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William "Mo" Cowan was named today as interim U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. Cowan replaces John Kerry, who resigned his Senate seat after he was confirmed Tuesday as Secretary of State. Cowan will serve until a new senator is elected in June to fill out the remainder of Kerry's term.

When the Selective Service was revived in 1980, women were exempted from registration because of their inability to participate in combat. Now that the Pentagon has lifted its ban on women in combat units, some are asking if women will be required to register with the draft database. Audie Cornish puts that question to Lawrence Romo, director of the Selective Service.

The U.S. economy actually shrank a bit in the fourth quarter. It was a tiny decline at one tenth of a percent, but it goes down as the first negative quarter in three and a half years. A sharp decline in government spending and a fall in business inventories were big factors.

Senators opened hearings Wednesday on gun violence with a surprise visit from former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, herself a shooting victim. "Too many children are dying," she told senators. What they should do, however, remained contentious as lawmakers heard from panelists — the NRA, the police and a lawyer among them who disagreed on solutions.

A British singer with classic R&B and pop influences, Faith draws comparisons to Amy Winehouse and Adele. If she keeps doing what she's doing, she's going to have lots of fans following her every musical and social cue.

More than 200 people crowded into a Senate building on Wednesday for the first hearing on gun violence since the tragic shootings at a Connecticut elementary school. Lawmakers have proposed any number of new regulations — from banning assault rifles to closing loopholes in the background check system.

Facebook says its mobile advertising business nearly doubled from the third to fourth quarter of 2012. As a whole, the company's ad business grew at its fastest rate since it went public last May. Some analysts felt the social network had initially been too slow to get into the mobile market.

BlackBerry has unveiled a new smarthphone that it hopes will woo back the many customers it lost in the past few years. Among its strategies, the company appointed singer Alicia Keys as its global creative director. But in the last few days Keys was found to be tweeting from an iPhone, one of BlackBerry's big rivals.

Israel's air force bombed a military facility in western Syria, according to Syrian media. It's a development that could further complicate the already volatile conditions in the region.

Former Salafi, turned rapper, Omar Kamal left the Salafi fold during Egypt's revolution. He says that when Salafis came out of the dark they showed their hypocrisy. To the rhythm of beat boxing, he uses his lyrics to chronicle his own identity crisis — a crisis that reflects Egypt's struggle to find itself.