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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 5 November 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

End of Life Notice for Interim Trust Anchor Repository (ITAR)

4 November 2010 | The Interim Trust Anchor Repository is now being retired from service.

Pre-Cartagena ICANN Policy Update Webinar Invitation

4 November 2010 | The ICANN Policy Staff will provide a briefing on Monday 22 November at 14.00 and 20.00 UTC, summarizing policy issues across the different ICANN Supporting Organizations, namely the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) and Address Supporting Organization (ASO).

Meet ICANN's 2010 Nominating Committee Selectees

4 November 2010 | On 7 September 2010, the Nominating Committee announced its selections for seven leadership positions within ICANN. Biographies of the selected individuals are listed within for each ICANN body.

Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT): Draft Proposed Recommendations for Public Comment

3 November 2010 | The Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) issues this request for Public Comment on a set of draft proposed Recommendations that it has developed as part of its review of ICANN's execution of its commitments to accountability and transparency under the Affirmation of Commitments (AoC).

Proposed Changes to the ICANN Bylaws Article XI: Advisory Committees Relating to the Charter and Membership of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC)

3 November 2010 | Pursuant to resolution 2010.28.10.11 passed by the ICANN Board at its meeting on 28 October 2010 the community is invited to provide comments on proposed Bylaws amendments addressing the recommendations arising out of the SSAC Review Working Group.

Updated: Slate of Three Candidates Selected for Position of the At-Large Selected Voting Board Director

3 November 2010 | On 28 October 2010, the At-Large Board Candidate Evaluation Committee (BCEC) announced the slate of three candidates for the position of At-Large selected voting Board Director.

FY11 Travel Support Guidelines Version 2 and Cartagena Travel Summary are Now Posted

2 November 2010 | The updated Travel Support Guidelines v2 are now posted at http://www.icann.org/en/topics/travel-support/.

IDN Update: Arabic IDN ccTLDs

2 November 2010 | At the recent ICANN Board meeting, the IDN ccTLD delegation request for ???. ("Qatar") to the Supreme Council of Information and Communication, ictQATAR, was approved.

Location Recommendations Now Being Accepted for ICANN's 2012 Meeting in North America

1 November 2010 | ICANN is actively seeking a location for its 45th meeting to be held 14-19 October 2012 in North America.


Upcoming Events

5 - 10 December 2010: 39th International ICANN Meeting - Cartagena, Colombia

About ICANN

ICANN Bylaws

Our bylaws are very important to us. They capture our mission of security, stability and accessibility, and compel the organization to be open and transparent. Learn more at www.ICANN.org.

Strategic Plan, 2010 - 2013

Adopted FY11 Operating Plan and Budget

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."