Paul, I thought it was a typo... thinking either the WAT is wrong or the -1 is wrong, but... But then, I read: # To make things confusing, `WAT' seems to have been used for -1:00 long ago; # I'd guess that this was because people needed _some_ name for -1:00, # and at the time, far west Africa was the only major land area in -1:00. # This usage is now obsolete, as the last use of -1:00 on the African # mainland seems to have been 1976 in Western Sahara. So, the same FORMAT = 'WAT' is used for both minus and plus one with FORMAT=WAT. As it says above WAT is obsolete... the reference is ambiguous but, I suspect I am digging up old news. Please disregard. Thanks for your reply. Jamie -----Original Message----- From: Paul Eggert [mailto:eggert@cs.ucla.edu] Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2010 12:13 PM To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Cc: Jamie Subject: Re: Africa - data error On 08/22/2010 07:58 AM, Jamie wrote:

I believe I have the latest - please check Africa file - it appears to have a minus sign in front of the Feb 1934 date.

Zone Africa/Niamey 0:08:28 - LMT 1912 -1:00 - WAT 1934 Feb 26

That minus sign is also in our source, namely Shanks & Pottenger. Quite possibly it's a typo (it wouldn't be the first time), but it'd be nice to have a source for any fix.

On 08/23/10 03:51, Jamie wrote:

The International Atlas says that the city and country have observed a time zone of -1 (Central Europe Time) since 1960. Before that the time zone was 0 (UT).

My copy of the International Atlas (6th edition, dated 2003) also says this: Before 1 Jan 1912 LMT Begin Standard 15W00 1 Jan 1912 0:00 1:00 Begin Standard 0W00 26 Feb 1934 0:00 0:00 which means that Niamey observed a time zone of -0100 (1 hour west of UTC) between 1912 and 1934. This is the offset in question.

The Wikipedia article on Niamey says

Wikipedia itself is not reliable on these issues, unless it cites sources.

The PC Atlas uses WAT for UTC-1...

AstrolDeluxe displays West Central Africa Time (WCAT) = -1...

These are clearly invented abbreviations, just as the TZ abbreviation is invented. Microsoft says that the "West Central Africa time zone" is +0100 (1 hour east of UTC). See <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd796927.aspx>. All the other uses of the phrase "West Central Africa time" (that I found with Google) agree with Microsoft.

Perhaps a different term (I propose WCAT) would straighten out the ambiguity

"WCAT" would be problematic for reasons described above. Ambiguity per se is not a problem in the tz database, as it exists in many other places (e.g., "EST" in the U.S. versus Australia). It's not entirely clear that this Niamey time zone actually existed; it might just be a typo. Until it's verified, it's not clear that it's worth the effort to invent a new abbreviation for it.

On Tue, 24 Aug 2010, I wrote:

A proposal has been put forward by an opposition MK to re-instate DST in Israel about two weeks after it ends this year (Sunday, September 12) and have it run another few weeks:

The Minister of Interior expressed today a willingness to re-instate Daylight Saving Time after the Fast of Yom Kippur (September 18, 2010): http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3949359,00.html Several "insiders" have expressed the opinion that this is unlikely to be actually legislated this year partially because of the small amount of time remaining to both the beginning of Standard Time and the Fast of Yom Kippur. I will update the forum if any actual legislation is tabled. ___________________________________________________________________________ Ephraim Silverberg, CSE System Group, Phone number: 972-2-6585521 Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Fax number: 972-2-5617723 WWW: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~ephraim E-mail: ephraim@cse.huji.ac.il