First non-Latin domain name goes online

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country (a sovereign state or a dependent territory).
All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs. Currently there are four internationalized country code TLDs, consisting in two Cyrillic letters or several Arabic letters. Creation and delegation of ccTLDs is performed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) as described in RFC 1591, corresponding to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes with few exceptions explained below.

The first of the non-Latin domain names is now online. Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology's official website (http://www.mcit.gov.eg) is also accessible via its domain name in Arabic (http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر).

It seems that major browsers are unable to handle Arabic letters and the URL displayed is http://xn--4gbrim.xn----ymcbaaajlc6dj7bxne2c.xn--wgbh1c/ar/default.aspx

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) had recently approved of domain names in Arabic for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Egypt's country code top-level domain (ccTLD) in Arabic is "مصر." (.masr) in additional to the existing ".eg".

Major internet applications are also yet to come to terms the new non-Latin URLs. Google Translate treats the domain name "http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر" as a piece of text, rather than an URL and spews out a literal translation "http:// site. Ministry - Communications. Egypt"

The popular URL shortening service bit.ly goes into error mode and displays the message "Server Error. Sorry, bit.ly encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request."

Until now, websites had to end their addresses with ".com" or another string using Latin characters. That meant businesses and government agencies still had to use Latin characters on billboards and advertisements, even if they were targeting populations with no familiarity with English or other languages that use the Latin script.

Non-Latin characters were sometimes permitted for the portions of the Internet address before the suffix. But Arabic websites generally haven't had that option because Arabic characters are written right to left, conflicting with Latin suffixes written left to right.

It is expected that by 2011 domain names in as many as seven Indian languages - Hindi, Bangla, Punjabi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu and Gujarati - would also be available.

Current Affairs at Glance

International Current Affairs 2010

• Belgium became the Europe’s first country to ban burqa.
• Pakistan’s National assembly passed a bill that takes away the President’s power to dissolve parliament, dismiss a elected government and appoint the three services Chiefs. Pakistan’s parliament passes 18th amendment which was later signed by Presient cutting President’s powers.
• USA and Russia signed Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty(START) that allowed a maximum of 1550 deployed overheads, about 30% lower than a limit set in 2002. The treaty was signed in the Progue Castle.
• Emergency was imposed in Thailand.
• Nuclear Security Summit held at Washington.It was a 47 nation summit wherein P.M. announced setting up of a global nuclear energy centre for conducting research & development of design systems that are secure, proliferation resistant & sustainable.
• PM visit USA & Brazil, a two nation tour. He attended Nuclear Security Summit in USA & India- Brazil-S.Africa(IBSA) and Brazil-Russia-India-China(BRIC) summit in Brasilia (Brazil).
• 16th SAARC Summit held in Bhutan in 28-29 April. The summit was held in Bhutan for the first time. It is the silver jubilee summit as SAARC has completed 25 years. The summit central theme was ‘Climate Change’. The summit recommended to declare 2010-2020 as the “Decade of Intra-regional Connectivity in SAARC”. The 17th SAARC summit will be held in Maldives in 2011.

National Current Affairs 2010

• Naxals killed about 75 CRPF personal at Chintalnar-Tarmetla village in Dantewada distt ,Chhattisgarh. Government appoint E.N. Rammohan, to probe the incident.
• Uninque Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) now known as Aadhaar. It’s Chairman is Nandan Nilekani. It will assign 16 digit identification number to all residents in India.
• NTRO- National Technical Research Organisation. The organization came to limelight after allegation of phone tapping of politicians.
• Indian navy commissioned India’s first indigenously built stealth warship ‘ INS Shivalik’. The other stealth warship to be built are named as ‘INS Sahyadri’ and INS Satpura’.
• Right To Education Act is notified and will become a legally enforceable from 1 April 2010. Key features of RTE Act are : All children in 6-14 age group must get free and compulsory eduction; No child shall be held back,expelled or required to pass a board examination till Class VIII; There must be 25 % reservation for poor children even in private & minority schools; There must be one teacher for every 30 students; A child rights commission will look into violations of the RTE law.
• Govt start Census 2011. It is the 15th Census. It is in two phase. The first phase is called –House listing & Housing Census and the second phase is called decadal headcount which will be held in Feb 2011. The Registrar General of India is C Chandramouli.

Sports Current Affairs 2010

• IPL3 season won by Chennai Super Kings defeating Mumbai Indians.
• Youth Olympics Games 2010 to be held in Singapore in Aug 2010.
• World Youth Championship was held at Baku, Azerbaijan.
• Lawn tennis legend Martina Navratilova diagnosed with Breast Cancer.
• ‘Jumbo’ chosen as 2011 World Cricket Cup Mascot.
• World Kabbadi Cup 2010- India defeated Pakistan to won World Cup Kabbadi 2010 held at Ludhiana.
• Pankaj Advani won the Asian Billiards Championship defeating Singapore’s Peter Gilchrist for the consecutive third time.
• Badminton Asia Championship, Delhi :
  • Men’s singles – Lin Dan defeated Wang Zhenguing
  • Women’s singles-Li Xiurei defeated Liu Xin.

Awards Current Affairs 2010

• 19Th Bihari Puraskar 2009 has been awarded to Hemant Shesh for his collection of poetry ‘Jagah Jaisi Jagah’.
• 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the best first Book was awarded to Glenda Guest for the novel ‘Siddon Rock’. Rana Dasgupta won Commonwealth Writers Prize for best Book 2010 for book ‘Solo’.
• Carl Zeiss wildlife conservation award was won by Joydip Kundu.
• Amitav Ghosh won the Dan David Prize alongwith Margaret Atwood for ‘Rendition of the 2oth century’.

Economics & Commerce

• India became the 7th largest shareholder in World Bank. India’s voting rights has gone up to 2.91 %. The USA has highest voting rights of 15.85 % followed by Japan with 6.84 % and Germany with 4 %.
• Govt proposed that concept of GGDP – Green Gross Domestic Product to be introduced in the country by 2015. In 2012 India will host the Rio+20 conference on biological diversity.
• Government approved disinvestment of 20% of share in SAIL in this financial year.
• India’s total external debt as on December 2009 is 251 billion.
• India’s Gems & Jewellery export grow by 16% to $28.41 billion in 2009-2010.
• RBI announced the credit policy. The CRR has been raised from 5.75 % to 6 %. The Repo rate has been raised from 5 % to 5.25 %. The reverse repo rate has been raised from 3.5 % to 3.75 %.

Persons in News 2010

• Justice Gyan Sudha Mishra was sworn in as Judge of Supreme Court of India. She became the 4th women judge to be elevated to the Supreme Court of India.
• Justice S H Kapadia will be next Chief Justice of India.
• Mukul Sangma shown in as Meghalaya Chief Minister.
• Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski died in a air crash at Moscow.
• Juan Antonia Samaranch, Former President of International Olympic Committee (IOC) died.

Misc Issues

• ‘Decision Points’ memoir of former US President George W Bush.
• A variety of mango has been named after Sachin Tendulkar.
• Scientist create element 117 from calcium & Berkelium.
• International congress of Mathematicians will be hosted by India for the first time in August 2010 at Hyderabad. The congress has been held once every four years since 1897except the breaks during two world wars.
• Government will opened four new campuses for the IIMC(Indian Institute of Mass Communication) at Nagpur, Kochi, Jammu and Aizawl.
• Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park, Derjeeling become first zoo in the country to install infrared night vision cameras in the enclosures housing endangered snow leopard.
• ‘Hindutva, Sex & Adventure’ written by Mark Tully.
• Gorumara National Park, Jalpaigudi has been declared the best among the 235 national parks & sanctuaries in the country by the MOEF.
• ‘Gandhi-Naked Ambition’ written by Jad Adams.
• India ranks 5th in the World’s cybercrime ranking for 2009 after US, China, Brazil & Germany.
• India lauched GSLV from Sriharikota on 15 April 2010. However the launch was failed in the third stage. The launch was important as GSLV-D3 was the third developmental mission of India’s GSLV during which ISRO’s indigenously developed cryogenic upper stage (CUS) was to be flight tested. This is the 6th flight of GSLV, but the first one to test Indian made cryogenic upper stage. GSLV-D3 was to launch the GSAT-4 satellite into an elliptical Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. The total flight of the vehicle was planned to be 1022 seconds.
• India likely to complete building its first strategic crude oil storage by Oct 2011. India is building underground storage at Visakhapatnam in AP and Padur in Karnataka to store about 5.33 million tones of crude oil which is enough to meet nation’s oil requirement for 13-14 days. India will join nations like the US, Japan & China that have strategic reserves.

People in the News

• Shashi Tharoor (born 9 March 1956) is a member of the Indian Parliament from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Kerala. A prolific author, columnist, journalist and human rights advocate, he has previously served as the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information and the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs.
• Lalit Modi (born 29 November, 1963 Delhi, India) is an Indian cricket administrator and businessman. He is best known for his stint as the Chairman and Commissioner of the Indian Premier League and the Chairman of the Champions League from 2008 to 2010. He is also the Vice President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) since 2005 and Vice President of the Punjab Cricket Association. 

Source--Civil Services India