I am about to send out changes to the time zone database compiled mostly from data kindly abstracted from the IATA tables by Gwillim Law. Here is a verbal description. Please let me know if any of these changes seem bogus; otherwise, I'll send out a proposed patch shortly. * Quintana Roo switched from CST/CDT to EST/EDT; we assume this happened last fall. This requires a new entry, America/Cancun. * Chihuahua switched from CST/CDT to MST/MDT; we assume this happened this spring. This requires a new entry, America/Chihuahua. * Cuba has changed the rules again. The 1998 change dates are Mar 29 and Oct 25. Thereafter, the rules will be the same as the US, except that the time of switch is 00:00 instead of 02:00. * Haiti stopped observing DST this year. * Starting in 1999, Paraguay switches the last Sunday in February, not March 1. * Starting this year, Estonia uses the EU rules; i.e. it switches at 01:00 UTC (03:00 standard time), not 02:00 standard time. * tzdata1998g.tar.gz has a glitch: it moves the Lithuanian clocks back by an hour at 1998 Mar 29 02:00, waits an hour, and then moves them forward an hour when 02:00 comes by again. Also, the new rules are identical to EU. * Crimea switched from Moscow time back to EET/EEST; we assume it happened in March 1997. * Starting this year, Armenia observes DST again, using the same rules as Russia. * Starting last year, Azerbaijan observes DST, using rules like Russia's except with transition times at 01:00 instead of 02:00. * Starting last year, Kirgizstan adopted DST rules like Russia's, except with transition times at 02:30 instead of 02:00. * Last fall Libya converted from CET/CEST to EET with no DST. Its spring 1997 transition was April 4 at 00:00, not Mar 27 at 02:00. * Egypt's DST rules are the fourth Friday in April at 00:00 to the last Friday in September at 24:00. The current tz database has the rules as the last Friday in April at 01:00 to the last Friday in September at 03:00, due to my transcription errors the last time around. * New Caledonia stopped observing DST in 1997; it was just a 1-year experiment. * The Cook Islands stopped observing DST in 1991. (This claim is from the 1995 edition of Shanks, not from the IATA.) * For the capital of Kazakhstan, the name `Almaty' now has a 2-to-1 majority over the old Russian-derived name `Alma-Ata' in English-language prose, as measured by Alta Vista; so it's time to switch the name in the database, with a backward-compatibility link.