The New Hampshire House has passed a bill to raise the minimum age for marriage from the present 16 years to 18 years without any exceptions. The bill, which has been designated as SB 359, will now be sent to the Governor for his signature.

If approved by the Governor, New Hampshire will become the 12th state to have a law that bans marriage under the age of 18 with no exceptions.

New Hampshire To Raise Minimum Marriage Age to 18

The New Hampshire House voted 192-174 to pass the bill SB 359 on Thursday, raising the legal age for marriage from 16 years to 18 years. The bill has a long and eventful history and has been sent to Gov. Chris Sununu for approval.

Bill 359 clearly states that

“no person below the age of 18 years shall be capable of contracting a valid marriage, and all marriages contracted by such persons shall be null and void.”

Presently, the legal age for marriage is 16 years.

The bill will also nullify the current legal options for minors to marry.

The current laws, RSA 457:6, permit parents and guardians of persons between 16 and 18 to approach a family court to grant permission for the marriage.

The petition also requires the involvement of the Division for Children, Youth, and Families and allows the court to interview with each minor getting married without their parents present. SB 359 would eliminate this process.

If the law is signed by the governor, it will make New Hampshire one of 12 states that have banned marriage under 18 with no exceptions. The other states which have such a law in place include Washington, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New York.

Maine permits marriage for 16- and 17-year-olds with written consent from their parents, legal guardians, or custodians. However, this will become nullified in New Hampshire if SB 359 becomes law.

The bill was advocated for years by Rep. Cassandra Levesque, a Barrington Democrat. In 2018, the idea of raising the marriage age to 18 years from the then stipulated 14 years was first proposed by Levesque, then 19 and not yet a state representative. However, the House and Senate Republicans agreed to pass a bill to raise it to 16 instead. Levesque won her first election to the House and continued to advocate raising the marriage age to 18 years.

Levesque argued that raising the marriage age will prevent situations that can be exploited by others.

Levesque, in the House Calendar introducing SB 359, said,

“The committee found that this bill is important to be in law because we know that age of majority does not amount to maturity, and that there is a greater risk of human trafficking and domestic violence without these protections.”

However, the bill was opposed by Republican lawmakers. Rep. Margaret Drye, a Plainfield Republican, argued that the marriage was a beneficial option for those under 18 in certain circumstances like an unexpected pregnancy.

Also Read: Ontario Sunshine List 2024 Reveals Why People Can’t Afford To Buy A Home

Ontario Sunshine List is released every year and it reveals the salaries of public sector workers who take home a salary in excess of $100,000. This year the list features 300,570 names which is 30,000 higher than last year of public sector employees with salaries over $100,000. The Ontario Sunshine list also features five employees working at the Ontario Power Generation who are among the top 10 earners with the province’s highest salary nearing $2 million.

Ontario had passed the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act in 1996 under the Mike Harris government and the stated aim of the act was to make the government more transparent and accountable. The $100,000 limit was a big deal then.

However the $100,000 in 1996 in relative terms in 2024 will be equivalent to $180,564.97. If you remove 300,570 people on this year’s Ontario Sunshine List for that salary threshold there you drop 279,781 names. In other words there will be many people who will not be able to own a house without help from family or an inheritance.

In a nutshell it means that employees who take home a six figure salary package will still feel the pinch of Canada’s affordability crisis. The soaring inflation and rising cost of living a $100,000 salary doesn’t guarantee financial security in many parts of the country.

Also, to maintain the $100,000 threshold today, the province should have adjusted it to $55,381.73 in 1996. Ontario has fixed a threshold of $100,000, while the threshold varies in other provinces. Alberta, for example, has set a threshold of $125,888 for government employees and $150,219 for people in public sector bodies.

Not much information is available for the federal government, but a Canadian Taxpayers Federation access-to-information request revealed that 110,593 employees in the federal public service earned $100,000 or more in 2023.

There are a couple of options for Ontario and other governments with non-indexing disclosure requirements. Resetting the threshold to a number that makes more sense today and then continuing to index the threshold going forward seems feasible.

We also don’t need to reveal the names of all individuals. The government could report aggregated salary ranges by job title rather than disclosing specific names below a second, lower threshold. This would maintain government accountability and transparency by still disclosing who the highest earners are.

As it stands, we have a list that publishes the names and salaries of potentially hundreds of thousands of people who could not afford to buy a house. This doesn’t seem aligned with the original intent of the disclosure act.

Some features of the Ontario Sunshine List 2024 are as follows:

• The highest paid employee took a pay check of $1.9M
• Public sector employees were paid salaries in excess of $100K
• The Ontario Sunset list top position is held by Kenneth Hartwick, CEO of the electricity Crown Corporation with a salary of $1.93 million followed by chief strategy officer Dominique Miniere $1.2 million and chief projects officer Michael Martelli drawing $1 million as salary.
• Public sector workers were paid counting in Bill 124 compensation
• 2024 budget revealed that Ontario deficit will triple
• CEOs of the Hospital for Sick Children and the University Health Network figured in the top 10 list and each drew a salary of $850,000 each while CEO of the provincial transit agency, Metrolinx drew a salary of $838,097.
• 17 professors or associate professors at the University of Toronto drew a salary in excess of $500,000

Caroline Mulroney, president of the Treasury Board, stated in a release,

“The largest year-over-year increases were in the hospitals, municipalities, and services, and post-secondary sectors, which together represented approximately 80 percent of the growth of the list.”

Also Read: Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum Says Wants to Hire Student Protesters Backlash Underway

Meteor Showers evokes both fantasy and awe and often when we see a meteor which is also sometimes referred as a shooting star we make a wish and hope that it is fulfilled. However meteors are an unpredictable phenomenon but wait what if someone says that today a star gazer can see up to 40 meteor showers in an hour?  Sounds like fiction but it is true.

What is an Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower Event?

Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower are the remnants of the Halley’s comet which left a trail of debris as it made its long and elliptical journey around the Sun. Halley comet visits the solar system once in 75 to 79 years. Last time it visited the solar system was in 1986 and it is expected to return in 2061. The comet as it enters the inner solar system and nears the sun, its ice layers break off as a long tail. The debris remains in the solar system long after the comet has returned to deep space. When the Earth passes through this debris left by the comet, a meteor shower event occurs. There are two annual meteor shower events which happen every year- the Eta Aquarids in May and the Orionids in October.

The Eta Aquarids meteor showers are spectacular and the meteors which move incredibly fast at speeds in excess of 44 miles per second leave glowing trains behind them which are a sight to watch.The space rocks travel at high speeds into the atmosphere where friction heats them up until they start to burn and leave a fiery trail behind. Most meteors will burn while they enter the earth’s atmosphere but some rocks survive this fiery ordeal and land on earth. They are known as meteorites.

 Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower, May 2024 Date

The ETA Meteor Showers are best viewed in the Southern Hemisphere where the number can reach 40 to 50 meteors per hour. The Meteor shower starts from April 15 but its peak will be reached on May 5th and 6th. The shower will originate more from the Aquarius constellation and  hence  the name Eta Aquariid’.

Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower 2024 Timing

The meteor shower is more likely to be visible in the night sky from 2:00 a.m. local time. From then on, the rates will continue to increase until dawn. However the visibility will be dependent on how much the sky is clear and there should be minimum light pollution. It is best to view the showers in the rural location since both pollution of the air and illumination by street lights are minimal.