29 December 2011, Tokelau - "Samoa and Tokelau skipping friday in order to cross international date line", Associated Press
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See Oceania Time Zone Map with current time
Locals from Falealupo village ("used to be the last village in the world to see the sunset of each day")
with WorldTimeZone.com kanga.
Photo © Alexander Krivenyshev, WorldTimeZone.com
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Samoa and Tokelau skipping friday in order to cross international date line
The tiny South Pacific nation of Samoa and its neighbor Tokelau will jump forward in time on Thursday,
crossing westward over the international date line to align themselves with their other 21st century trading partners
throughout the region.
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At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 29, time in - New Year's Eve.
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In a bid to remedy that, the Samoan government passed a law in June that will move Samoa west of the international date line, which separates one calendar day from the next and runs roughly north-to-south through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Under a government decree, all those scheduled to work on the nonexistent Friday will be given full pay for the missed day of labor.
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Nearby Tokelau, a three-atoll United Nations dependency, said it will join its neighbor in the date line dance to maintain its alignment with Samoa, three sailing days away, where its administration is based.
Tokelau's parliament, the Tokelau General Fono, recently voted to go ahead with the change, although it still has to complete all formalities for the date line switch, a New Zealand foreign ministry official said in Wellington on Thursday.
"They're going ahead and doing it ... the same as Samoa," ministry spokeswoman Susan Budd said. The territory is administered by New Zealand on behalf of the U.N.
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The Ulu, or chief, of Tokelau, Foua Toloa, said Thursday that the New Zealand government had given its blessing for Tokelau to make the change.
"The General Fono (parliament) decision has been endorsed, and we hope that the people will go to sleep on Thursday night and wake up the next day, Saturday, the 31st of December, without any huge changes," he told Radio New Zealand International.
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03 October 2011, Tokelau - "Tokelau jumps across the dateline", 3news.co.nz
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Tokelau jumps across the dateline
Tokelau is the latest Pacific Island nation to announce it will jump the dateline at the end of the year.
It will join Samoa in skipping December 30, bringing the two countries one hour ahead of New Zealand in summer.
The Tokelauan government says this will make it easier to do business with New Zealand.
Islands in the Kiribati group are already ahead of New Zealand.
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