The leap year date brought scattered and minor computer glitches to the Island in the final throes of the Millennium Bug which wasn't.

The tiny hiccups across Bermuda did not affect airports, which remained open, all services continued as normal and banks worked smoothly.

But a smattering of computer systems failed to recognise the leap year date of 29 February, 2000. Among these were restaurant MR Onions, whose computer failed to generate receipts with the correct date and Pulp and Circumstance who could not process credit and debit cards in the morning.

Yesterday was the final Y2K hurdle for businesses round the world to make sure their systems passed muster.

Other businesses are believed to have had minor problems generating receipts or accounts with the date 29 February, 2000.

But all major bodies reported no major incidents, with the Government Information Services Director Gavin Shorto reporting no problems in any of their departments.

The Bermuda Monetary Authority said no companies had reported any problems and all three banks also said that it was all systems go on the Island.

The Millennium Bug failed to strike at the heart of Bermuda's systems in the turn-over to year 2000 and there was little concern.

Unlike the year 2000 issue, in which the use of two-digit years was a standard programming flaw in old code, a leap year coding error results because programmers have an incomplete understanding of leap-year rules. Three rules apply for determining the occurrence of a leap year: A leap year occurs in years divisible by four; most years divisible by 100 are normal years; the exception is any year divisible by 100 and 400, which is a leap year.

For example, 2000 and 2400 are leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not.

In America John Koskinen, President Clinton's Y2K czar, said Leap Day was quiet.

"At this juncture, as we expected, we have received no reports of any major problems,'' he told reporters in Washington.

"This does not meant that no one has had a computer problem, but in many cases they are minor problems that can be fixed immediately.'' Some of these included Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, which had problems with computers that track aircraft parts and vehicles and lines grew at Reagan National Airport near Washington because some check-in computers failed.

Some caller ID and pagers displayed March 1, and Wisconsin Public Service Corp in Green Bay shut down a record-keeping programme it knew was problematic.

A computer in the Netherlands could not transmit weather to the media, and merchants in New Zealand had trouble verifying banking transactions.

The Jakarta Stock Exchange was closed as a precaution, and the Singapore subway system rejected some riders' cards.

Passport agency computers in Greece and Bulgaria issued passports with incorrect dates.

At Japan's Meteorological Agency, weather monitoring stations reported double-digit rainfall even though no rain fell, and 1,200 automated teller machines at post offices shut down.

But the problems were dismissed as minor by Bruce McConnell, who heads a United Nations-World Bank monitoring group for Y2K.

"It's completely low key,'' he said. "There's no need for worry because it is being handled internally and it's a small number of incidents in any case.''