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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 25 October 2013

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Announcement of the Launch of the Implementation Advisory Group for Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice

24 October 2013 | We are pleased to announce the launch of the Implementation Advisory Group for Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice (IAG-CCT). Thirty-eight (38) individuals responded to the Call for Volunteers.

Internet Domain Name Expansion Now Underway

23 October 2013 | Los Angeles, California… The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced that the first new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) from its New gTLD Program were delegated.

Dawn of a New Internet Era

23 October 2013 | Today marks an historic moment, not only for the New gTLD Program, but for the Internet as a whole.

Audited Financial Statements Posted Within 120 Days After the Fiscal Year End

23 October 2013 | ICANN continues to provide accountability and transparency regarding its financial results, with another unqualified audit report from independent auditors, Moss Adams LLP, for the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2013.

Second Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT 2) Draft Report & Recommendations

21 October 2013 | To collect public feedback on Draft Proposed Recommendations resulting from the second Accountability and Transparency Review, mandated by the Affirmation of Commitments.

First New gTLDs Get the Green Light for Delegation

21 October 2013 | The time has come! Today, the first four domains from ICANN's New Generic Top-Level Domains Program were cleared to proceed to delegation.

Upcoming Events

17-21 November 2013: 48th International Public ICANN Meeting - Buenos Aires

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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."