The SimpleDateFormat below parses all the other TimeZone's I tried but doesn't seem to recognise EDT?
private static final SimpleDateFormat currentDateFormat =
new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, d MMM yyy h:mm a z");
ParseException: Unparseable date: "Sun, 15 Mar 2015 12:50 pm EDT" (at offset 26)
I've temporarily cut off the timezone from the date string so that it parses correctly.