<i>Samoa and Tokelau to jump time</i>

The tiny South Pacific nation of Samoa and its neighbour Tokelau was scheduled to jump forward in time yesterday, crossing westward over the international date line to align themselves with their other 21st century trading partners throughout the region.
At the stroke of midnight on Dec 29, time in Samoa and Tokelau will leap forward to Dec 31 -- New Year's Eve. For Samoa's 186,000 citizens, and the 1,500 in Tokelau, Friday, Dec 30, 2011, will simply cease to exist.
The time jump back to the future comes 119 years after some US traders persuaded local Samoan authorities to align their islands' time with nearby US-controlled American Samoa and the US to assist their trading with California.
But the time zone has proved problematic in recent years, putting Samoa and Tokelau nearly a full day behind neighbouring Australia and New Zealand, increasingly important trading partners.
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.
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.