(The following appeared on the News-Press website on March 7.)
Time to lose an hour.
Daylight Saving Time begins each year at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March in most of the United States and its territories.
Clocks must be moved ahead one hour when DST goes into effect.
DST is not observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the state of Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Indian Reservation, which does observe DST), according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
On August 8, 2005, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It included the changes in Daylight Saving Time, which resulted in the current schedule, effective in 2007.
Before then, DST began at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in April, and ended at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October.
The new rules for DST beginning in 2007 mean an extra four or five weeks of DST each year. There will now be a total of 238 days of DST, compared to a total of 210 days of DST in 2006 under the previous rules, and the U. S. will remain on DST for about 65 percent of the year, according to the institute of standards and technology.