Chavez Hands Nation New Time Zone

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez plans to bump clocks in his nation back half an hour next month to add daylight to citizens' lives and create "a more fair distribution of the sunrise," Reuters reports. The change will particularly help poor children who wake up before dawn to go to school, explained Chavez' science and technology minister.

The change, switching Venezuela  to Greenwich Mean Time minus 4.5 hours, would also provide unspecified brain benefits. "It's about the metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight," Chavez said in a rambling seven-hour talk on his weekly radio program. Other measures will soon be introduced to "make more effective use of time," he promised.