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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 3 July 2009

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

ICANN Formalizes Relationship with ccTLD Manager for Portugal (.PT)

2 July 2009 | ICANN has announced that it has signed an exchange of letters with the country code top level domain (ccTLD) manager for .PT (Portugal), Fundação para a Computação Científica Nacional (FCCN).

ICANN Formalizes Relationship with ccTLD Manager for Paraguay (.PY)

1 July 2009 | ICANN has announced that it has signed an accountability framework with the country code top level domain (ccTLD) manager for .PY (Paraguay), The National Computer Center (CNC) from the National University of Asuncion (UNA) and Laboratory Electronycs Digital Telecom (LED) of the University Catholic Nuestra Senora de la Ascuncion (UCA), together known as NIC. Paraguay.

ICANN Formalizes Relationship with ccTLD Manager for Vanuatu (.VU)

1 July 2009 | ICANN has announced that it has signed an exchange of letters with the country code top level domain (ccTLD) manager for .VU (Vanuatu), Telecom Vanuatu Limited.

ICANN Formalizes Relationship with ccTLD Manager for Uruguay (.UY)

1 July 2009 | ICANN has announced that it has signed an exchange of letters with the country code top level domain (ccTLD) manager for .UY (Uruguay ), Servicio Central de Informatica (SeCIU).

ICANN Formalizes Relationship with ccTLD Manager for Haiti (.HT)

1 July 2009 | ICANN has announced that it has signed an accountability framework with the country code top level domain (ccTLD) manager for .HT (Haiti), Consortium FDS/RDDH.

Public Comment Encouraged on Revised GNSO Stakeholder Group Charters

1 July 2009 | As part of the comprehensive GNSO Improvements effort, last year the ICANN Board approved the formation of four new GNSO Stakeholder Groups (SGs). After considering proposed SG Charters that were submitted by the community and posted for public comment, the ICANN Board passed a Resolution in May directing its Structural Improvements Committee (SIC) and ICANN Staff to revise the SG Charters to make them consistent with the Board's GNSO Improvements Report (and related Resolutions).

Public Comment: Proposed Bylaw Amendments Related to GNSO Restructuring

30 June 2009 | Implementation of the GNSO Improvements process requires the amendment of a substantial number of the ICANN Bylaws to reflect new GNSO structures, processes and mechanisms.

Rod Beckstrom Named ICANN CEO

26 June 2009 | Internet founders and leaders are joining industry executives and government officials in praising the selection of Rod Beckstrom as the new Chief Executive Officer and President of ICANN.

Upcoming Events

25 - 30 October 2009: 365th International Public ICANN Meeting - Seoul, South Korea

About ICANN

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Strategic Plan, July 2007 - June 2010

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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."