NIC México has announced the .MX country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) reached 300,000 registered domain names recently, with the number of registrations today standing at 309,112. Of these, 58,000 domain names registered in 2009 alone showing a rapid growth for the ccTLD. … more

In a move to allow domain names to be registered and accessible to as many people in the European Union as possible, the European Commission has announced speakers of Bulgarian and Greek will soon be able to have .eu websites in their own languages. … more

On 17 June 2009, ICANN received the attached communication from Catherine Sigmar, General Manager at Registry Services Corporation (dba RegistryPro) (see, icann.org/correspondence/sigmar-to-pritz-17jun09-en.pdf) requesting an amendment to the .PRO Registry Agreement (see, icann.org/en/tlds/agreements/pro/). … more

A new public comment period opens today for 30 days on a proposed amendment from Tralliance to Appendix 6 and 7 of the dot-travel Registry Agreement.

On 18 May 2009, ICANN posted for public information a request submitted by Tralliance through the Registry Services Evaluation Process (RSEP). The request calls for a phased allocation process for one and two-character names in dot-travel. … more

The ongoing battle at Nominet, the .uk domain name registry, “has been the unlikely location for a corporate soap opera, complete with scandals, villains, twists and turns, allegations of corruption, resignations, grand plans thwarted at the last minute and some nasty in-fighting that has left people alternatively amazed, entertained and worried,” writes Kieren McCarthy on his blog. … more

With Internationalised Domain Names (IDN) getting closer to becoming a reality, AusRegistry International has announced they have successfully implemented full IDN capability into their existing systems. … more

There are now almost 183 million domain names registered around the world across all Top Level Domains according to the latest 2009 Domain Name Industry Brief from VeriSign. This represents a 17 per cent increase year-on-year and a four per cent increase over the fourth quarter of 2008. Registrations increased twelve per cent over the same quarter from last year while ccTLD registrations continued to increase at a faster rate than gTLDs. … more

Japan Registry Services have published their JP Domain Name Registry Report 2008, their 2008 annual report, outlining the activities for 2008 regarding the management of the .JP ccTLD.

Probably the most noteworthy of the .JP happenings was the passing of the one million registrations mark on March 1, 2008. As of May 1 2009 the number stands at 1,090,476. For a country the size of Japan, with around 127 million people, this is a very low rate of registrations per capita. … more

Sweden’s registry, .SE, is undertaking a series of free courses to alert Sweden’s municipalities on the use of secure DNS, or DNSSEC with the first course taking place in Sundsvall on 4 June. .SE found that 11 of the 290 Swedish municipalities are using secure DNS. … more

Pool.com and Quintaris have received around 300,000 pre-orders for registrations with new gTLDs despite no new gTLDs having been confirmed as of yet and not likely until 2010 at the earliest.

Since Pool.com and Quintaris began allowing consumers to pre-order domain names in what they consider likely new registries, the total number “spoken for” has averaged 10,000 per day. … more

Nominet is running a consultation that is giving those interested in the future of .UK the opportunity to have their say about potential changes to the self-regulation model of the domain name industry in the UK.

Nominet wants to hear opinions about the recommendations made by Professor Garratt and Mutuo on their recent independent governance review. Nominet says now is the time to act to ensure that self-regulation continues and to avoid the potential increased costs, slower pace of change and possible fines for non-compliance that could become a part of everyday life if the industry were to be regulated. … more

Domain name holders in the .AR ccTLD will no longer be able to have more than 200 domain names, a move that appears aimed at domainers. The change in policy to limit the number of domain registrations sees each entity limited to a maximum of 200 COM.AR or ORG.AR domain names. … more

The Nigerian Government has assumed management and control of the .NG ccTLD with a change of severs to .NG and the approval of the board re-delegation of the Nigerian ccTLD on the IANA website by the global Internet regulation body ICANN/IANA, reports Lagos’ Daily Independent. … more

The .ME Registry announced this week the ccTLD has reached 250,000 domains registered. Montenegro’s .ME Registry has seen significant growth since it launched the domain extension worldwide just over one year ago. … more

Telnic, the .TEL registry operator, have announced there are now over 200,000 .TEL domain names registered, the milestone being achieved within the first two months of General Availability. … more