SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico's state Canvassing Board certified results from the midterm election on Tuesday in a 3-0 vote amid praise for election administrators and poll workers.
The board meeting at the state Capitol building was the culmination a once-routine election certification process that in some locations has become a focal point for those voicing distrust in voting systems.
Election results have largely been certified without issue in jurisdictions across the country, though Republican officials in a rural Arizona county have so far refused to do so despite a lack of evidence of any problems with the count.
Canvassing boards in each of New Mexico’s 33 counties certified results of the Nov. 8 election, in which Democrats maintained control of every statewide elected office and flipped a congressional seat.
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Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver both won reelection to four-year terms. They serve on the state Canvassing Board along with state Supreme Court Chief Justice Shannon Bacon.
“I'm really proud of the safety, engagement and professionalism at every polling location,” Lujan Grisham said Tuesday.
In New Mexico, doubts about the 2020 election were fueled by a lawsuit from Donald Trump’s campaign and a fake set of electors willing to certify him. This year, an assortment of local and out-of-state Trump allies held forums throughout the state promoting conspiracy theories about elections, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and the Republican nominee for secretary of state, Audrey Trujillo.
In the state's June primary, the Otero County commission initially refused to certify results citing distrust of vote tallying systems — even though the county's top elections regulator said there were no problems. The commission reversed course on a 2-1 vote to certify the primary after Toulouse Oliver successfully petitioned the state Supreme Court to issue an order directing the local board to certify.
In Torrance County, commissioners took unusual steps to provide assurances, including an unofficial hand recount of primary election ballots.
In other midterm results, Democratic challenger Gabe Vasquez won election to Congress in New Mexico’s 2nd District, defeating incumbent Rep. Yvette Herrell in a majority-Hispanic district along the border with Mexico.
Republicans are challenging the new outline of the 2nd District under a redistricting plan from Democratic lawmakers that divvied up a politically conservative oilfield region among three congressional districts.
Statewide certification of the vote also initiated automatic recounts for two state House seats. Democrats won at least 44 seats out of 70, not including the contests subject to a recount.
Incumbent Democratic state Rep. Candie Sweetser is vying against Republican Jenifer Marie Jones in a district that extends across the “bootheel" of southwestern New Mexico, including the cities of Deming, Lordsburg and Columbus.
In the northwest reaches of Albuquerque, Republican Robert Henry Moss is competing for an open state House seat against Democrat Charlotte Little.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Features and Investigation Editor of The Sun, Mr. Henry Umahi, on Sunday, won the prestigious Investigative Reporter of the year award at the 2022 Nigeria Media Merit Award in Lagos.
Umahi won with his extraordinary report entitled: ‘South East: Beaten, battered, bleeding
•Real reasons anarchy reigns in the zone’.
The eight-page report x-rayed the killings and general insecurity in the region and exposed the conspiracies involved.
Other staff of The Sun, Messrs Henry Akubuiro and Steve Agbota, were also nominated for other categories.
Sun in Scorpio sign November 2022
The Sun is the king of the planetdom, the royal presence, and the significator of the father in a Kundli. This November 16th, 2022, Sun is transiting the sign of Scorpio/ the Vrishchik rasi, according to Vedic (sidereal) calculations. The Sun transits each sign of the zodiac in the mid-calendar month and marks the beginning of a month that belongs to a rasi. In many Indian states, the day is considered to be auspicious, almost like the beginning of a new year. Hence cleaning the house, special poojas, and prayers are done to mark the auspiciousness of the transit. The change of the Sun from one rasi to the other is called sankrama, and it happens on a Sankranthi. The following weekdays also gain significance, like the first Monday, the first Tuesday, and so on.
According to Mantreshwara, 'The Sun is the significator of the person's collection of copper and gold, And of father, patience, valor, victory in war, one's soul (Atman), auspiciousness, happiness, prowess, power, light, any work relating to Lord Shiva, travels in forests and mountains, havans or yajnas, Inclinations for work, temple, acuteness, enthusiasm.'
Let us see how Sun's transit in Scorpio zodiac sign sheds light on each rasi.
Aries (Mesha)
Sun being the natural lord of the fifth, the transit of Sun in Scorpio, the eighth house, indicates a 'not so rosy time' for romance and having fun! Lack of confidence and vigor may also show up during this time. Pay heed to your wife's words, as you could avert any loss with her support.
Taurus (Vrishabha)
Fights with your spouse are indicated as the Sun transit in Scorpio is in your seventh rasi. There could be health issues for them as well. As Venus transit is also happening in Scorpio for the whole time Sun is going to stay in the rasi, marital bliss is going to be burnt up by the Sun's heat. But for the unmarried folks, this transit of the Sun could bring marriage. Buying new vehicles or getting institutional support in finance are also indicated.
Gemini (Mithuna)
The Sun being the third house lord of Gemini, now hops into the sixth house. Serious care must be given to one's health. Your hard work will pay off. You will receive gains from the government. You will succeed in competitive situations like exams. You could also have minor tiffs with younger siblings. If you are looking for an opportunity to go abroad, this could be it!
Cancer (Karka)
For Cancer natives, the sun transit in Vrishchik rasi is in their fifth house of poorva janma punya, education, kids, and love. The Sun being the natural karaka of the second house for Cancer, you have to be careful about your speech, especially if you are in a romantic relationship. Ego would get in the way of reconciliation. Students will get a greater push toward their studies. Money flow is also indicated by the eleventh aspect of the Sun. You would place your family first in everything.
Leo ( Simha )
The Sun transit in Scorpio is in its fourth house, which is the house of domestic happiness and mother. Sun is the lord of Leo, and when Sun transits Scorpio, there is a possibility of some domestic squabbles and issues related to the health of the mother that needs to be addressed. Gains through property-related business are seen in the Sun in Scorpio. Your work environment will improve, and your social status will become better.
Virgo (Kanya)
Sun transits the third house of Vrishchik rasi, wherein the Sun is the natural karaka of the twelfth house for Virgo. You will do hard work and reverse your luck and regain what you have lost. You may go on a pilgrimage. Invest your money carefully. You will shine well in businesses, but you have to be careful about impulsive buying.
Libra (Thula)
Sun is the natural eleventh house lord of Libra. The Sun transit in Scorpio in the second house brings financial gains to Libra. This is the best time to make investments and start new businesses. As the natural second lord, Mars is in the eighth during the transit; you should take care of your fixed assets.
Scorpio (Vrishchik)
The natural lord of the tenth house, the Sun transits Scorpio to bring in positiveness to work. You will have the drive to work harder, and you will get rewarded for the same. You could get benefits from the government as well. You could feel dominance towards your spouse, do keep that in check. You could benefit from alliances with foreigners. Health-wise, you would be susceptible to migraines, blood pressure, or fever.
Sagittarius (Dhanus)
The natural ninth house lord falls in the twelfth house during this transit of the Sun in Scorpio. You should be careful in making decisions. Your father's well-being must be taken care of. If you are a student, there could be impediments to your progress.
Capricorn (Makara)
The natural lord of the eight now hops onto your eleventh house with this transit in Vrishchik rasi. You will have a sudden increase in the flow of income. This transit will be rewarding, Capricorn folks! And you will become more popular among your friends and in networks. You would share secrets with your friends.
Aquarius (Kumbh)
The lord of the seventh house will visit your tenth house during this sun transit in Scorpio. It is a lucky time to climb up the career ladder. You will deal with your workplace duties efficiently and its ease. You could look into the well-being of your mother, and you will experience domestic bliss.
Pisces (Meena)
Your father's health could suffer during this transit of the Sun, where your sixth lord is transiting your ninth house. A lot of hard work will be expected from you. If you are a philanthropist, you will gain accolades for your dedication and selflessness in service.
Those whose reading was favorable can let their hair down!! Others can follow remedies to propitiate Sun, like fasting on Sundays; donating red clothes, food, wheat, and red sandalwood on Sundays. Avoiding salt is also a remedy recommended. Reciting Aditya Hrudaya stotra, which was advised to Lord Ram on the battlefield in his war against the formidable Ravan, is also a recommended remedy. But do bear in mind that all prayers and rituals will get to fruition only when done with dedication and when your actions do not cause harm to others!
The sun has had an active few months, developing Ellerman bombs and solar snakes on its surface.
Sunspot AR3140 was recently seen exploding its "bombs, and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter probe spotted a cylinder of gases snaking through the sun's magnetic field in September.
Ellerman bombs occur in areas of the sun's surface with strong magnetic fields. Named after physicist Ferdinand Ellerman, who studied them in the 1900s, the bombs are magnetic explosions caused by opposite polarities colliding. While the explosions are one-millionth as powerful as normal solar flares, they are still immensely energetic, releasing as much energy as 100,000 World War II atomic bombs, according to SpaceWeather.com.
"These events are due to a combination of intense magnetic activity and pressure within the outer parts of the sun," Christopher Conselice, an astronomy professor at the University of Manchester, told Newsweek.
"The Ellerman bombs have been known about for over a century, but their origin is still being debated. We observe these as bright features on the surface of the sun, but their ultimate cause is still unknown," Conselice said.
Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs)—high-energy releases of electromagnetic radiation and solar plasma, respectively—are also associated with areas of higher activity on the sun, so Ellerman bombs can represent a warning bell for more intense solar events.
"They are connected to other solar activity and can indicate that more intense solar flares and CMEs will occur," Conselice said. "The sun is a very active and ever-changing star, and we still don't know how to explain all of the physics behind the activity we see."
The solar snake that was spotted on September 5 by the Solar Orbiter is also an ejection of solar plasma, but it is suspended in a unique way by the sun's magnetic field.
"You're getting plasma flowing from one side to the other, but the magnetic field is really twisted. So you're getting this change in direction because we're looking down on a twisted structure," David Long, an astronomer at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London, said in an ESA statement.
In the video, the extremely hot plasma—up to 1 million degrees Celsius—is snaking along a long filament of the sun's magnetic field. The ESA has estimated that the snake was traveling at around 170 kilometers per second, or roughly 380,000 mph.
The area that the snake emerged from later erupted in a CME, sending huge amounts of solar plasma into space. This suggests that solar snakes may also be a precursor to larger and more significant solar activities.
These solar events come as the sun inches toward its solar maximum, when it experiences more solar flares and CMEs, increasing in activity as it does. The solar activity follows approximately 11-year cycles, during the middle of which the sun reaches the solar maximum, when this activity is a lot higher than during its minimum.
The last solar minimum occurred in 2019, so our sun is ahead of schedule, being more active than it normally is at this stage in the cycle.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about solar activity? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico's state Canvassing Board certified results from the midterm election on Tuesday in a 3-0 vote amid praise for election administrators and poll workers.
The board meeting at the state Capitol building was the culmination a once-routine election certification process that in some locations has become a focal point for those voicing distrust in voting systems.
Election results have largely been certified without issue in jurisdictions across the country, though Republican officials in a rural Arizona county have so far refused to do so despite a lack of evidence of any problems with the count.
Canvassing boards in each of New Mexico’s 33 counties certified results of the Nov. 8 election, in which Democrats maintained control of every statewide elected office and flipped a congressional seat.
People are also reading…
Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver both won reelection to four-year terms. They serve on the state Canvassing Board along with state Supreme Court Chief Justice Shannon Bacon.
“I'm really proud of the safety, engagement and professionalism at every polling location,” Lujan Grisham said Tuesday.
In New Mexico, doubts about the 2020 election were fueled by a lawsuit from Donald Trump’s campaign and a fake set of electors willing to certify him. This year, an assortment of local and out-of-state Trump allies held forums throughout the state promoting conspiracy theories about elections, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and the Republican nominee for secretary of state, Audrey Trujillo.
In the state's June primary, the Otero County commission initially refused to certify results citing distrust of vote tallying systems — even though the county's top elections regulator said there were no problems. The commission reversed course on a 2-1 vote to certify the primary after Toulouse Oliver successfully petitioned the state Supreme Court to issue an order directing the local board to certify.
In Torrance County, commissioners took unusual steps to provide assurances, including an unofficial hand recount of primary election ballots.
In other midterm results, Democratic challenger Gabe Vasquez won election to Congress in New Mexico’s 2nd District, defeating incumbent Rep. Yvette Herrell in a majority-Hispanic district along the border with Mexico.
Republicans are challenging the new outline of the 2nd District under a redistricting plan from Democratic lawmakers that divvied up a politically conservative oilfield region among three congressional districts.
Statewide certification of the vote also initiated automatic recounts for two state House seats. Democrats won at least 44 seats out of 70, not including the contests subject to a recount.
Incumbent Democratic state Rep. Candie Sweetser is vying against Republican Jenifer Marie Jones in a district that extends across the “bootheel" of southwestern New Mexico, including the cities of Deming, Lordsburg and Columbus.
In the northwest reaches of Albuquerque, Republican Robert Henry Moss is competing for an open state House seat against Democrat Charlotte Little.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
A "canyon-like" hole in the sun's atmosphere has opened up and may launch a high-speed stream of solar wind into Earth's magnetic field from Thursday (Dec. 1) to Friday (Dec. 2), and will possibly cause a minor geomagnetic storm, according to spaceweather.com (opens in new tab).
The coronal hole is a gigantic solar gulf stretching across the sun’s center. Coronal holes are areas in the sun's upper atmosphere where our star's electrified gas (or plasma) is less hot and dense than in other regions, which makes them appear black in contrast. Around these holes,the sun's magnetic field lines, instead of looping back in on themselves, point outward into space, beaming solar material outwards at up to 1.8 million mph (2.9 million km/h), according to the Exploratorium, (opens in new tab) a science museum in San Francisco.
This barrage of energetic solar debris, mostly consisting of electrons, protons and alpha particles, is absorbed by Earth’s magnetic field, which becomes compressed, triggering a geomagnetic storm. The solar particles zip through the atmosphere near the poles where Earth's protective magnetosphere is weakest and agitate oxygen and nitrogen molecules — causing them to release energy in the form of light to form colorful auroras such as the northern lights.
The storm that could hit Earth on Thursday will likely be fairly weak. Predicted to be a G-1 geomagnetic storm, it could cause minor fluctuations in power grids and impair some satellite functions — including those for mobile devices and GPS systems. It could also cause an aurora to appear as far south as Michigan and Maine (opens in new tab).
More extreme geomagnetic storms, however, can have far more serious effects. They can not only warp our planet's magnetic field powerfully enough to send satellites tumbling to Earth, but can disrupt electrical systems and even cripple the internet.
Geomagnetic storms can also come from two other forms of solar activity: coronal mass ejections (CMEs) or solar flares. Debris that erupts from the sun in the form of CMEs usually takes around 15 to 18 hours to reach Earth, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center (opens in new tab). The bright flashes of solar flares, which can cause radio blackouts, travel at the speed of light to arrive at Earth in just 8 minutes.
The upcoming storm is just the latest in a string of solar barrages fired at Earth as the sun ramps up into the most active phase of its roughly 11-year solar cycle.
Astronomers have known since 1775 that solar activity rises and falls in cycles, but recently, the sun has been more active than expected, with nearly double the sunspot appearances predicted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (opens in new tab). Scientists anticipate that the sun's activity will steadily climb for the next few years, reaching an overall maximum in 2025 before decreasing again.
The largest solar storm in latest history was the 1859 Carrington Event, which released roughly the same energy as 10 billion 1-megaton atomic bombs. After slamming into Earth, the powerful stream of solar particles fried telegraph systems around the world and caused auroras brighter than the light of the full moon to appear as far south as the Caribbean. It also released a billion-ton plume of gas and caused a blackout across the entire Canadian province of Quebec, NASA reported (opens in new tab). If a similar event were to happen today, scientists warn it would cause trillions of dollars’ worth of damage and trigger widespread blackouts, much like the 1989 solar storm that released a billion-ton plume of gas and caused a blackout across the entire Canadian province of Quebec, NASA reported (opens in new tab).
But this may not even scratch the surface of what our star is capable of hurling at us. Scientists are also investigating the cause of a series of sudden and colossal spikes in radiation levels recorded in ancient tree rings across Earth's history. A leading theory is that the spikes could have come from solar storms 80 times more powerful than the Carrington Event, but scientists have yet to rule out some other potentially unknown cosmic source.
Editor's note: The strapline of this article has been updated to indicate that the El Ali meteorite was discovered, and did not crash, in Somalia in 2020.
There are five constitutional amendments that will appear statewide on the ballots for the Nov. 8 general election. Additionally, local ballot questions will appear in certain counties, including one local referendum, passed by the General Assembly, that will appear on the ballots in Montgomery County.
See the full list of ballot questions here.
