1485
Welp that answers a lot of why all .ml are down
(i.imgur.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I can answer this. The organization that says mali owns .ml gives the ownership country a lot of sway.
So if the country of mali were to reach out formally to the organization and say "hey this domain violates our laws" they would take that very seriously and then work with the registrar & authoritative nameserver owner to handle the situation.
I'm sure this isn't 100% accurate but 90-95 based on my work in a web hosting company
It's a little stronger than that. The country gets the final say on where the root zones point to when it comes to their assigned country code. Many countries employ private organizations to handle their TLD. They aren't supposed to be paid for that though. (But it 1000% happens under the table)