You will recall that at ICANN51, the ALAC submitted a very controversial piece of Advice to the ICANN Board, specifically that the New gTLD applications and delegations for specific TLDs be frozen until appropriate public interest safeguards can be put in place. The TLDs in question were those referred to by the GAC as Category 1 TLDs in the fields of health, education, finance, charities and gambling, identified by the GAC as particularly sensitive, requiring enhanced safeguards to build public trust. I understand that this advice is under review by the Board New gTLD Process Committee (NGPC). Our statement has received a lot of notice, particularly by the Registries. A letter from the Registry Stakeholder Group to the ICANN Board is attached. They STRONGLY recommend that the Board reject our advice. Accordingly, I believe that we must quickly reinforce our position. I have asked Evan Leibovitch and the ALAC New gTLD WG to provide further details on the short statement approved in LA, so that it may be taken into consideration by the NGPC. The statement is attached. There is nothing in this statement that was not already implied in the advice we have already given, but it sets out the details in such a way as to (hopefully) make our advice harder for the Board to dismiss completely. As the Registry Stakeholder Group points out, a freeze would be problematic. We are not trying to cause problems, but we do believe that the public interest MUST be served. I believe that this matter is of extreme urgency. Accordingly I am taking the rather unusual step of requesting that staff immediately initiate a 4-day vote to ratify this statement. The vote will start as soon as staff can initiate it and will end on Tuesday, 18 November at 23:59 UTC. PLEASE VOTE AS SOON AS YOU CAN. Once the vote has received sufficient support as to ensure that it passes, I will notify the Board. Alan