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Supportive Statements

Global Support for IANA Stewardship Transition

08 Sep 2016

ICANN58 NextGen@ICANN Application Round

ICANN58 NextGen@ICANN Application Round Now Open

08 Sep 2016

At-Large Review Survey - We want your feedback!

Help improve ICANN, take the At-Large Review Survey!

08 Sep 2016

Updated Expected Standards of Behavior

Updated Expected Standards of Behaviors

08 Sep 2016

Announcements

Attention Adobe Connect Users: Service Change (Action Required)

Adobe Connect, ICANN's remote participation tool, is moving over to an ICANN-hosted server. The transition will occur on a rolling basis between 26 September and 14 October 2016. After 14 October, all Adobe Connect meetings will use the new...

26 Sep 2016

Help Improve ICANN, Take the At-Large Review Survey!

The Independent Examiner ITEMS is seeking broad community input to measure community perception of the effectiveness of At-Large internal procedure, work output, and the leadership team. Please take this online survey http://bit.ly/2cncbG1 to...

26 Sep 2016

ICANN58 NextGen@ICANN Application Round Now Open

ICANN is looking for the next generation of individuals interested in becoming engaged in their regional communities and shaping the future of global Internet policy. Important work is happening every day at ICANN. If you're ready to start your...

26 Sep 2016  |  Civil Society, Developing World, DNS Marketplace, Technology

ICANN Quarterly Stakeholder Report – Register for the FY17 Q1 Call on 18 October 0300 UTC / 1100 SGT / 17 October 2000 PST

ICANN has announced its FY17 Q1 Stakeholder Call, which will take place on 18 October at 0300 UTC / 1100 SGT / 17 October 2000 PST. The call will focus on how ICANN has implemented community policy for the Quarter ending 30 September 2016 as well...

23 Sep 2016  |  Accountability, Transparency, Civil Society, DNS Marketplace, Technology

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Multimedia

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A comunidade da América Latina e do Caribe falou sobre o ICANN56

Mais informação sobre o GAC: https://gacweb.icann.org/ Leia o comunicado do GAC emitido durante a reunião ICANN56: https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2-2016-06-30-en Assista ao vídeo de...

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ICANN56: The LAC community shared some of the meeting's milestones

Learn more about the GAC: https://gacweb.icann.org/ Read the GAC ICANN56 Helsinki Communiqué: https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2-2016-06-30-en Watch the video (in English) about GAC...

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Cheryl Langdon-Orr on the history of the ALAC

Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Former Chair of the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC), joins Ariel Liang, ICANN Policy Analyst, to talk about the history and founding of the ALAC.

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Jelena Ožegović and Ayden Férdeline talk about ICANN’s NextGen Program

Two former NextGen@ICANN participants, Jelena Ožegović and Ayden Férdeline, join ICANN Global Media Coordinator, James Cole, to talk about what they learned from the program.

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Blog Posts

News from Identifier Technology Health Indicators (ITHI)

  |   By Alain Durand

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From mitigation to integration: III LAC DNS Forum in Santo Domingo

  |   By Daniel Fink, Senior Stakeholder Engagement Manager for Brazil, ICANN

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Update on Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review

  |   By Jonathan Zuck

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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."