Global Vote Ends Leap Second

International time authorities voted to stop adding or subtracting leap seconds to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and to allow UTC to drift relative to Earth's rotation until a very rare 'leap hour' would be considered. The change responds to repeated technical problems (services that 'smear' seconds, software fragility after past leap seconds, and the prospect of a never‑before negative leap second) and caps decades of debate about civil vs astronomical time. — This institutional shift alters the operational standard for time, with downstream effects on computer systems, legal timekeeping, civil rituals tied to solar time, and the way societies coordinate time internationally.