Dale,
Personally, I'd trust "date -u" much sooner than any random person.
Even better:
$ date --date='00:00 Feb 26, 2013 UTC'
Mon Feb 25 19:00:00 EST 2013
$
Funny thing is when I try the date from the announcement:
All Final Version (-01 and up) submissions are due by UTC 24:00 Monday,
February 25.
I get this:
$ date --date='24:00 Feb 25, 2013 UTC'
date: invalid date `24:00 Feb 25, 2013 UTC'
Seriously, what the heck is 24:00? Is that like the meeting we'll have in
the afternoon at about 13:90?
Paul