29.06.2007 Local Presence now available for COM.HK
06.06.2007 Local presence for COM.MY - Malaysia
05.06.2007 .LC opens for registrations
16.05.2007 .SE to enhance IDN support for nordic and minority languages
08.05.2007 Purely Numeric .NO Domains available in June 2007
05.03.2007 Post-validation soon available for .CAT registration

29.06.2007 Local Presence now available for COM.HK
.com.hk is a 3rd level extension in the .hk namespace that is reserved for local companies registered in Hong Kong. European Domain Centre is now able to add this extension to the list of those covered by our Local Presence offer.
06.06.2007 Local presence for COM.MY - Malaysia
It is now possible also for registrant's without their own office in Malaysia to register .com.my domains thanks to European Domain Centre's new Local Presence product.

05.06.2007 .LC opens for registrations
.LC, the ccTLD for the island nation of Saint Lucia in the eastern Caribbean sea, has announced a general opening for registration under its 2nd level suffix, as well as under the 3rd level extensions .COM.LC, .ORG.LC, .NET.LC, .CO.LC, .L.LC, and .P.LC.

Until the 30th of June a sunrise phase will be held to allow Trademark holders to seek protection for their names. On the 1st of July the Registry will then open for general registrations on a first-come-first-served basis.

16.05.2007.SE to enhance IDN support for nordic and minority languages
The Swedish Registry .SE is preparing to introduce enhanced support for IDN to cover all the official minority languages of Sweden and the other Nordic languages.

In the first phase of the launch, set to start on July 4th 2007, the Registry will create 2 separate queues to which applicants can submit their requests. The applications in the Trademark queue will have priority over the applications submitted in the Public queue. To submit an application to the Trademark queue there is a requirement that the registrant to be the same as the owner of the Trademark in question.

After the queues are closed on the 1st of August, all the applications submitted in the Trademark queue will be published on the Registry´s site in order to allow for the submission of objections to the validity of the submitted applications. In the case of an application being challenged, the applicant will be required to submit documentary evidence of his rights to the name in question.

In the case of multiple valid applications for the same name, the domain will be assigned randomly by drawing lots.

Here is a calendar of the launch:

04/07/2007: opening of the queues for application
01/08/2007: queues closed. TM Queue is published for comments.
13/08/2007: last day to submit objections to TM applications to objection@iis.se
14/08/2007: .SE checks all received complaints and take action on the relevant ones.
03/09/2007: all requested domains are registered. Multiple applications are solved with drawing a lot.
05/09/2007: opening for normal applications.

With this enhancement of .SE support for IDN, it will be possible to register domains in the following languages:

- Danish
- Faroese
- Finnish
- Icelandic
- Meänkieli
- Norwegian
- Romani
- Sami
- Swedish
- Yiddish

The characters for Norwegian are the same as the ones currently supported by NORID for .NO, and therefore also include support for Norwegian minority languages, and possibly additional completely foreign languages.

08.05.2007 Purely Numeric .NO Domains available in June 2007
NORID, the Norwegian Registry, has recently announced its intention to allow the registration of purely numeric domain names under the .no tld starting from the 13th of June 2007.

05.03.2007 Post-validation soon available for .CAT registration
The .cat tld recently celebrated its first anniversary and is close to reaching 21000 active domain names. The Registry operator PuntCAT also announced that post-validation of .cat domain names registrations will soon be available to complement the current system based on pre-validation.

Pre-validation has been the standard process available since the beginning, either through sponsorship or promotional codes.
Registration was not immediate as the Registry has to verify the application form and eligibility criteria compliance and, quite often, exchange mail with registrant to complete missing information.

The new Post-validation will allow for faster registration provided that the registrant explicitly accepts (ticking a web checkbox with the statement) the compromise to publish a significant amount of the content in Catalan within the given deadline.