Friday never happened for about 182,000 residents of two Pacific island states, Samoa and Tokelau, which legally changed to a different time zone when Thursday finished, dpa reported. At the stroke of midnight, it suddenly became Saturday. But there were no wild celebrations in Samoa. "We have morning coffee and tea now to celebrate the occasion," Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi told the BBC after the changeover. Samoans will now celebrate New Year's Day at the same time as New Zealand. For the past century, Samoa and Tokelau have been almost a day behind neighbouring New Zealand and Australia, the largest and most developed countries of the South Pacific, because they were on the opposite side of the international dateline. The dateline is a spiky boundary that follows the meridian of 180 degrees longitude and bisects the Pacific Ocean. The change moves Samoa west of the dateline, where it used to be a century ago, before an American trader persuaded chiefs to align the country more closely with the United States and the adjacent territory of American Samoa, which remains to the east. Parliament confirmed the move in June to smooth business ties with Australia, New Zealand and Asia, after complaints that Samoa was closed whenever someone phoned from nearby metropolises on a Monday, whereas offices in New Zealand were closed during Samoa's Fridays. "We now have five working days with our business counterparts in New Zealand and Australia," the prime minister said. Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand with about 1,200 people living on three atolls covering 12 square kilometres, had little choice but to follow as its main government offices are based in the Samoan capital, Apia, nearly 500 kilometres away. -- SPA
