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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 7 November 2014

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Requirements for Implementing Rights Protection Mechanisms in Name Collision Mitigation Framework Now Available

7 November 2014 | Following a 90-day public consultation period, ICANN is implementing a solution to allow new gTLD registries to release names from their Second-level Domain (SLD) Block Lists while complying with all Rights Protection Mechanism requirements.

ICANN 52 Fellowship Participants

7 November 2014 | 50 fellows from 37 countries have been selected to participate in ICANN's Fellowship program at the 52nd Public Meeting in Singapore, 8-12 February 2015.

.NGO/.ONG Registry Agreement Amendment - Mandatory Technical Bundling of Second-Level Domains

6 November 2014 | On 12 March 2014, Public Interest Registry (PIR), the registry operator for .NGO and .ONG TLDs, submitted a Registry Services Evaluation Policy (RSEP) request to offer mandatory technical bundling of second level domain names for .NGO and .ONG under Exhibit-A of each respective Registry Agreement.

Proposed Charter for Enhancing ICANN Accountability Cross Community Working Group (CCWG) Submitted for Consideration

5 November 2014 | On 3 November 2014, the Drafting Team that was formed by the ICANN community to develop a charter for the Enhancing ICANN Accountability Cross Community Working Group (CCWG) distributed a charter for adoption by chartering organizations.

Upcoming ICG Conference Calls

4 November 2014 | The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) has scheduled its seventh, eighth and ninth conference calls.

ICANN's Updated Proposal for Enhanced Engagement in Africa

4 November 2014 | This webinar aims to cover ICANN's Africa Strategy framework for 2015 and to elicit community feedback moving forward. ICANN continuously aspires to find means to strengthening our engagement in Africa.

ICANN 52 Meeting to Relocate to Singapore | Marrakech, Morocco Meeting to Take Place in Early 2016

3 November 2014 | Community concerns that would prevent maximum participation at its next global meeting (ICANN 52, 8-12 February 2015), a critical one given the ongoing discussions around the IANA Stewardship Transition and ICANN Accountability, has prompted ICANN to postpone the meeting in Marrakech, Morocco and to relocate to Singapore on the same dates.

Upcoming Events

8-12 February 2015: 52nd International Public ICANN Meeting – Singapore

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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."