Kathmandu, April 7: The Army Integration Special Committee has deployed its Secretariat members to the various camps where the Maoist former combatants have been kept for their regrouping.

This move comes after the major political parties agreed in principle to complete the works related to the army integration process by April 12 through the main Special Committee.

Accordingly, the Special Committee meeting decided to again give the choice to the combatants opting for integration and living in seven camps to choose between integration or voluntary retirement.

Convenor of the Special Committee Secretariat Balananda Sharma said teams comprising members of the Secretariat have been mobilized to the seven PLA camps for regrouping of the Maoist combatants            .

The meeting of the Special Committee on April 4 had decided that the combatants opting for integration would be handed over to the Nepali Army, their arms would be brought under the control of the government and those combatants opting for voluntary retirement would be sent home. It also decided to mobilize the Secretariat members for carrying out this task.

The teams will reach the Chulachuli camp in Ilam, the Dudhauli camp in Sindhuli, the Shaktikhor camp in Chitwan, the Jhyaltungdanda camp in Nawalparasi,the Dahaban camp in Rolpa, the Dasrathpur camp in Surkhet and the Talband camp in Kailali for that purpose, it is learnt.

Voters are going to the polls Tuesday in GOP primaries in Maryland, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia with front-runner Mitt Romney looking for big wins — or even a sweep – as he tries to close out the Republican race.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, has increasingly begun to focus on the general election and a matchup against President Obama, who is seeking a second term.
“The president is consumed with finding someone to blame. This is an economy that hurt at lot of people (including) single moms — single moms living in poverty,” Romney said Tuesday morning on Fox News.

Romney and his three Republican rivals, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, have spent most of the past two weeks in Wisconsin, a Midwest swing state that has 42 delegates up for grabs and in 2008 voted from Obama.

Romney’s wife, Ann Romney, recently has taken a more prominent role in campaigning as the primary races near a close in June and the party holds its nominating convention in August in Tampa, Fla.

Romney said voters have been telling his wife that their No. 1 concern is the economy, in particular good jobs for themselves and family members. He also said women have expressed concern about high gasoline prices.

Romney made the remarks one day after Obama did a video for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in which he suggested Republicans are playing politics with women’s health issues.

“Let’s be clear here — women are not an interest group,” the president said in the video.

Romney’s messages also serve double duty as a subtle push to Santorum, his closest competitor who has pledged to continue campaigning until Romney wins the presidential nomination.

If Romney wins the nomination, he would face a better-organized, better-financed campaign backed by the power of the presidency.

“He gets full credit or blame for what’s happened in this economy, and what’s happened to gasoline prices under his watch, and what’s happened to our schools, and what’s happened to our military forces,” Romney told supporters gathered at a sandwich shop in Waukesha, Wis. “All these things are his responsibility while he’s president.”

Obama, addressing an annual meeting of the Associated Press on Tuesday, poked at Romney for calling Republican Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget “marvelous.” He also assailed the Republican Party as extreme.

“I think it’d be marvelous if the Senate were to pick up Paul Ryan’s budget and to adopt it and pass it along to the president,” Romney told Wisconsin voters in a telephone town hall meeting last Wednesday.

Marvelous, Obama said, “is a word you don’t often hear when it comes to describing a budget.”

Obama’s re-election campaign is also running a new TV ad in six swing states criticizing the former Massachusetts governor by name for the first time – in this case as a backer of “Big Oil” amid high gas prices.

Romney responded Tuesday by accusing the president of trying to shift blame for the bad economy.

“The president put an ad out yesterday, talking about gasoline prices and how high they are. And guess who he blamed? Me,” Romney said after handing out ham, turkey and Italian subs to supporters. “Maybe after I’m president I can take responsibility for things I might have done wrong. But this president doesn’t want to take responsibility for his mistakes.”

Romney made one campaign stop before an election night party in Milwaukee. He spent the weekend campaigning across Wisconsin, accompanied by Ryan and working to win yet another big industrial state that Santorum was counting on to keep his flagging candidacy alive.

Santorum was spending the day in Texas at private fundraisers for his campaign before heading to his home state of Pennsylvania for an election night party in Mars, a community just north of Pittsburgh.

Romney has 572 delegates to the Republican National Convention, half the needed 1,144, and is on a pace to clinch the nomination by the end of the primary season in June. Santorum has 272 delegates, Newt Gingrich 135 and Ron Paul 51.

Romney is expected to win in Maryland because most Republicans are considered centrists or moderates in the strongly Democratic state, where 37 delegates are up for grabs.

Nineteen delegates are available in the District, where Santorum is not on the ballot.

Romney has ignored Santorum the past few days to focus on Obama.

Obama’s ad claims that “Mitt Romney’s stood with Big Oil – for their tax breaks, attacking higher mileage standards and renewables.” The ad is in response to a spot from the American Energy Alliance blaming Obama for rising gas prices.

Romney’s campaign, though, is running far behind the president in fundraising, as he’s been unable to raise general election money because the primary contest is still going on.

At the end of February, Obama reported $84.7 million in his campaign account compared with Romney’s $7.3 million. Obama has more than 530 paid staff compared to roughly 100 for Romney.

Santorum, who also campaigned in Wisconsin on Monday, said Romney has essential

ly bought his success by spending more than the competition.

Romney and his allies have spent $53 million on TV advertising so far this election cycle compared to $27 million from his three Republican competitors combined, according to data compiled by the media trackin

g firm SMG Delta.

Santorum’s team, having narrowly lost a string of high-profile contests, spent just $9 mil
“With almost unlimited resources, Governor Romney has not proven to be very effective,” Santorum said as he looked to a possible upset in Wisconsin. “The only way he’s been successful in winning the primaries is by just bludgeoning his opponents by an overwhelming money advantage – something he’s not going to have in the general election.”lion.

The Associate Press contributed to this report.

Tokyo (CNN) – A spring storm packing typhoon-strength winds caused two deaths and paralyzed traffic in Japan on Tuesday.

In Toyama, strong winds pulled down a barn, killing a man, police there said. In Ishikawa prefecture, an 82-year-old woman died after hitting her head when she fell in strong wind.

Japan’s meteorological agency predicted a developing low pressure system and front in the Sea of Japan will create strong winds and heavy rain in Japan from Tuesday morning through Wednesday. The agency asked people to avoid potential weather hazards by remaining indoors.

Strong gusts and rain hit western Japan in the morning and widened northward throughout the day.

A record-breaking wind was recorded in the western city of Tomogashima, at 150 kilometers per hour (94 miles per hour).

By late afternoon, train stations in Tokyo’s business and commercial districts were packed with commuters who took early trains home to avoid potential public transportation closures.

Many companies, including Sony, Canon and Fujitsu, closed business early to send employees home.

Memories of traffic chaos are still fresh on people’s minds in large Japanese cities where tens of thousands were stranded overnight after last year’s devastating earthquake.

The Shinkansen bullet train service was stopped between west and central Japan, while railway service was suspended in many areas throughout the country. More than 500 flights were canceled.

Images of toppled trucks, broken umbrellas and squatting pedestrians unable to walk in strong winds were shown one after another on evening news programs.

Kabul, Afghanistan — An arena where the Taliban used to execute women provides a chilling and incongruous setting for one teen girl’s unlikely Olympic dream.
But the dusty floors, broken mirrors, and poorly-lit hallways inside Kabul’s Ghazni stadium have been the training base for 17-year-old Sadaf Rahimi.
Dressed in a track suit, red lace up boots and a blue bandana, she is on course to become Afghanistan’s first female Olympic boxer and only the third Afghan sportswoman to compete at an Olympic Games.
“The first time I hit someone it was in my village, I was 11. It was actually my cousin,” she told CNN during a break from training. “Afterwards he said I hit him so hard that I should become a boxer!”
She did just that. A wild card from the Olympic committee has propelled the student towards the London games this summer, a daunting prospect given the modest resources at her disposal.
Special: London 2012
Rahimi and her teammates, including her sister Shabnam, can’t train in a proper boxing ring, because one doesn’t exist in war-torn Afghanistan. Instead dozens of girls and women in the team shuffle around in mismatched uniforms inside a small, dirty improvised gym complete with padded flooring.
“The equipment we have is pretty inadequate. I’ve even had to buy my own boxing socks,” she said.
Women’s boxing in Afghanistan
With sport facilities in short supply in Kabul, the boxing team’s time in this gym is limited.
“We can only train one hour a day, and that’s it,” said Rahimi. “It’s not enough to prepare for London. Other teams around the world train three times a day.”
Rahimi says she would like expert help in Dubai or India to be competitive against more seasoned international fighters.
But this is Afghanistan, where money is too often in all the wrong places. So they’re left hoping for a sponsor to help them out.
“We would like a sponsor with a good name in the world of sports. But more importantly a company that can assist our female athletes in the future, Rahimi’s coach, Mohammed Saber Sharifi, said.
Sharifi, a former male professional boxer and an advocate for women’s rights, believes the world will see Afghanistan in a different light when Rahimi steps into the ring in London.
“I hope the world can see that Afghan women are breaking down barriers by pursuing their dreams of becoming a professional athlete. We represent this country with pride,” he said.
I hope the world can see that Afghan women are breaking down barriers by pursuing their dreams of becoming a professional athlete.
Mohammed Saber Sharifi, coach
Afghan females imprisoned for ‘moral crimes’
The Afghan Amateur Women’s Boxing Association was established by the Cooperation for Peace and Unity project in 2007 to promote women and girls in sports.
When female athletes were banned by the Taliban from competing in sport, Afghanistan was suspended from competition by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It missed the 2000 Olympics in Sydney as a result. Afghanistan — with female athletes involved for the first time — competed in Athens in 2004 after the Taliban had been ousted in 2001.
But the Taliban have not been the only obstacle.
In a country where human rights activists say women are still vulnerable to prejudice and a range of issues including domestic violence, forced marriage and sexual abuses, Rahimi fears for her own safety.
Her father spoke of anonymous threats and warnings that his daughters should not be boxing. Many fear this kind of conservatism in Afghan society will increase when NATO leaves the country.
“For one month I was not allowed to come to the gym for practice because of my safety”, she said.
While her own parents are extremely supportive of her and her sister, she says other family members have criticized their lifestyle.
“My aunt used to say girls should stay at home and do housework, they shouldn’t be going out and playing sports. She would say my actions are not in line with Islam.”
But Rahimi says this pressure doesn’t keep her from the sport she loves.
It’s easy to be impressed by the dedication shown by someone who says she’s never hit anyone in anger — well, not yet anyway.

(CNN)

Beijing (Financial Times) – China’s largest aluminium producer intends to acquire SouthGobi Resources, a Mongolia-focused coal company listed in Toronto, for up to C$925m — the biggest investment yet by a Chinese mining company in Mongolia as China seeks to tap the vast resources of its neighbour.

Chalco, a Hong Kong-listed subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned metals and mining group Chinalco, said it intends to offer C$8.48 per share to acquire a stake of up to 60 per cent in SouthGobi, which trades in Hong Kong and Toronto.

The deal follows years of frustration for Chinese miners trying to gain access to Mongolia’s deposits of copper and coal. Although Mongolia has opened up to foreign investors over the past decade, Chinese -companies have often found themselves sidelined because of historic mistrust between the two countries.

The deal could pave the way for more Chinese investment in the Gobi desert, which sits in southern Mongolia right on the common border. The transaction will not require Mongolian approval because the share transfer will take place in Canada, but a representative of SouthGobi said the Mongolian government had been informally notified and was supportive.

Ivanhoe, the Toronto-listed mining company headed by Robert Friedland, has agreed to sell Chalco its 57.6 per cent stake in SouthGobi. China’s sovereign wealth fund also holds a 13.7 per cent stake in SouthGobi and has a right of first refusal for Ivanhoe’s shares, but the fund is expected to give its approval to Chalco’s bid.

Chalco has been eyeing assets in Mongolia for years as it seeks to expand beyond its core aluminium and bauxite business into base metals and energy. Previous discussions with Ivanhoe over a stake in the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine did not come to fruition, bankers say.

South Gobi’s main producing asset is a coking coal mine less than 50 km from the Chinese border, and the sale is unlikely to stir the same kind of nationalist debate that has accompanied the development of Mongolia’s big state-owned mines, such as Tavan Tolgoi, which plans to list in London later this year.

Alexander Molyneux, president and chief executive of SouthGobi, said the company would benefit from being controlled by a big state-owned miner such as Chalco, which has coal distribution networks inside China and will buy coal from SouthGobi as part of the deal. “SouthGobi will be a more valuable company by having a big brother like Chalco,” he said, adding that the company could be a platform for Chalco’s overseas coal deals in the future.

Andrew Driscoll, an analyst at CLSA, said the SouthGobi deal was a natural extension of Chalco’s coking coal trading business on the Mongolian border. “This marks the most substantial step yet for Chalco in pursuing its diversification strategy,” he said.

Shenhua, China’s biggest coal miner, appeared to win a leading role in developing part of the Tavan Tolgoi coking coal deposit, but the Mongolian government is now reconsidering the deal after complaints from Japanese and Korean companies.

The offer price represents a premium of 28 per cent to Friday’s close in Toronto but is below SouthGobi’s historic highs. SouthGobi’s share price has fallen by more than half from its peak of C$16.56 in February 2011 amid global investor gloom over resource assets.

Chalco’s shares closed down 1.9 per cent in Hong Kong after the announcement, which was made before the start of trading. SouthGobi’s Hong Kong share price shot up 18 per cent from the Friday close.

Chalco will make a formal offer to SouthGobi before July 5, the company said, and the acquisition will be funded either by issuing external debt, drawing on internal funds or some combination of the two.

The French Interior Ministry announced Monday it has deported two Muslims and plans to expel three more in a crackdown after the killing of seven people by a suspected Islamic extremist.
A statement by Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the moves were part of “an acceleration of the deportation procedures of foreign Islamic radicals.”
An Islamic militant from Algeria who was involved in 1994 attacks in Marrakech, Morocco, was sent to his home country Monday, the statement said. In addition, a Malian imam was returned to his home country for sermons that promoted anti-Semitism and rejection of the West, it said.
Deportation proceedings also have started or are planned against three others: an imam of Saudi nationality, a militant Islamist from Tunisia and an imam from Turkey, the statement said.
French gunman buried in Toulouse Weapons ‘easily’ available in France
It cited provisions in the law governing aliens and political asylum, saying the statutes “allow this type of decision with regards the ‘urgent need for state security or public safety’ or ‘conduct likely to harm the fundamental interests of the state.’ ”
According to the statement, other expulsions will occur soon.
Last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told French radio that 19 people had been arrested in a series of police raids on suspected Islamists.
The raids came a week after gunman Mohammed Merah, who killed seven people, was shot dead after a long siege in the southwestern city of Toulouse.
Sarkozy, who is running for re-election, said the raids were intended to “deny the entry of certain people to France” who did not share the country’s values.
“It’s not just linked to Toulouse. It’s all over the country. It’s in connection with a form of radical Islam, and it’s in agreement with the law,” he said.
Sarkozy suggested then that more raids would follow, saying, “There will be other operations that will continue and that will allow us to expel from our national territory a certain number of people who have no reason to be here.”
Merah was blamed for the killings of three French paratroopers, a rabbi and three Jewish children ages 4, 5 and 7. Two other people were seriously wounded in the shootings.
Merah told police he had attended an al Qaeda training camp while visiting Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to Paris prosecutor Francois Molins.
But his uncle, Jamal Azizi, denied statements by French authorities that Merah was an al Qaeda sympathizer and that he had traveled to Afghanistan or Pakistan to train to use arms.

via CNN

Europe’s air safety regulator said Thursday an oil fire may have caused an engine turbine failure on a Qantas superjumbo, and issued an emergency order requiring airlines to re-examine that type of Rolls-Royce engine and ground any planes with suspicious leaks.

The order by the European Aviation Safety Authority backed earlier indications from investigators that they suspect a turbine disc was the cause of last week’s engine failure on the Airbus A380, but was the first official mention of an oil fire preceding the engine’s disintegration.

The A380 engine failure shortly after takeoff from Singapore on Nov. 4 has raised concerns over the safety of the world’s biggest passenger airplane three years after its debut. The failure sent shrapnel slicing through the plane’s wing and hurtling down over an Indonesian island before pilots made a safe emergency landing with 466 passengers and crew aboard.

Qantas said this week it had found small oil leaks on Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines on three of its other Airbus A380s during tests after the Nov. 4 incident. The airline, Australia’s national carrier, said Thursday it was keeping its six A380s grounded until further checks were completed — extending an earlier deadline.

Singapore Airlines on Wednesday grounded three of its 11 A380s after checks prompted by the Qantas incident revealed what the company called oil stains in the Trent 900 engines. Lufthansa also uses the A380-Trent 900 combination, but said on Wednesday its checks had not turned up anything untoward.

The European regulator said in a new “emergency airworthiness directive” posted on its website Thursday that airlines using Trent 900 engines should conduct “repetitive inspections” of them.

Twenty planes operated by Qantas, Germany’s Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines use the Trent 900 engines. Nine have been grounded — six Qantas and three Singapore Airlines.

EASA said airlines should check several parts of the engines, including the oil service tubes, to ensure there is no “abnormal” leakage. If any such leaks are found, the airlines are prohibited from using the engines.

The directive was issued in response to the Qantas engine failure. EASA said an analysis of the investigation into the incident so far “shows that an oil fire” in part of the engine “may have caused the failure” of the engine’s intermediate pressure turbine disc.

“This condition, if not detected, could ultimately result in uncontained engine failure potentially leading to damage to the aeroplane and hazards to persons or property on the ground,” the directive said.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is taking the lead in the investigation, has focused on a mangled section of a shattered turbine disc that was recovered from the stricken plane. It has been sent to Britain for testing, with investigators coordinating with Rolls-Royce, the bureau says.

Airworthiness directives are issued by the European agency to advise airlines about extra inspections or repairs needed to deal with potential problems on planes, and are relatively common occurrences covering many different types of planes and engines.

However, those classified as emergency directives are unusual, said Jason Middleton, an aviation professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

William Voss, head of the Flight Safety Foundation based in Alexandria, Virginia, said the EASA directive indicated the investigation into the Qantas incident had narrowed, and EASA was highlighting the oil service tubes as the likely source of the leak so airlines could more easily inspect for the problem.

“It appears the investigation has shown that oil contamination and burning in the very hot section of the engine where the energy is extracted from the fuel is a problem on that type of engine,” he said. “I expect Rolls-Royce is working to fix this very quickly.”

The latest directive was the third one issued this year on the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines.

In one of those directives, the European agency warned that unusual wear to parts of the engine could cause problems in the intermediate pressure turbine — the same part of the engine identified in Thursday’s directive.

Too much wear could cause the turbine to move backward into a nonmoving part of the engine, the earlier directive said. That could eventually lead to an oil fire and an uncontained engine failure.

Middleton said the engine parts the agency has directed airlines to check all appear to be in the same area as the damaged disc.

The directive seems to confirm an oil fire erupted inside the engine, and suggests that the fire may have caused the disc to fail, Middleton said.

He cautioned that it’s simply too soon to tell if the issues are related. Still, he said, it is intriguing.

“The original (directive) does point at an area which looks to be one of interest right now,” Middleton said. “There COULD be a connection there.”

Qantas spokesman Tom Woodward said the airline’s checks were already complying with the new EASA order, and that there had been no new discoveries of any problems. Still, engineers were conducting further tests on the three engines where oil was found, and none of the A380 fleet would return to the air for the time being, he said.

“The objective is to get them back in service as soon as possible,” Woodward said. “We don’t want to attach a timeframe to that at this stage, because the situation is pretty fluid. The inspections are ongoing and it really depends on when our engineers are satisfied it is safe to bring them back into service.”

Singapore Airlines said the new directive did not mean any disruptions to its services. The airline is replacing the engines on the three A380s that had oil stains and has deployed other types of jets to fill the gaps, spokesman Nicholas Ionides said.

Russia’s president suggested Friday changes to the country’s spy agency are coming in the wake of this summer’s arrest of agents in the United States and a report that a top Russian intelligence officer helped capture them.

At a news conference in Seoul, South Korea, Dmitry Medvedev was asked about the report in the newspaper Kommersant.

“There has to be an examination of this … The relevant lessons will be studied,” Medvedev said.

The arrests of the 10 agents and the subsequent news that an intelligence officer fled to the United States shortly before have been an embarrassment to Russia’s powerful Foreign Intelligence Service.

Medvedev confirmed the newspaper report, telling reporters, “As far as I am concerned, what was published in Kommersant was not news. I found out about it on the day it happened, with all its attributes.”

The report, citing unnamed sources, identified the intelligence officer only as Col. Shcherbakov, whom it said headed the intelligence service’s operations to place “sleeper agents” in the United States. Such agents work under cover of civilian life rather than attachment to diplomatic or military missions.

The newspaper said that according to the sources, he fled to the United States three days before a June visit by Medvedev. The arrests took place less than a week after the visit, leading some Russian officials to suggest they were made at the behest of conservatives who wanted to undermine improving relations between Washington and Moscow.

However, the newspaper said the arrests apparently came because the Americans were concerned that Shcherbakov’s defection would cause Russia to begin spiriting the agents out of the country.

The apparent loss of an officer so widely knowledgeable about intelligence operations in the United States could be a significant blow to the intelligence service, which has declined to comment.

Medvedev declined to comment directly Friday on whether there was a shake-up planned at the intelligence service, known by the initials SVR. But Gennady Gudkov, a member of the parliament’s national security committee, said Thursday that the “irreparable damage” caused by the case justifies forming a commission for analyzing the SVR.

The SVR is headed by Mikhail Fradkov, an ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Fradkov was one of Putin’s prime ministers when Putin was president. Removing Fradkov could be a risky move for Medvedev, potentially angering Putin’s camp and undermining support for Medvedev if he wants to seek a second term as president.

The 10 Russian agents were deported in exchange for four Russians who had been convicted of spying in their own country. It was the largest such spy-swap since the end of the Cold War.

Voters are going to the polls Tuesday in GOP primaries in Maryland, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia with front-runner Mitt Romney looking for big wins — or even a sweep – as he tries to close out the Republican race.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, has increasingly begun to focus on the general election and a matchup against President Obama, who is seeking a second term.

“The president is consumed with finding someone to blame. This is an economy that hurt at lot of people (including) single moms — single moms living in poverty,” Romney said Tuesday morning on Fox News.

With all the lawn signs and ads on the airwaves, it’s obvious an election is taking place in Wisconsin — just not for the Republican presidential candidates.

While the presidential primary being held Tuesday is a comparatively low-key affair, the raucous campaign to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker is dominating the state’s political landscape.

More than a year after the unions took to the streets and the halls of the capital city of Madison in protest of Walker’s budget reforms, the push to recall the governor and other Republican officials is reaching a decision point. The lawn signs in the state are more likely to say “Recall Walker” or “Support Walker,” than anything about the GOP presidential candidates, as the governor prepares to stand for election in June.

“The presidential race essentially didn’t come to Wisconsin ’till seven days ago,” said Brian Schimming, vice chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

The recall fever has made it difficult for the presidential candidates to make inroads with voters. By the time the ads for Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum hit the airwaves, viewers had seen their share of pro- or anti-Walker spots.

“The presidential race has had a hard time getting on the radar screen in Wisconsin. I think so much attention has been paid to the recall elections, and there has been recall fever for over a year in Wisconsin,” said Mike McCabe, with the independent watchdog organization the Wisconsin Democracy Group.

Wisconsin donations to the presidential campaigns are down 57 percent. Still, the candidates are forced to spend money just to get noticed. “We spent plenty of money to get our message out and to get people to focus that this race is happening right now,” said Ted Kanavas, Wisconsin chairman for the Romney campaign.

That does not mean the money is tight in the state. “There is no question that there is money flowing — big money flowing. It’s just not flowing to the presidential race,” McCabe said.

The last time candidates in the recall needed to disclose finances, Walker had already raised $12 million — a record in Wisconsin. That was long before the recall election was certified. He was able to continue raising money without restraint until last Friday, when the recall became official.

Money is flowing in because combatants on both sides understand how important the June 5 recall will be as a barometer for November.

All the attention on the recall, though, doesn’t mean state voters are disinterested in the presidential race.

The election board estimates that one in three registered voters will turn out for the primary.

“They are as keyed in as they have been in my 30 years of involvement in this state. People are really paying attention. They are going to vote. The energy level is there,” Shimming said.

via fox news