIS)

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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is sponsoring and participating in the Africa Internet Summit (AIS) from 29 April – 11 May 2018, in Dakar, Senegal. This annual summit is organized by the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) and the African Network Operators Group (AFNOG).

SSAC2 Review Survey Available for Community Input

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Analysis Group, the independent examiner conducting the second review of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC2), has published a survey for community input. The aim of the survey is to collect input from those who have interacted with SSAC or have suggestions for ways to improve it.

Application for APIGA 2018 Is Now Open

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ICANN is looking for aspiring leaders from the Asia Pacific region, between the ages of 18 and 35, to apply for the Asia Pacific Internet Governance Academy (APIGA). The five-day academy will focus on topics related to ICANN and Internet governance and takes place in Korea from 23 – 27 July 2018. Application window closes on 18 May.

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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."