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LAS VEGAS (AP) — With Donald Trump's grasp on the Republican presidential nomination tightening, the billionaire businessman's rivals get one more chance to challenge the GOP front-runner on the debate stage before next week's slate of Super Tuesday contests.
The situation is likely more dire for the other GOP candidates than they would like for voters to believe. Yet Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have so far shown little willingness to take on the former reality television star when the national spotlight shines brightest.
That could change Thursday night in Houston.
"The vast and overwhelming majority of Republicans do not want Donald Trump to be our nominee," Rubio told NBC, suggesting that Trump is winning only because the other candidates are splitting the majority of the electorate.
For his part, the New York billionaire predicted the relative civility between Rubio and himself is about to disappear. The ninth Republican debate of the presidential campaign will take place just a few days before 11 states hold GOP elections that will either cement Trump's dominance, or let his rivals slow his march to his party's presidential nomination.
"Time still exists, but not much," said Liz Mair, a Republican operative leading one of the anti-Trump movements. "The strategy of ignoring the front-runner is not working. Cruz and Rubio need to tag-team to cause Trump problems."
How they do so is still to be determined. To date, Trump has proved largely immune to traditional political attacks, something he reveled in on Wednesday. "I seem to have a very good track record when to do go after me," the New York real estate mogul told NBC.
The task is made more complicated by the shift from single-state campaigns to a new phase of the race, where the candidates must compete across several states at the same time. Next Tuesday features voting in a mix of states that includes Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, Massachusetts and Virginia, with more to come in the weeks after.
"Now these campaigns are in the position of having to use debates to try and shape or change voter perceptions across more than a dozen states in the space of 18 or 19 days," said Republican strategist Kevin Madden. "That's a daunting task."
Trump won Nevada's presidential caucuses on Tuesday with more than 45 percent of the vote, scoring his third consecutive primary victory in dominant fashion. Rubio edged out Cruz for runner-up for the second consecutive race, with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson far off the pace.
As each seeks to become the Trump alternative, Cruz and Rubio have significant liabilities of their own.
Cruz comes into the debate at the weakest point of his presidential campaign after a staff shakeup and three consecutive third-place finishes.
The Texas senator ousted a senior aide on Monday after the aide promoted an inaccurate news report that Rubio had condemned the Bible during a chance encounter with Cruz's father. The aide's dismissal helps legitimize Trump and Rubio charges that Cruz has been running an unethical campaign.
Even while vulnerable, Cruz signaled an aggressive stance heading into the debate. He lashed out at Trump and Rubio as "Washington dealmakers" while talking to reporters in Houston on Wednesday. Rubio, Cruz said, had worked with Democrats to craft an immigration overhaul, while Trump has given money to Democrats and backed their priorities at times in recent years.
"I don't think the people of Texas and I don't think the people of this country want another Washington dealmaker to go and surrender more to the Democrats, giving in to the failed liberal agenda," Cruz said.
Rubio, meanwhile, is just one debate removed from a primetime meltdown. The Florida senator repeated himself several times in a New Hampshire debate less than three weeks ago, triggering what he now calls "the New Hampshire disappointment."
He avoided a similar mistake in the subsequent debate, but critics in both parties will be laser-focused on anything that suggests the 44-year-old legislator isn't sufficiently prepared to move into the White House.
Rubio has been reluctant to talk about Trump by name, but stepped up his aggressiveness Wednesday, criticizing Trump for what he called a failure to strongly oppose the President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.
He also said "the front-runner in this race, Donald Trump, has said he's not going to take sides on Israel versus the Palestinians because he wants to be an honest broker."
Rubio said there was no such thing, "because the Palestinian Authority, which has strong links to terror, they teach little kids, 5-year-olds, that it's a glorious thing to kill Jews."
Emboldened by the recent departure of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush from the race, Rubio has fresh momentum after two consecutive second-place finishes and winning over a rash of endorsements from Republican leaders. The latest came Thursday from Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam.
But after eight debates, it's unclear what sort of approach will work against Trump. As his resume would suggest, he's proven to be a master showman on primetime television.
"It seems that the Trump people like Trump no matter what he says," said Republican strategist John Feehery. "This debate is all about who is the Trump alternative."
NEW YORK (AP) — If you could build your dream smartphone, what would it look like? Now suppose you could put it together yourself.
That's the promise of modular design, a new concept in smartphones that would basically let you snap together different components like Lego blocks. Say you want a great camera. Snap! A vivid screen and good sound because you watch a lot of video? Snap! But maybe you could live with a smaller battery because you spend most of your day at home or work. Snap!
Sure, phones now offer choices in color and storage. Motorola goes a bit further in letting you choose custom backs made of wood or leather. But the rest of the phone is pretty standard. You're stuck with the processor, battery and other hardware chosen by Motorola, Apple, Samsung and other tech companies.
With modular design, you could just pay for the components you need instead of settling for whatever manufacturers put in their designs. And instead of buying a new phone every year or two, you could just upgrade individual parts as they wear out or become obsolete.
LG is dipping its toes in the modular-design concept with its upcoming G5 smartphone, announced this week at a wireless conference. The bottom of the phone pops out to let you swap in new hardware. For starters, you'll be able to attach a camera grip with physical shutter buttons or insert a high-fidelity audio system if regular MP3-quality sound isn't good enough for you.
Google's Project Ara, which isn't making products yet, is also outlining a modular-design approach that starts with a structural frame and lets you add cameras, sensors and batteries. Google figures a phone could cost as little as $50 using the most basic parts.
A Dutch startup called Fairphone is selling the $580 Fairphone 2 online. Though it comes assembled, you can replace the screen for less than $100, or the camera for $40. An expansion port will let people add components — perhaps for wireless charging or mobile payments — that Fairphone or outside parties make in the future.
Chinese phone maker ZTE has circulated concept designs. Other startups exploring modular phones include Finland's PuzzlePhone (as in the components fit together like a puzzle).
Modular phone design is similar to how hobbyists build their own personal computers or soup up their cars. But there's no guarantee the idea will take off.
For one thing, modular design is itself a trade-off. Many consumers want phones to be thin, light and power efficient, and that means all the parts have to be tightly integrated. You give that up when you go modular.
Samsung, for instance, rejects modular design, preferring to offer "the best combination of features and functionality" in a compact and elegant design, says Justin Denison, Samsung's senior vice president for U.S. product strategy and marketing.
Modular design also isn't easy. Project Ara missed its 2015 target for a pilot project in Puerto Rico and suggested in cryptic tweets that designing modules has proven more complicated than expected. Google had no further comment.
Ronan de Renesse, lead analyst for consumer technology with the research firm Ovum, says many parts in current smartphones are designed specifically to work together. Swap in a new camera or screen, and the older processors might not know what to do with it. The camera might stutter, the screen might blink, and both might drain the battery faster than expected.
Lego-like parts also could allow dust or water to intrude into the phone's innards. Their connections might also give way over time.
"I don't think those phones are going to be reliable enough for the mass market," de Renesse says.
There's already some buzz around the phones. Fairphone has sold about 35,000 units and is targeting 150,000 this year. The company says many of its customers are environmentally conscious about e-waste and don't need up-to-the-minute advances in phone technology.
Many big phone makers introduce features just to have something to brag about in ads, says Miquel Ballester, Fairphone's co-founder. "I don't really think it's always what the customer is looking for."
Even if the appeal is limited, the concept could have broader influence.
LG's G5 isn't fully modular, as users couldn't replace processors, cameras and screens themselves. LG's Frank Lee says the modular design for now is mostly about enhancing the phone's capabilities with optional features. But perhaps one day, he says, people will be able to swap in a slower, but more power-efficient processor on days they'll be away from chargers.
In the future, he says, "we won't be referring to them as phones anymore."
NEW YORK (AP) -- Bill Gates is supportive of investigators' efforts to force Apple to help them crack into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, saying a balance needs to be struck between government access and the need to preserve data security.
While clarifying he doesn't support untrammeled government access to personal data, the Microsoft co-founder's position runs contrary to those of many tech executives who have backed Apple Inc. The heads of Facebook, Twitter and Google have all sided with Apple on the grounds that complying with the government's request would ultimately undermine data privacy.
Gates stated in a handful of interviews that it's not uncommon for phone companies and banks to hand over customer information to investigators. He questioned why tech companies should be treated differently.
In particular, he took issue with Apple CEO Tim Cook's argument that helping crack the shooter's iPhone would set a broader precedent.
"They are not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case," Gates, who remains a technical adviser to Microsoft Corp., told the Financial Times in a Tuesday interview.
And in a lengthy interview on Charlie Rose on PBS, Gates said that if government is "blind," it might not be able to stop online crimes such as tax evasion, child pornography and, most importantly, terrorism.
He added in an interview with The Associated Press that public opinion will likely be on the government's side, saying "I do think people want the government to act on their behalf if they feel like the safeguards are there."
But Gates later on Tuesday said that he was being mischaracterized by the media as backing the FBI.
"The extreme view that government always gets everything, nobody supports that," he told Bloomberg News. "Having the government be blind, people don't support that."
Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym last week ordered Apple to assist investigators by creating specialized software that would let the FBI rapidly test random passcode combinations to try to unlock the iPhone and view data stored on it.
The county-issued iPhone 5C was used by Syed Farook, who with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people at an office holiday party in December before they died in a gun battle with police.
But Apple maintains that creating such software would set a dangerous precedent, threatening data security for millions by making essentially a master key that could later be duplicated and used against other phones.