Egypt Becomes First to Apply for International Domain

The agency in charge of assigning domain names began accepting applications for domain names written in non-Latin languages, and Egypt -- a country now drawing heated criticism from human rights advocates -- became the first to apply for a domain name in Arabic. Following a controversial decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to allow Web sites written in Arabic, Russian Chinese, and other non-ASCII character sets, governments or their designees can now apply for the approval of such names.