image Website owners and internet users in the Arab nations of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are today able to use a system that allows full web addresses to contain no Latin characters, including in their domain country codes.

The system is a first step by internet regulatory authority Icann to allow web addresses in many scripts including Chinese, Thai and Tamil. More than 20 countries have requested approval for international domains from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

The introduction of the first web names using so-called country code top-level domains has been planned for several years by Icann. Previously, websites could use some non-Latin letters, but the country codes (such as .eg for Egypt had to be written in Latin script.) 

The three new suffixes will allow web addresses to be completely written in native language characters.

image "All three are Arabic script domains, and will enable domain names written fully right-to-left," said Kim Davies of Icann in a blog post. One of the first websites with a full Arabic address is the Egyptian Ministry of Communications.

From the BBC & Icann

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