Venezuela, Gaza, Iran changes

[Paul Eggert]

"Jesper Norgaard Welen" <jnorgard at prodigy.net.mx> writes:

> * According to Steffen Thorsen's web site the Gaza Strip and the rest of the
> Palestinian territories left DST early on 13.th. of September at 2:00
> instead of 19.th. of October at 0:00 as tz database has it. If that is true,
> Palestine therefore just preceded Israel which left DST on 16.th. of
> September at 2:00. See
> http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=702

My understanding is that Gaza and the West Bank disagree even over
when the weekend is (Thursday+Friday versus Friday+Saturday), so I'd
be a bit surprised if they agreed about DST.  But for now, I guess we
should assume they agree with Steffen Thorsen's info.  For lack of
better information, we can predict that future changes will be the 2nd
Thursday of September at 02:00.

> * DST News claims that Iran will adopt DST again from 21. March to 23.
> September (2008?).

Reuters is not so confident about the date; see
<http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKBLA65048420070916>.
For now, let's assume they revert to the old rules, which specify the
Persian calendar, and next year would mean switches occur at March 21
00:00 and September 21 00:00.  If we get more-authoritative info we
can improve this later.

> * Although there are no (English!) authoritative information about it, there
> are some web sites claiming Japan and South Korea will join a mutual new DST
> implementation in 2008, presumably at the same dates. Perhaps something
> could be put in the comments for these countries to document the rumour (SK
> already has some info on this in 2007g version of asia file).

Thanks for the heads-up.  I think the current comments are enough for
now.  Japan has been talking about doing this for decades, but has
never done it.