Can You Spare a Second?

Why, yes, I can. I just happened to find an extra one floating around here.

The International Earth Orientation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) has announced a leap second.

A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2008.
The sequence of dates of the UTC second markers will be:

2008 December 31, 23h 59m 59s
2008 December 31, 23h 59m 60s
2009 January 1, 0h 0m 0s

The difference between UTC and the International Atomic Time TAI is:

from 2006 January 1, 0h UTC, to 2009 January 1 0h UTC : UTC-TAI = – 33s
from 2009 January 1, 0h UTC, until further notice : UTC-TAI = – 34s

The proud parents had previously stated they didn’t care whether the leap second were added or removed, just that it had all of its fingers and toes.