official designated regional domain extension for Asia and the Pacific. It is a sponsored generic top-level-domain (gTLD) operated by the DotAsia Organisation Ltd. .asia is open to companies, individuals and organisations who have connection to the region. .Asia domains can be seen and used by international and Asian businesses; regional conferences and symposiums; as well as Asian artists and celebrities.

The .Asia web address was introduced to the public through a comprehensive launch involving a multiphased Sunrise and Landrush process from October 9, 2007 to March 12, 2008. It became available on a first-come-first-served registration basis on March 26, 2008. In 2013, there are more than 455,000 .asia domains registered across 155 countries.

Roll-out/response

.asia founded the first Pioneer Domains Program on July 20, 2007, more than two months prior toget?

We’re fracked.

A recent item from New Scientist highlighted the clathrate issue but unfortunately provided more smoke than light. The August 17 report described research led by Graham Westbrook of the University of Birmingham and Tim Minshull of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2009GL039191). Their team sailed into the west of the Svalbard archipelago, which lies north of Norway, where they found CH4 plumes being heated by the West Spitsbergen current, which has warmed 1 °C over the past 30 years. The methane being released from hydrates in the 600 km2 area added up to 27 kilotons/year, which suggests that the entire hydrate deposit around Svalbard could be releasing 20 megatonnes a year. Globally, extrapolating to all shallow, cold ocean areas, that translates to around