AP FACT CHECK: Putin puffery in Republican's latest debate

WASHINGTON (AP) — You'd think from the latest Republican presidential debate that Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina have special insights into what makes Russian Vladimir Putin tick because the candidates have been up close and personal with the Kremlin's man himself.

Trump and Fiorina seemed to be contesting who knows Putin better — Fiorina from a chance meeting in a holding room before she and Putin addressed a Beijing conference in 2001, or Trump from having appeared on the same "60 Minutes" program as Putin in September.

[...] that usually doesn't happen.

Economic research has found that when states raise their minimum wages higher than neighboring states, they don't typically fare any worse than their neighbors.

Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce said in a 2014 analysis that median incomes were $68,000 for people with an advanced degree in philosophy or religious studies.

TED CRUZ, holding out his hand and unfolding one finger at a time to punctuate his point: "Five major agencies that I would eliminate: the IRS (his thumb), the Department of Commerce (index finger), the Department of Energy (middle finger), uh, the Department of Commerce (ring finger), and HUD (pinkie)."

According to current forecasts, growth is expected to average roughly half that rate.

The Pacific trade agreement signed by Obama with 11 other nations was designed for China to come in through the back door and take advantage of everyone. ...

Public opinion remains divided over Obama's health care law, but it's clearly helping many people.

While the coverage mandate in Obama's law remains highly unpopular, state-run high-risk health insurance pools like the one Fiorina proposes to replace the law have been tried before by many states and failed to solve the coverage problem.

The risk pools grouped people who couldn't get private insurance because of health problems, resulting in very high premiums and pricing out low-income people.

CRUZ:

Since 2008, the economy has grown on average only 1.2 percent a year, showing "the Obama economy is a disaster."

Eisenhower did oversee a deportation program in 1954, but it involved nowhere near the 11 million people now estimated to be in the U.S. illegally and it was criticized for violating the civil rights of deportees.

Another repatriation, in the 1930s, had seen the return of 500,000 to 1 million Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans, also drawing civil rights complaints and in some cases expelling U.S. citizens along with their immigrant relatives.