I am interesting in the correlation between the barrage of "China is melting" stories recently and the recent article on how a large percentage of news stories are given to the agencies by corporations/special interest groups (can't find the link). As new agencies tend to parrot each other it probably wouldn't be that expensive to start something like this.
It is interesting that religious/conservative groups tried to stop the .xxx domain. If this went ahead it would be excellent for them as they could push to move ALL pornographic content into .xxx and ban it from other domains. Maybe they are wise to the feasibility of this approach but with more top-level domains there will be more range for more restricted registration.