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Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, January 31st, and this is your

FT News briefing. Microsoft had a stellar fourth quarter and the global economy is doing better than expected.

Plus allegations against a UN agency called UNRWA is putting more pressure on the

humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Within Gaza itself, what UNRWA is doing is described to me by almost everybody is indispensable.

For many people in Gaza, owner of food,

owner of vaccinations, under medicine,

is pretty much the only way that they manage you to survive.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day. Microsoft reported record quarterly revenues yesterday.

That's thanks to strong demand for its cloud computing services and excitement about the company's investment in artificial intelligence.

But investors couldn't get excited about the report itself.

Shares fell more than 1% in after hours trading yesterday.

Meanwhile Google's parent company Alphabet had more of a meh day when it reported earnings.

Its ad revenue came in just shy of Wall Street's expectations.

And just shy is a big deal when the division makes up roughly 80% of Alphabet's top line. The miss sent the company's shares down by as much as 5% in after-hours trading.

But it wasn't all bad for Alphabet. The company closed out 2023 with stronger than expected growth, thanks in large

part to its Google Cloud Services business. The International Monetary Fund came out with its Global Economic

Outlook yesterday and there were a few surprises. For one Russia's economy is now expected to grow much faster than the

IMF previously thought it would, and the global economy is also expected to do much better.

Here to explain is the FT's acting U.S. economics editor Claire Jones.

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