The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) has officialy announced that Association des Radio-Amateurs de Nouvelle-Caledonie (ARANC) has been confirmed as the newest IARU member society, effective 22 March 2000. Due to the timing of the voting process, the first full UTC date for ARANC's membership was 23 March, making this the effective "event date" for DXCC purposes.

The result is that QSOs with the Chesterfield Islands on or after 0000 UTC, 23 March 2000, are expected to count toward the new DXCC entity. This corresponds to the date and time when the TXØDX operation began.

The full text of the IARU news release can be found at http://www.iaru.org/rel000323.html.