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• Libyas Colonel Gaddafi struggles to remain in power and continues his crackdown on civilians
• Libyan-New Yorkers talk about the experiences of their families in Libya
• Ohio lawmakers consider a bill like Wisconsins that would strip workers rights
• Koch Industries and the Wisconsin bill that would restrict collective bargaining rights
• In Honduras, a new draft constitution calls for the official recognition of indigenous and Garifuna people
• The US budget impasse and the possibility of the government shutting down

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In Ohio, State lawmakers are considering a bill that would restrict state and local employees collective bargaining powers. The proposals are similar to bills in other states, including Wisconsin. Proponents of Ohio's Senate Bill 5 want to end collective bargaining for all state workers and restrict if for local employees including firefighters and police.  Sehvilla Mann has more from Columbus.

In Honduras, hundreds of Indigenous people and Garifuna - who are descendants of Carib, Arawak and West Africans -  have been meeting in a constitutional assembly. Today, they're putting the finishing touches on proposals for a new Honduran Constitution which calls for recognition of Indigenous and Garifuna peoples.  The assembly has emphasized issues fundamental to indigenous and Garifuna autonomy, education and health care for marginalized communities.   Tim Russo brings us more from Honduras.

iPad 2 should hit store shelves early this month. We take a look at the numbers and specs on the Apple iPad 2.

Libyans and foreign workers continued to stream across the border with Tunisia Wednesday as Muammar Qaddafi characterized the rebellion as fueled by Al Qaeda.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the iPad 2, which has new features that further blur the lines between technologies like televisions, computers, and smartphones.

Enda Kenny is hot favourite to be elected taoiseach
New government's priority will be to lobby EU finance summit

Irish people are voting on Friday in what is arguably the most important general election in the republic's history.

The electorate of more than 2 million will be sending representatives of a new government back to Brussels early next month to renegotiate the terms of the international bailout package that gave Ireland more than 80bn (68bn).

Enda Kenny, leader of the main opposition party, Fine Gael, is almost certain to be elected taoiseach and is already planning to travel next week to Brussels to meet his counterparts in the European People's party bloc.

The meeting will pave the way for an EU finance summit later in March during which a number of debt-stricken countries, including Ireland, will attempt to persuade fellow Europeans to lower the interest payments on the loans.

Up until the final day of campaigning, Kenny and his party have been resisting all calls to reveal who they will share power with after the election. Kenny has also declined to give advice to Fine Gael voters as to where they should place their second, third, fourth and other preferences. Ireland elects its 166 members of the Irish parliament on the single transferable vote system in 43 multi-member constituencies.

Asked about the prospect of becoming prime minister, Kenny said: "I have been round this course before. This is a very anxious period for everyone standing in the election but the Irish people are suffering at the minute and they are looking for a way out."

Despite a surge in support, Fine Gael is unlikely to reach the magic figure of 83 seats that would allow the party to govern with an overall majority. Over recent days, relationships have been improving between Fine Gael and the Irish Labour party, Kenny's most likely coalition partners.

Labour has complained of last-minute dirty tricks directed at the party by the Catholic right. Anti-abortion pressure groups have covered lamp-posts along O'Connell Street, Dublin's major thoroughfare, with stickers claiming: "A vote for Labour is a vote for abortion." Labour is the only one of the major Dail parties to take a pro-choice stance on abortion, which is still illegal in Ireland.

Party leader Eamon Gilmore, the man tipped to serve as deputy prime minister in what is expected to be the next coalition government, said that his home in his Dun Laoghaire constituency had been picketed by busloads of anti-abortion protesters earlier in the campaign. He said the protest had upset his wife and five-year-old son.

"We are all human, we do feel things. I have a family who are entitled to privacy," said Gilmore.

Despite several unresolved disagreements between Fine Gael and Labour not least over the issue of abortion most commentators and bookmakers seem to think the two parties are most likely to form the next coalition with a 30-plus majority in the Dail.

According to a mobile advertising hoarding owned by Ladbrokes in O'Connell Street, the chances of a Fine Gael-Labour government being formed after the weekend were judged to be 7-2 on.

RTE, the state broadcaster, will be conducting exit polls at various voting centres across the republic on election day. However, under Irish broadcasting laws they cannot publish their results until 7am on Saturday, just a few hours before the real count begins. In the last general election, in 2007, RTE's exit poll was found to be 99% accurate.

If Gaddafi goes, who will bankroll enormous gigs of the kind played by Lionel Richie and Beyonc?

Like everyone, Lost in Showbiz has spent this week looking aghast at events in Libya: the violence, the bloodshed and Gaddafi's insistence that everyone taking part in the demonstrations is on "hallucination pills", as if the whole thing is being orchestrated by Hawkwind. And, with every news report that arrives, the same unanswered question presents itself. Will these people not think at all of the careers of Lionel Richie, Beyonc and Mariah Carey? Standing up and courageously fighting for freedom, human rights and democracy in the face of almost unimaginable horror is all well and good, but what about the human right of the world's leading r'n'b stars to make vast sums by performing at the behest of a tyrannical dictator and his family?

If the Gaddafi regime falls, who will bankroll enormous gigs of the kind played by Richie in the grounds of the Bab al-Azizia barracks in 2006? Wouldn't it be a terrible pity if his son were too distracted by political events to arrange the annual New Year's Eve gig on St Barts that in 2009 paid Beyonc a reported $2m for five songs and the year before played host to Carey and Timbaland?

Let's have a little perspective here! Lost in Showbiz looks the Libyan protesters sternly in the eye and asks: Are you sure your struggle to free yourself from the yoke of tyranny is worth disrupting Beyonc's schedule for? Perhaps you should ruminate on the recently expressed opinion of noted political philosopher Jim Davidson and reconsider: "Once people start protesting in those kind of numbers the politicians have to listen. What I can't get my head around is everyone saying democracy is the way forward. I don't think it is. Look at us. I lived in Dubai. They have a ruling family and all's well. Giving the people a right to choose who governs them is a stupid thing to do." You see? You're screwing everything up for Carey in pursuit of something the greatest socio-political mind of our epoch thinks is stupid!

Lost in Showbiz is well aware of the carping voices that suggest Richie, Beyonc et al should have thought twice about associating themselves with the Gaddafi regime in the first place. To them, it can only say: the benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it? Perhaps it's worth reminding yourself that Richie's Tripoli gig a concert that ended with a group of children dressed as angels singing We Are The World took place five years ago, an era when there was no sign that the Brother Leader might be the kind of crazed despot who would bomb his own people, unless you count the website set up that year that listed 343 victims of murder and political assassination under Gaddafi, the ongoing imprisonment of the late democracy campaigner Fathi el-Jahmi and the Human Rights Watch report that detailed "the continued arrests and incarceration of political prisoners, some of them 'disappeared'; the absence of a free press; the ban on independent organisations; violations of the rights of women and foreigners; and the torture of detainees".

Come on! You think Richie's got time to read every human rights report in the world? He's got a busy touring schedule it's not just genocidal autocrats who are gagging for a fix of Dancin' On the Ceiling and those Walkers crisps don't advertise themselves! "The hospitality in Libya is unbelievable," he told a press conference, which is certainly one way of describing a country where the regime's methods of torture allegedly include "clubbing; applying electric shock; applying corkscrews to the back; pouring lemon juice in open wounds; breaking fingers and allowing the joints to heal without medical care; suffocating with plastic bags and hanging by the wrists". But why dwell on the whole corkscrews-to-the-back/lemon-juice-in-open-wounds aspect of Gaddafi? He liked Say You, Say Me, and that's the important thing!

And in the case of Beyonc and Carey, it wasn't even Gaddafi himself who organised the gig: it was his sons, most notably the delectable Hannibal Gaddafi, who has put some clear blue water between himself and his father by rigorously avoiding behaving like the violent, spoilt son of a dictator. In 2001, he was arrested for attacking three Italian policemen with a fire extinguisher, then demanded diplomatic immunity. In 2005, his then-girlfriend Aline Skaf filed an assault lawsuit against him for punching her: he then allegedly brandished a 9mm handgun and went on a furniture-smashing rampage in his hotel suite. In 2009, after screams were heard from their London hotel room, police discovered Skaf, now his wife, with facial injuries including a broken nose, which she claimed she had sustained in a fall: three of his security staff were arrested for obstruction. A year previously, the pair had been held for two days in Switzerland after allegedly beating their servants. In what you have to say is a fairly unique approach to the business of parenting, his father responded by shutting down local subsidiaries of Swiss companies, cancelling most commercial flights between the two countries, announcing that if he had nuclear weapons he would "wipe Switzerland off the map", then submitting a proposal to the UN that the country be dissolved and partitioned between Italy, France and Germany.

Lost in Showbiz has a positive message for the performers involved: nil desperandum! The Gaddafi family might not be organising any high-paying gigs for the foreseeable future, but there's plenty more music-loving murderous dictators in the sea! Robert Mugabe is famously a fan of Cliff Richard. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad likes Chris de Burgh. Come on Beyonc! Sort out a cover of Congratulations and get yourself over to Harare!

Diplomatic and legal situation remains fraught, while the media are engaged in a frenzy of speculation about CIA agent

A storm of media speculation has enveloped the case of Raymond Davis, the CIA official charged with murder in Pakistan, as officials from both countries seek to shape public opinion in an increasingly fraught diplomatic and legal standoff.

Since it emerged this week that Davis, who shot two people on a busy street last month, was a working spy, Pakistan's media has been gripped by lurid stories portraying him as a dangerous provocateur.

One front-page story accused him of working with Taliban bombers to sow chaos across Pakistan; other accounts have variously suggested he is addicted to chewing tobacco, howls during prayers, enjoys jailhouse visits from women and spends hours playing Ludo to fend off depression. US officials continue to insist Davis is a bona-fide diplomat, so immune from prosecution. Conditions are so dangerous at the jail where Davis is being held, they say, that dogs test his food, his guards have been disarmed and he is at constant risk of assassination.

"This issue is mired in so many versions of the truth that it's hard to know who's telling the truth and who isn't," said Cyril Almeida, a columnist with Dawn.com. "My guess is that all sides are lying."

The outcome should be settled in court, although resolution seems distant.

Barack Obama insists Davis should be freed under the provisions of the Vienna convention. But Pakistan's former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who lost his job over the issue, says Davis is not covered as does Ron Mlotek, an experienced former US lawyer.

"The American case is very convoluted and appears to be based on smoke and mirrors," said Mlotek, who retired two years ago after 25 years of service in the state department examining such cases.

Even if the US can prove that Davis is a diplomat, he argues, Pakistan could challenge immunity on the basis that he was carrying an illegal weapon, worked from a spy agency safe house and was not living in Islamabad, where the embassy claims he was based.

"No matter what the US government says, this is not an open-and-shut case. The facts are far from clear," he said.

But fact is only one aspect of the issue, which has become enmeshed in a web of nationalist passions and spy agency rivalries. Prompted by selective leaks, newspapers have raised questions about cowboy Americans roaming the country "How many Davis-type agents are in Pakistan?" asked one headline yesterday while soap opera-style storylines supplement the publicity frenzy.

On Thursday newspapers reported that the father-in-law of one man killed by Davis had survived a mysterious poisoning attempt; other relatives are said to be under pressure from religious parties to refuse any American offer of compensation. Prison guards have reportedly been fired for trying to smuggle items into Davis's cell.

But the depth of public hostility is difficult to gauge the outcry is led by the usual suspects, minority Islamist parties and some coverage has had a playful tone, drawing parallels between Davis and Jason Bourne, James Bond or, because of his poor spycraft, Mr Bean. One comedian proposed a new television show entitled Everyone Hates Raymond.

A troubled spy agency relationship lies under the media frenzy. Complaining of American arrogance, the ISI says its links to the CIA have been badly damaged by the affair, warning in an unusual press statement this week that it was "hard to predict if the relationship will ever reach [its prior] level".

It is not just a case of wounded amour propre analysts say the army is using the controversy to its advantage. "Are they hoping that settling this matter amicably will lead to some concessions or a change in American attitude on other issues? Possibly," said Almeida.

Amid the noise there is little new light, however, on the 27 January shooting that triggered the crisis. US officials stress that Davis was working in a security role at the time and not in intelligence collection, probably to avoid him also being charged with espionage.

The Pakistani government says it needs until 14 March to decide whether Davis has immunity from prosecution. Given the public uproar, Pakistani analysts say it is hard to see how the government can politically afford to set him free.

"This has become a big mess, for the Americans as well as the Pakistanis," said Talat Masood, a retired general and analyst. "There's no easy solution, and both sides need to let things calm down for a while. Otherwise it will get out of hand."

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