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BY HARUMENDAH HELMY

ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN

This is Newsy Now and here are your latest headlines.

In U.S. politics, after a strong debate performance, GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich now has the lead in the latest poll of likely South Carolinian primary voters. CNN says the race to the nomination is closer than ever.

“A poll from American Research Group -- it shows a dead heat. Thirty three percent of likely Republican voters are backing Newt Gingrich, we’ve got 32 percent who are backing Mitt Romney.”

In world news, Thursday was the last official day of the Arab League monitor mission in Syria. The mission’s leader is set to present its observations on Sunday. Euronews reports the league is expected to extend the mission for another four weeks -- saying... 

“Some successes were reported on Thursday, with a local truce getting a tank pullout from the town of Zabadani near the Lebanese border. But overall there are no signs of a halt to the violence.”

In tech news, the U.S. Department of Justice has taken down the online file-sharing site Megaupload for hosting infringed content. Seven of the company’s employees were indicted - including enigmatic leader Kim Dotcom. The news comes a day after an Internet-wide protest of the two anti-piracy acts under consideration in the U.S. Congress. Here’s HLN. 

“There’s pictures of the FBI raiding a Washington, D.C. data center for Megaupload. Four people were arrested in New Zealand. The FBI says Megaupload helped people rip off companies by half a billion dollars.” 

And finally, in business news, Google reported a fourth quarter earnings and revenue that are significantly lower than street expectations. Its stocks immediately took a hit. CNBC says analysts had been looking for Google to report its most prosperous quarter in its history. 

“...but the big surprise the search giant collected less money per click on its online ads. You can see what that did to the earnings last night that stock down by over 8 percent.”

Stay with Newsy for your news analyses throughout the day. For Newsy Now, I’m Christina Hartman, highlighting the top headlines making you smarter, faster.