NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

WORLD/ WEB DOMAIN SUFFIX REVOLUTION COMING: A global internet body has voted to allow the creation of new website domain suffixes, the biggest change for the online world in years. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) plans to dramatically increase the number of domain endings from the current 22. Internet address names will end with almost any word and be in any language. Icann will begin taking applications next year, with corporations and cities expected to be among the first. "Icann has opened the internet's addressing system to the limitless possibilities of the human imagination," said the president and chief executive officer for Icann. "No one can predict where this historic decision will take us." There will be several hundred new generic top-level domain names (gTLDs), which could include such addresses as .google, .coke, or even .BBC. There are currently 22 gTLDs, as well as about 250 country-level domain names such as .uk or .de or .ca. It will cost $185,000 to apply for the suffixes, and companies would need to show they have a legitimate claim to the name they are buying. Analysts say it is a price that global giants might be willing to pay, n order to maximize their internet presence. The money will be used to cover costs incurred by Icann in developing the new gTLDs and employing experts to scrutinise the many thousands of expected applications. A portion will be set-aside to deal with potential legal actions, raised by parties who fail to get the domains they want. The vote completes a 6 year negotiation process and is the biggest change to the system since .com was first introduced 26 years ago.

US/ WILDFIRES BURN IN 6 STATES: About 10,000 Arizonans have been forced to flee from their homes as wildfires continue to consume wide swaths of the southwestern United States today. 3 dozen fires are raging across parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and California, as well as Texas and Georgia, forcing additional evacuations and slowing traffic to a crawl as highways in the path of the firestorms are closed. Walls of flames have reached 10 feet in some areas, and have burned more than 1.2 million acres. More than 700 firefighters have come from across the country to battle what has become known as the Monument fire south of the city of Sierra Vista, Arizona, pictured at left, which has been burning since last week. The Wallow blaze, in eastern Arizona, has consumed 519,319 acres, as more than 3500 firefighters attempt to defend against its advance. Despite its size, the fire has only destroyed 32 homes and 4 rental cabins. Containment rose to 51% Sunday. The other major fire in the area, in Cochise County, Arizona, called the Horseshoe Two fire, has charred about 210,000 acres and destroyed 23 structures since it started May 8. Diminishing winds today should help firefighters battle the blazes, after a week's worth of sustained high winds that helped fuel the fires.

US/ SUPREME COURT SIDES WITH WAL-MART: The US Supreme Court has ruled that a group of women claiming discrimination against US retail giant Wal-Mart may not seek a class action lawsuit. The court ruled 9-0 that women who said they were paid less because of their gender must pursue legal action individually. Plaintiffs had sought to unite more than a million women in their effort. Wal-Mart denied the accusation and said female employees across the US had no grounds for a class action. The court overturned a ruling by a lower appeals court that 1.5 million women who had worked at Wal-Mart retail stores could unite in the class action suit. The court ruled that the women could not show common "questions or law or fact" that held for all the women in the proposed class (any woman who has worked for one of more than 3,400 Wal-Mart stores in the US since December 1998). In a dissenting opinion, the court's 4 liberal justices agreed the Wal-Mart case did not merit a class action, but would have taken a less narrow view of the requirements for a class action suit over back pay.