leap second news from NIST, ITU/R, etc.

[Paul Eggert]

Yesterday Demetrios Matsakis reported on the Leap Second Discussion
List some results from an informal session on leap seconds held at the
2001 European Time and Frequency Meeting.  He said that the ITU/R
committee on leap seconds, which may recommend the abolition of leap
seconds, has asked for cooperation from other international bodies,
and that the IERS and the IAU are involved.

He also mentioned a few other things:

* The planned European satellite system Galileo will run on TAI.

* NIST is planning to make TAI-UTC available in its WWV series of
  broadcasts, and it is already available in their NTP format.

* NIST plans to do a user survey about this.

* Judah Levine of NIST has proposed including the complete list of
  leap seconds in all NTP packets.  Others have suggested just giving
  the current value plus a change bit.

For more about this, please see his full notice, archived on the Leap
Second Discussion List (you need to join to to view the archives), at:

http://clockdev.usno.navy.mil/archives/leapsecs.html