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Speaker 1: News when you want it with Bloomberg News Now, I'm

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Speaker 1: Brian Curtis in Hong Kong. House Republicans have nominated Mike

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Speaker 1: Johnson of Louisiana as their latest choice for speaker. Johnson

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Speaker 1: has been one of Donald Trump's most outspoken allies in

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Speaker 1: his efforts to overturn the twenty twenty presidential election. Former

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Speaker 1: Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows has been given immunity

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Speaker 1: from prosecution in the probe into Trump's role in election interference.

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Speaker 1: A person familiar told Bloomberg that Meadows has testified before

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Speaker 1: a grand jury hearing evidence in the case. Meadows reportedly

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Speaker 1: said he repeatedly told Trump in the week's following the

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Speaker 1: election that claims of election fraud were baseless. In other news,

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Speaker 1: US intelligence officials are said to have determined that Israel

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Speaker 1: was not behind a large explosion at a hospital in

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Speaker 1: Gaza last week. That's according to The Washington Post. The

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Speaker 1: explosion killed as many as three hundred people. Analysts used

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Speaker 1: video from four locations to track the trajectory of the weapon.

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Speaker 1: It was shown that it was fired from within Gaza

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Speaker 1: and had malfunction. Israel's credit outlook has been cut to

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Speaker 1: negative by s and p Global Ratings. SMP cited the

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Speaker 1: war with hamas saying it could spread more widely and

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Speaker 1: it could have a bigger effect on the Israeli economy

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Speaker 1: than expected. In earning's news, Alphabet reported quarterly revenue and

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Speaker 1: profit from its cloud business that missed estimates, and it's

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Speaker 1: raised concerns since the market has looked to Google's cloud

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Speaker 1: unit to take the lead. Alphabet is the third largest

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Speaker 1: player in the cloud market after Amazon and Microsoft. We

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Speaker 1: get more here from Bloomberg's Mandeep Singh.

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Speaker 2: Cloud a little bit off a leaddown, but not surprise

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Speaker 2: given you know everyone right now is talking about generative

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Speaker 2: AI and they are kind of making their twenty twenty

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Speaker 2: four plans. It hasn't really translated into cloud revenue.

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Speaker 1: Away from cloud. Overall sales and profit did beat analyst

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Speaker 1: expectations by the stock traded down more than six percent

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Speaker 1: in late trading. Microsoft reported first quarter revenue rising thirteen percent.

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Speaker 1: Sales were fifty six and a half billion dollars and

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Speaker 1: above expectations. It represents Microsoft's strongest sales gain in some

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Speaker 1: six quarters. Heard from Bloomberg's Dina bas what happened.

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Speaker 3: In the quarter. They just reported is a significant amount

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Speaker 3: of stability in that Azure cloud business. The unit came

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Speaker 3: in with growth higher than the company had forecast. They

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Speaker 3: are although it's early these they are reporting strengths related

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Speaker 3: to some of the artificial intelligence products that they're selling,

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Speaker 3: including a cloud service they sell which lets Azure customers

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Speaker 3: use open AI's model.

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Speaker 1: Microsoft up four percent in late trading. China is stepping

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Speaker 1: up support for the economy. Bloomberg's Joanne Wong with the

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Speaker 1: story from Hong Kong.

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Speaker 4: China's legislature approved a plan to raise the fiscal deficit

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Speaker 4: ratio for twenty twenty three to about three point eight

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Speaker 4: percent of GDP. Shinhua said the plan would include issuing

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Speaker 4: a distiontional sovereign debt worth one hundred and thirty seven

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Speaker 4: billion dollars in the fourth quarter. The additional debt would

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Speaker 4: be used to support disaster relief and construction. China has

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Speaker 4: rarely adjusted his budget midyear. The last time was in

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Speaker 4: two thousand and eight in the aftermath of a Sichuan earthquake.

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Speaker 4: The latest budget revision shows that top leaders are concerned

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Speaker 4: about China's economic outlook. Just yesterday, President Chichingpain made what

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Speaker 4: sought to be his first ever visit to the Central

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Speaker 4: Bank since he became president.

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Speaker 1: Joanne Wong. Meantime, Visa posted fourth quarter profit that bed

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Speaker 1: analyst estimate says consumer card spending rows. We get that

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Speaker 1: story from Bloomberg's Charlie Pellett.

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Speaker 5: The world's biggest payments network also announced a new twenty

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Speaker 5: five billion dollar stock repurchase program. US consumers have remained

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Speaker 5: resilient amid geopolitical upheaval, stubborn inflation, and the threat of

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Speaker 5: a recession, although American Expressed last week reported a slowdown

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Speaker 5: in spending growth on its corporate cards. Visa Arrival, MasterCard

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Speaker 5: is scared Joel to report quarterly results before markets open

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Speaker 5: on Thursday.

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Speaker 1: That's news when you want it with Bloomberg News Now.

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Speaker 1: I'm Brian Curtis. This is Bloomberg