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BBC: Clock changes: EU backs ending daylight saving
by Marshall Eubanks Aug. 31, 2018

Aug. 31, 2018

Clearly, not going to happen that soon. Regards https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45366390 The EU Commission is proposing to end the practice of adjusting clocks by an hour in spring and autumn after a survey found most Europeans opposed it. Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said millions "believe that in future, summer time should be year-round, and that's what will happen". The Commission's proposal requires support from the 28 national governments and MEPs to become law. In the EU clocks switch between winter and summer under daylight saving time. A European Parliament resolution says it is "crucial to maintain a unified EU time regime". However, the Commission has not yet drafted details of the proposed change. In a consultation paper it said one option would be to let each member state decide whether to go for permanent summer or winter time. That would be "a sovereign decision of each member state", Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein explained on Friday.

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Mozambique officially uses LMT?
by Steve Allen Aug. 30, 2018

Aug. 30, 2018

A month ago was the longest lunar eclipse this century, and it was well visible from Mozambique. I know folks there who forwarded a couple of low resolution versions of information pages that the national meteorological agency issued. Upon looking at them I realized that they were saying that someone at the national meteorological agency believed that each town in Mozambique, including the capitol city Maputo, is running on Local Mean Time. I have attached the images. They are the official announcement from INAM. In a lunar eclipse all points on earth see the same fuzzy shadow events within milliseconds, but all times in the table are offset according to the longitude of the city. I know that cell phones in Mozambique use what tzdb says. I cannot say what outlying villages and people without cell phones use, other than that there is no such thing as precise timing of civil events and transportation departures/arrivals as in most modern cultures. So I cannot say for sure whether this is a mistake, an official doing these calculations the way things used to work, or whether outlying towns still set their clocks using a stick in the ground. I have no contacts to dive deeper into Mozambican government, so I wonder if anyone else can find out more. -- Steve Allen <sla(a)ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB 260 Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855 1156 High Street Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m

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[PROPOSED] * asia: Add story about Higgins time.
by Paul Eggert Aug. 30, 2018

Aug. 30, 2018

--- asia | 26 +++++++++++++++++++++++--- 1 file changed, 23 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/asia b/asia index 7166380..5e27d85 100644 --- a/asia +++ b/asia @@ -2939,15 +2939,34 @@ Link Asia/Qatar Asia/Bahrain # Saudi Arabia # -# From Paul Eggert (2014-07-15): +# From Paul Eggert (2018-08-29): # Time in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Arabian peninsula was not -# standardized until relatively recently; we don't know when, and possibly it +# standardized until 1968 or so; we don't know exactly when, and possibly it # has never been made official. Richard P Hunt, in "Islam city yielding to # modern times", New York Times (1961-04-09), p 20, wrote that only airlines # observed standard time, and that people in Jeddah mostly observed quasi-solar # time, doing so by setting their watches at sunrise to 6 o'clock (or to 12 # o'clock for "Arab" time). # +# Timekeeping differed depending on who you were and which part of Saudi +# Arabia you were in. In 1969, Elias Antar wrote that although a common +# practice had been to set one's watch to 12:00 (i.e., midnight) at sunset - +# which meant that the time on one side of a mountain could differ greatly from +# the time on the other side - many foreigners set their watches to 6pm +# instead, while airlines instead used UTC +03 (except in Dhahran, where they +# used UTC +04), Aramco used UTC +03 with DST, and the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line +# Company used Aramco time in eastern Saudi Arabia and airline time in western. +# (The American Military Aid Advisory Group used plain UTC.) Antar writes, +# "A man named Higgins, so the story goes, used to run a local power +# station. One day, the whole thing became too much for Higgins and he +# assembled his staff and laid down the law. 'I've had enough of this,' he +# shrieked. 'It is now 12 o'clock Higgins Time, and from now on this station is +# going to run on Higgins Time.' And so, until last year, it did." See: +# Antar E. Dinner at When? Saudi Aramco World, 1969 March/April. 2-3. +# http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/196902/dinner.at.when.htm +# newspapers.com says a similar story about Higgins was published in the Port +# Angeles (WA) Evening News, 1965-03-10, page 5, but I lack access to the text. +# # The TZ database cannot represent quasi-solar time; airline time is the best # we can do. The 1946 foreign air news digest of the U.S. Civil Aeronautics # Board (OCLC 42299995) reported that the "... Arabian Government, inaugurated @@ -2957,7 +2976,8 @@ Link Asia/Qatar Asia/Bahrain # # Shanks & Pottenger also state that until 1968-05-01 Saudi Arabia had two # time zones; the other zone, at UT +04, was in the far eastern part of -# the country. Ignore this, as it's before our 1970 cutoff. +# the country. Presumably this is documenting airline time. Ignore this, +# as it's before our 1970 cutoff. # # Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] Zone Asia/Riyadh 3:06:52 - LMT 1947 Mar 14 -- 2.17.1

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EU Public Consultation on summertime arrangements
by John Wilcock Aug. 29, 2018

Aug. 29, 2018

https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations/2018-summertime-arrangements_en > > Objective of the consultation > > Following a number of requests from citizens, from the European > Parliament, and from certain EU Member States, the Commission has > decided to investigate the functioning of the current EU summertime > arrangements and to assess whether or not they should be changed. > > In this context, the Commission is interested in gathering the views > of European citizens, stakeholders and Member States on the current EU > summertime arrangements and on any potential change to those arrangements. >

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Fwd: TZDB Questions
by Paul Eggert Aug. 29, 2018

Aug. 29, 2018

[Forwarded with permission.] -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: TZDB Questions Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2018 17:52:53 -0700 From: Mikey Schott <maschott(a)gmail.com> To: eggert(a)cs.ucla.edu Hello, Dr. Eggert. First let me express my thanks to you for all of the time and energy you have put into the upkeep of the time zone database. I appreciate all of the thought and detail that goes into the decisions regarding each zone. I've been working extensively with the time zone database over the past month to identify a list of currently unique time zones for use in a front-end web application. I'd be happy to share the details of my work if you are curious, but since its purpose is tangential to that of the time zone database, I'll leave them out of this email. The reason I'm writing is because after working so closely with the data, I had a few questions I was hoping you could answer for me. I have more or less completed the work I was doing, so these questions come more from curiosity than necessity. 1. Has there been any consideration to move the source data into a more structured format like csv, xml, or json? I realize I'm probably in the minority here in terms of people who would find this useful. 2. The latest zone entry for some zones that no longer use dst still point to dst rules, e.g. Asia/Tokyo and the Japan rule set even though dst is no longer used in Japan . Is there a reason why some non-dst zones use this method where they point to an outdated rule set whereas most non-dst zones use no rule set (i.e. rule = '-')? 3. I've noticed that some zones just use a shortened version of their offset for their format, whereas timeanddate.com gives them a more descriptive format (e.g. Europe/Volgograd uses MSK vs. +03). Is there a reason for the discrepancy? Does the time zone database error on the side of caution here? 4. I believe that one of the primary purposes of the Link zones is to ensure that there is a zone that covers every country. Is there a specific list or source that the time zone database uses to decide the list of countries that are covered? I noticed that Bouvet Island (BV) and Heard and McDonald Islands (HM) are not included despite having ISO-3166-2 country codes. (Although both have a population of 0, so it hardly qualifies as an oversight.) 5. Do you have a favorite time zone? I've become quite fond of Antarctica/Troll both for its name and its unique offset. Thanks again for all of your work on the database. I've signed up for the mailing list so I can keep up to date. -Mikey

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Re: [tz] TZDB Questions
by Mikey Schott Aug. 29, 2018

Aug. 29, 2018

Great. Thanks for all the answers.

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The rules of DST@Shanghai need some modifications
by Hong Xie Aug. 21, 2018

Aug. 21, 2018

The existing rules of DST@Shanghai is # Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/S > Rule Shang 1940 only - Jun 3 0:00 1:00 D > Rule Shang 1940 1941 - Oct 1 0:00 0 S > Rule Shang 1941 only - Mar 16 0:00 1:00 D > Rule PRC 1986 only - May 4 0:00 1:00 D > Rule PRC 1986 1991 - Sep Sun>=11 0:00 0 S > Rule PRC 1987 1991 - Apr Sun>=10 0:00 1:00 D There are a news record about the DST in China: http://bjrb.bjd.com.cn/html/2017-08/25/content_169986.htm The accurate hour of DST@China is 02:00. For Example, In 1986, the start time of DST@China is 02:00 May 4 1986. The end time of DST@China is 02:00 Sep 14 1986. So the rule should be modified to: # Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/S > Rule Shang 1940 only - Jun 3 0:00 1:00 D > Rule Shang 1940 1941 - Oct 1 0:00 0 S > Rule Shang 1941 only - Mar 16 0:00 1:00 D > Rule PRC 1986 only - May 4 2:00 1:00 D > Rule PRC 1986 1991 - Sep Sun>=11 2:00 0 S > Rule PRC 1987 1991 - Apr Sun>=10 2:00 1:00 D

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time and cost to reprogram computers for DST in Japan
by Paul Eggert Aug. 20, 2018

Aug. 20, 2018

Earlier this week Mainichi Japan published an article describing some criticism of reintroducing DST to Japan. My favorite quote was this one, abut the time and cost to reprogram computers: "The biggest hurdle in Japan to putting daylight saving time in place is the cost and workload required to adjust computer systems. Professor Tetsutaro Uehara of Ritsumeikan University, a specialist in information systems, estimates that it would take about four years and hundreds of billions of yen to do just that. "'Japan is a country with advanced information technology systems, and computers with timing functions are used everywhere. Many are programmed with Japan time based on the international standard time,' pointed out Uehara. 'Software would have to be rewritten to introduce summer time. Such work would take about four years and cost hundreds of billions of yen. It is crazy to attempt to put it in place by the 2020 Games,' said the bewildered professor." My source: Nakagawa S, Hatta K. Daylight saving time causes more trouble than benefits, say critics. The Mainichi. 2018-08-12. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180812/p2a/00m/0na/010000c

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Time zones in the news
by Arthur David Olson Aug. 13, 2018

Aug. 13, 2018

"Trump’s diplomatic learning curve: Time zones, ‘Nambia’ and ‘Nipple’" https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/13/trump-world-knowledge-diplomatic-… @dashdashado

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2-hour DST during 2020 Tokyo Olympics?
by Paul Eggert Aug. 8, 2018

Aug. 8, 2018

Prompted by the recent deadly heat wave in Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met yesterday with the president of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic organizing committee, and discussed whether to introduce one or two hours of daylight saving time during the 2020 Olympics to help beat that summer's heat. Although Japan's 2020 Olympics bid said that Tokyo's July/August climate has "many days of mild and sunny weather" and is "an ideal climate for athletes to perform at their best", in reality a Tokyo summer's heat and humidity can be brutal: summer temperatures regularly get to 35°C (95°F) and last week peaked at 41°C (106°F). The International Olympic Committee has agreed to allow staging the marathon at 07:00 to beat the heat. "Why not 05:00? the sun will already be up then," Tokyo residents may be thinking. Apparently the recent heat wave has caused organizers to think the same thing, as a 2-hour DST would advance the event's effective starting time to 05:00 by the sun while still keeping it nominally at 07:00. Although the 1964 Tokyo Games were held in October to avoid heat, this was before the Olympics schedule was subject to the scheduling demands of broadcasters and sponsors. The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics ratings were down 9% from 2012 (including digital streaming) and event dates will be an important factor in the 2020 ratings. Although a 2-hour DST would presumably affect attendance and ratings only in Japan, that alone is a significant concern for the event's organizers. My sources: Tokyo weighs daylight saving time for Olympics as heat wave incinerates weather descriptions used for 2020 Games bid. Japan Times. 2018-07-28. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/07/28/national/tokyo-weighs-daylight… OLYMPICS/2020 Tokyo organizers consider daylight saving to beat heat. Asahi Shimbun. 2018-07-28. http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201807280009.html

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