The new gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAG) version 4 is now available for public comment as announced by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
This version of the DAG has important new content, for example:

Incorporation of trademark protections, including improvements to the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS), the Trademark Clearinghouse (TM Clearinghouse), and the [...]

The first Cyrillic Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) country-code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), .РФ is now approved and operational. The introduction of .РФ was lobbied for by both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, both self-confessed keen internet users.
“I have just checked, the website президент.рф is up and running. The Cyrillic website of the [...]

The Moscow Times reports that domain names in Russia ending in the Cyrillic IDN ccTLD, .рф may be available as soon as this week. Representatives from ICANN may officially assign .рф to Russia at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting in Moscow starting this thursday.
“We’re really expecting it within days. As soon as the domain [...]

We can finally start to register complete domain names in non-latin characters as representatives of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approves the first three internationalised domain name (IDN) country-code top level domain (ccTLD) to be placed in the DNS root zone.
The three IDN ccTLDs are:

Egypt: مصر (Egypt)
Saudi Arabia: السعودية (AlSaudiah)
United Arab [...]

.KURD or .KUR is a decision a Kurdish company must decide on to use and represent over 35 million Kurdish people worldwide. A huge number of Kurdish people live in Iran and Iraq, while there are approximately 14 million Kurdish people in Turkey.
This initiative is being driven by Aras Noori, a German resident. Noori wrote [...]