Update 02/02/11: The Internet is back up in Egypt according to numerous reports.

Egypt said Monday it is applying to use Arabic characters for the first time in its entire Internet domain name.

The move by Egypt comes as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) formally opens the process allowing countries to apply for "internationalized" domain names or IDNs, where scripts such as Arabic or Chinese will be used in the last part of an address name.

Google and the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology have signed a $10 million contract regarding business and workforce development in Egypt. Egyptian Minister of CIT, Dr. Tarek Kamel came to Washington D.C. this week with the goal of reinforcing bilateral relations between Egypt and the US, a representative for the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) tells WebProNews.

A journalism student photographing demonstrations outside a police station in Egypt found himself jailed by police, but he managed to put a word out to his friends on Twitter.

Webmasters who target Indian, Egyptian, and/or Middle Eastern users may see a considerable drop in traffic from those countries over the next week and a half to two weeks. An undersea cable network was somehow cut, causing massive Internet blackouts in the area.

Reuters reports that what severed the underwater cables is yet unknown, but as much as 70 percent of Egypt’s network was affected, and a 50-60 percent drop in bandwidth in India.

The Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education is getting a helping hand, courtesy of Google. The search engine giant is going to provide the ministry with Google Apps for Education, which will allow it to access “innovative email, instant messaging, and calendaring, with accounts on your school’s domain, all for free.”

Buried beneath 20 feet of Sand in the Saqqara Pyramids Complex south of Cairo, excavators uncovered what they say may be “the most beautiful mummy ever found in Egypt.