North Charleston (United States): With the first vote of America’s 2016 election two weeks away, Republican presidential frontrunners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz dispensed with months of niceties and locked horns in a primetime debate.
After months of chaotic campaigning that saw a dozen long-shot candidates vie for attention, the debate in South Carolina brought the race to become the Republican presidential nominee into sharper focus.
Mr Trump and Mr Cruz, who lead the polls in Iowa — which on February 1 will become the first state in the country to vote for the nominee — at times seemed to ignore the rest of the field as they traded blows.
The duo went back-and-forth over conservative values and Mr Trump’s allegation that Mr Cruz, a hardline Texas Senator born in Canada, might be legally blocked from becoming president.
