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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 7 June 2013

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Call for Subject Matter Experts for the IDN Root Zone LGR Integration Panel and Advisors to All Panels

6 June 2013 | Today, ICANN's IDN Variant TLD Program moves forward with initiating the implementation of the IDN Root Zone LGR Procedure by publishing the Call for Subject Matter Experts for the IDN Root Zone LGR Integration Panel and Call for Advisors to the IDN Root Zone LGR Panels.

NGPC Adopts Resolution Accepting Nine Items of GAC Beijing Advice on New gTLDs

6 June 2013 | The ICANN Board New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) met on 4 June 2013 and adopted a resolution accepting nine items of the GAC's Beijing advice with respect to New gTLD applications.

Webinar: TMCH & IDNs

6 June 2013 | You are invited to a webinar intended to address questions and provide a background around Internationalized Domain Names and the Trademark Clearinghouse processes, including the comments in Beijing about implementation of variant rules.

ICANN Announces Top-Level Executive Changes [PDF, 67 KB]

6 June 2013 | Los Angeles, California… The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced that Akram Atallah, currently Chief Operating Officer (COO), will become division President of the Generic Domains Division, a newly created branch that will focus on generic domain operations, domain name industry engagement and web services for the community.

Call for Expressions of Interest for 2014 Nominating Committee Chair and Chair-Elect

5 June 2013 | ICANN is immediately seeking expressions of interest for leadership roles in the 2014 Nominating Committee (NomCom) – that of the 2014 NomCom Chair and Chair-Elect.

Proposed Renewal of .BIZ gTLD Registry Agreement

3 June 2013 | ICANN is posting today for public comment a proposed agreement for renewal of the Registry Agreement for .BIZ.

Proposed Renewal of .INFO gTLD Registry Agreement

3 June 2013 | ICANN is posting today for public comment a proposed agreement for renewal of the Registry Agreement for .INFO.

Pre-Durban ICANN Policy Update Webinar Invitation 27 June 2013

3 June 2013 | Whether you plan to participate in the upcoming ICANN meeting in Durban remotely or in person, you're invited to a quick reminder of the background and current status of each major policy issue currently under discussion in ICANN.

Technology Policy Expert to Lead ICANN's Asia Engagement Strategy [PDF, 317 KB]

3 June 2013 | Los Angeles, California… Kuek Yu-Chuang, a leading executive in technology policy development has been named Vice President for Global Stakeholder Engagement for the Asia Region.

Upcoming Events

14 - 18 July 2013: 47th International Public ICANN Meeting - Durban

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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."