GENEVA – The leap second survives – for at least three more years. Delegates at an international telecommunications meeting in Geneva were to decide on Thursday whether to recommend the elimination of leap seconds, which are occasionally added to the world’s atomic clocks to keep them synchronised with Earth’s rotational cycles.
Richard C. Beaird, a state department official who led the US delegation, said in a statement that discussions at the meeting “revealed a heightened degree of interest that has not previously existed on this issue”.
With no consensus among the delegates, International Telecommunication Union officials, part of the United Nations, sent the issue back to a panel of experts for further study. A revised proposal will be introduced no earlier than 2015. – ( New York Timesservice)
