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Murray could make return after hip surgery, says mother Judy

FILE PHOTO: Tennis - Australian Open - Melbourne Park, Melbourne, Australia
FILE PHOTO: Tennis - Australian Open - Melbourne Park, Melbourne, Australia - January 12, 2019 - Britain's Andy Murray trains. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo

February 22, 2019

(Reuters) – Andy Murray could return to competitive tennis after undergoing hip resurfacing surgery last month but the former world number one also knows his career might already be over, his mother Judy has said.

Three-times Grand Slam champion Murray said before his first round exit at the Australian Open last month that the tournament could be his last as a professional due to severe hip pain.

“I think he will (return),” Judy was quoted as saying by Sky Sports at the Rio Open. “(But) I think he’s aware that it might not be possible.

“He’s a smart guy, he has a lot of interest in different things, he has a lot of options in life after tennis. But the most important thing is that he’s free from the pain he’s had for 20 months.

“He has a young family, you have to think about the quality of life for the rest of your life. Actually, that’s the most important thing.”

The two-time Olympic champion said last month surgery was the only option if he wanted to extend his career.

(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Rutherford)

Source: OANN

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Protesters climb Universal Studios globe in California demanding NBC take climate-change action

Climate-change activists took over the Universal Studios globe in California on Monday, claiming they were gluing themselves to the iconic sphere and demanding action from NBCUniversal.

Two protesters with Extinction Rebellion Los Angeles waved green flags with the organization's symbol from atop the globe on it as visitors to the tourist spot watched.

A spokesperson for Universal Studios told Fox News on Monday that "Earth Day demonstrators came to the property unannounced and we are working with law enforcement to have them peacefully removed."

CLIMATE-CHANGE PROTESTERS ANNOUNCE SHIFT TO POLITICAL NEGOTIATIONS AFTER WEEK-LONG DEMONSTRATIONS IN LONDON

Extinction Rebellion LA stated on Facebook Monday afternoon — in addition to noting that one demonstrator was arrested as a result of the protest — that they had "taken the globe at universal studios."

The group reportedly sent NBCUniversal a list of demands asked that they declare that the world is "indeed in a Climate and Ecological Emergency – that the extinction of the natural world is happening, that we are facing the collapse of civilization."

In the list, obtained by Fox 11 Los Angeles, was comprised of four different points — including asking the company to "tell the whole truth about our climate and ecological emergency, including the failure of the US Government to respond with appropriate action/preparedness planning until now."

CLIMATE-CHANGE PROTESTERS BRING LONDON TO HALT, DEMONSTRATOR GLUES HIMSELF TO SUBWAY TRAIN, 300 ARRESTED IN 2 DAYS

Another point demanded: "That NBC reject all advertising from fossil fuel corporations, agrees to be zero-carbon by 2025, and publish a public, annual eco-audit of all NBC/Universal operations, including summary of key ecological and carbon data."

The fourth point requested that NBCUniversal "only permit think-tank spokespersons or lobbyists on the air to discuss the climate and ecological emergency whose funding is made fully transparent to your viewers in each and every case."

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Extinction Rebellion was also behind a similar protest last week at New York City's City Hall in Lower Manhattan. Of the close to 150 protesters at the event, the New York Post reported that more than 60 were arrested.

London's Metropolitan Police stated in a news release on Monday that they were aware of an Extinction Rebellion protest in Parliament Square to take place Tuesday, and have put a "robust policing plan" into place.

Source: Fox News National

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With budget, Trump throws opening jab in next funding fight with Congress

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a rally at El Paso County Coliseum in El Paso
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a rally at El Paso County Coliseum in El Paso, Texas, U.S., February 11, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo

March 11, 2019

By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Monday will ask lawmakers to hike spending for the military and the wall he wants to build on the U.S.-Mexico border and slash other programs in his 2020 budget, the opening move in his next funding fight with Congress.

The Republican president’s proposal, slated for release at 11:30 a.m., is expected to be rejected by Congress, where Democratic leaders on Sunday warned Trump against what they called a “repeat performance” of last year’s funding war, which led to a five-week partial shutdown of the federal government.

This year, the stakes are higher. The Oct. 1 deadline for a funding deadline to keep the government running coincides with the deadline to lift the debt limit – without which the U.S. government would risk a default, which would shock the world economy.

Trump’s budget will ask for $8.6 billion to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico, officials familiar with the budget told Reuters.

That is more than six times what Congress gave him for border projects in each of the past two fiscal years, and 6 percent more than the president has corralled by invoking emergency powers this year after he failed to get the money he wanted.

Immigration enforcement, veterans’ healthcare and opioid addiction programs will get a boost in the budget. But Trump will propose to cut non-defense spending by an average of 5 percent below caps that Congress had set for fiscal 2019, the White House Office of Management and Budget said on Sunday.

Some programs will be targeted for cancellation altogether to push total non-defense discretionary spending below a cap of $542 billion established in a 2011 fiscal restraint law, an administration official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Tax cuts have been a priority for the Republican White House and Congress in recent years, rather than deficit reduction. The deficit ran to $900 billion in 2019, and the national debt has ballooned to $22 trillion.

Trump’s budget would propose $2.7 trillion in spending cuts over a decade – but even that would not be enough to balance the budget. The OMB said the budget was designed to balance by 2034, exceeding the traditional 10-year budget outlook.

Trump will propose to boost defense spending by an as-yet-unspecified amount in fiscal 2020. But to get around the spending caps, those increases will be funneled through the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund, more traditionally used for emergencies.

The tactic has already drawn criticism from fiscal hawks. “We’ve long argued that OCO is a gimmick,” said Romina Boccia, who specializes in fiscal and economic policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Boccia said she saw the move as an opening bid to try to break the pattern of making increases in defense spending contingent on hikes in non-defense programs.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Source: OANN

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House Asks Judge to Block Trump’s Use of Funds for Wall

The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday asked a judge to issue a preliminary injunction to prevent President Donald Trump from using funds identified from his national emergency declaration to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, CNN reports.

"Defendants are moving quickly to construct the border wall, and they have awarded contracts against funds that Congress did not appropriate for that purpose," House General Counsel Doug Letter and other lawyers wrote in a 56-page motion filed to U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden. "And more contracts are coming soon. Once made, these unconstitutional expenditures cannot be undone, and the grave institutional injury inflicted on the House cannot be remedied."

Trump declared a national emergency in mid-February in an attempt to secure more funding to build a barrier, a move that resulted in roughly $6 billion from the Pentagon's budget and $600 million from the Treasury Department being shifted over to use for the barrier.

Trump, House lawyers said, violated the U.S. Constitution with his decision to do so.

"The decision to spend funds 'without Congress' violates the Appropriations Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which mandates that '[n]o Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law,'" they wrote.

Lawmakers earlier in the month only allocated $1.375 billion for the barrier, far less than the $5.7 billion Trump requested.

Source: NewsMax America

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Sweden charges 3 policemen in shooting of disabled man

Sweden's prosecution authority has charged three police officers in the fatal shooting in Stockholm last year of a disabled man who waved a toy gun.

Prosecutor Martin Tiden says one officer was charged with causing another person's death and the others for misconduct. In the wake of the Aug. 2 shooting.

Tiden said Friday the case will be heard before the Stockholm District Court. No date for the trial was set. None of the police officers' names was released.

Eric Torell, who had Down Syndrome and autism and struggled to communicate, was holding a plastic toy resembling a submachine gun — a birthday present from his mother when he turned 5 — when he was shot dead.

Source: Fox News World

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EU sees economic splits as half of member states face differing gaps

A man reads a newspaper at a coffee shop in central Athens
A man reads a newspaper at a coffee shop in central Athens, Greece, November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Costas Baltas

February 27, 2019

By Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Half of European Union countries are experiencing economic imbalances that differ widely, the EU Commission said on Wednesday, as the bloc discusses how to improve convergence among its 27 members after Britain leaves.

In a regular check-up of EU governments’ economic policies and achievements, the Commission renewed its warning that gaps that are harmful to the whole bloc not being addressed in several states, while a growing number of them face shortfalls.

As economic growth slows, “challenges vary significantly across countries and call for appropriate and determined policy action,” the Commission said in its report.

Thirteen states were rebuked for their economic imbalances, two more than in last year’s assessment.

Of them, Italy, Greece and Cyprus were found to have “excessive” shortfalls which would require swift corrective action. The Commission was mostly worried by the high ratio of bad loans in their banking sectors and their large public and private debt.

Bulgaria, Germany, Ireland, Spain, France, Croatia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Sweden also have imbalances although less acute than the three Mediterranean states, the commission said. Croatia’s imbalances are no longer considered excessive.

None of these countries have sufficiently narrowed the gaps the Commission had highlighted in a report last year, in a sign that EU’s fiscal recommendations have so far been largely ignored in national capitals.

Problems also differ among countries, with France affected by low productivity, Italy hit by high unemployment and debt and Germany lagging on investments.

CASH FOR REFORMS?

The EU monitoring was launched after the 2008-09 global financial crisis to address national economic imbalances that could weaken the EU economy.

However, major shortfalls have not been tackled by EU states. For example, Italy’s large public sector debt has not dropped and Germany has maintained an excessive trade surplus.

Structural reforms have also stalled in recent years in many countries of the bloc. “To unlock the full growth potential of our economies, we need structural reforms,” the Commission’s vice-president in charge of financial stability Valdis Dombrovskis said in a statement.

In a bid to address these shortfalls and lower economic divergences among EU states, the Commission last year proposed to set up a 25-billion-euro ($28.4 billion) EU fund to help countries that embark on structural reforms, such as of their pensions systems or labor markets.

Germany and France, the two largest countries of the bloc, supported the cash-for-reform plan in a blueprint agreed last week, but a fund will only be set up if there is backing from all EU states. Not all countries support the plan.

If agreed, the fund could begin financing reforms from 2021 when the new long-term EU budget will start.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; editing by Philip Blenkinsop)

Source: OANN

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Troubled Secret Service Faces New Leadership – Again

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The Secret Service, the once vaunted force charged with protecting the president, is again bracing for new leadership – the third director to helm the troubled agency in five years.

The White House on Monday announced that Randolph “Tex” Alles would be stepping down amid a shakeup at the Department of Homeland Security, where DHC Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, effective April 10. Trump tapped James Murray, a career Secret Service agent and official who is currently the assistant director of the Office of Protective Operations, as the agency’s new director.

Murray also has served as Secret Service’s liaison to Congress, the special agent in charge of the Washington field office and held the top leadership role at the agency’s training center in Maryland.

There was no immediate reason given for Alles’ departure, which appeared to be part of a housecleaning of sorts of DHS officials with ties to John Kelly, President Trump’s former chief of staff and, prior to that, secretary of Homeland Security. The moves coincides with White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner, taking over the DHS portfolio.

Kelly is a retired U.S. Marine Corps general who was pushed out of the administration at the end of last year after months tangling with Trump and other White House officials. Kelly helped pull in Alles, a former major general in the Marine Corps, to lead the Secret Service, at the beginning of Trump’s presidency.

In a memo to other Secret Service officials and staff on Monday, Alles denied being fired and said administration officials had told him “weeks” ago – before a serious security breach at Mar-a-Lago — to plan for “transitions in leadership” across DHS.

“No doubt you have seen media reports regarding my ‘firing,’” he wrote in the memo addressed to “All the Men and Women of the U.S. Secret Service” and obtained by RealClearPolitics.

“I assure you that is not the case, and in fact was told weeks ago by the administration that transitions in leadership should be expected across the Department of Homeland Security,” he wrote.

“The president has directed an orderly transition in leadership for this agency, and I intend to abide by that direction. It is my sincere regret that I was not able to address the workforce prior to this announcement,” he continued.

Both Alles and the administration made it clear that the arrest of a Chinese woman carrying a malware-laced device at Mar-a-Lago did not lead to the director’s departure. An administration source told RCP the decision “has been in the works for two weeks and is no way related” to the Mar-a-Lago incident.

Alles, in his staff memo, also called Murray a “consummate professional, a true leader” and someone whose capabilities have earned his confidence.

At the beginning of his administration, Trump followed recommendations made by a blue-ribbon panel convened in 2014 at the height of several Secret Service scandals to tap an “outsider” to head the agency.

Alles was the first non-Secret Service employee to be named director in the agency’s storied history. The panel, and several key members of Congress, all called for a new director who was unconnected to the current and former leadership who could truly change the insular culture and uneven discipline partially responsible for low morale.

Before that recommendation, President Obama named Julia Pierson, a career agency official, to be the first woman Secret Service director. Even after the recommendation, he turned to known quantity Joseph Clancy to replace Pierson when security lapses continued. Clancy had served as the head of the service’s presidential protective division during Obama’s time in office before retiring. Obama brought him back to try to reform the agency, but it continued experiencing security breaches, as well as discipline and retention problems.

Murray is very well-liked and respected but it’s unclear if he can truly shake up the culture to make necessary changes, sources close to the Secret Service community told RCP.

In order to fix the morale problem, one source said Murray needs “to set friendship aside and promote competence, fairness – [that’s] easier said than done in D.C.”

Gary Byrne, a former Secret Service Uniformed Division officer who wrote a tell-all book about the Clintons and their misbehavior in the White House and another about the history of the service, said the agency on Monday was reeling after the announcement of Alles’ departure and Murray’s ascension.

Even though Murray is well-respected, he said officers he’s talked to “still want somebody from the outside” to lead the agency.

“They just keep repeating the same mistakes,” Byrne said of the quick succession of directors.

“Nothing has really changed – unless they fix the problem with the Uniformed Division pay scale and reduce the number of hours everyone is working. It’s an insane amount of hours these guys work,” he said.

The agency’s uneven discipline problems and claims of top officials contributing to a culture of corruption have also exacerbated tensions among the rank and file.

In the first few weeks of the Trump administration, a senior Secret Service agent faced an internal disciplinary investigation after posting on Facebook that she would not take a bullet for the new president. But the agency declined to act on a complaint about Kerry O’Grady, the senior agent in question, until a media report exposed the Facebook post.

After nearly two years on paid administrative leave, O’Grady is being allowed to leave the service in just a few weeks virtually unscathed financially with her retirement largely intact.

“They let her get away with what she did because they didn’t want her spilling the beans on the dirt of the Secret Service,” Byrne said, noting that it “absolutely degraded morale.”

“The senior officials and staff of the Secret Service knew what was going on … and they were ignoring her behavior until” the issue became public and others in the community started to “raise a stink,” Byrne said.

In recent years, the Secret Service has ranked either dead last or near the bottom of a government employee survey of job satisfaction conducted annually by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. The agency’s most-recent ranking, released late last year, is near the bottom at No. 398.

Many of the morale problems are tied to agents’ and officers’ crushing workload -- long hours amid increased security demands from the White House and in protecting presidential candidates in recent years, as well as lagging employment recruitment and poor retention rates.

As of August of 2017, just nine months into the Trump presidency, more than 1,000 agents had hit their federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to cover the entire year.

Responding to that crisis, Alles was able to convince Congress to provide more funding in a 2018 bill aptly titled the Secret Service Recruitment and Retention Act, but it mainly played a stop-gap role in fixing the overtime funding shortfall.

Solving the underlying workload issues would mean expanding the Secret Service workforce, giving each agent and officer time to take longer breaks from duty to recharge and attend training sessions to sharpen skills.

Trump’s 2019 budget aimed to accomplish this by providing hundreds of millions of dollars more to support an additional 450 agents and officers for a total of 7,600 positions by the end of the fiscal year. However, the DHS inspector general testified to Congress last year that even that number is insufficient – that the agency needs a total of 8,200 personnel, 1,700 more than it currently has.

After Congress provided more money for overtime, agents are now getting paid for all the work they do but are still working far too many hours and being stretched too thin, insiders say.

“If you’re working 120 hours a pay period, which a lot of these guys are, you’re still working too much,” Byrne said.

Susan Crabtree is a veteran Washington reporter who has spent two decades covering the White House and Congress.

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A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad, California September 22, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. economy is growing at a 2.08% annualized pace in the second quarter based on upbeat data on durable goods orders and new home sales in March, the New York Federal Reserve’s Nowcast model showed on Friday.

This was faster than the 1.92% growth rate calculated by the N.Y. Fed model the week before.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Extraordinary European Union leaders summit in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte arrives at an extraordinary European Union leaders summit to discuss Brexit, in Brussels, Belgium April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday he had assured China’s Huawei Technologies that it would not face discrimination in the rollout of Italy’s 5G telecoms network.

Conte was speaking on a visit to China where he said he met Huawei’s chief executive, Ren Zhengfei. The prime minister’s comments were carried in Italy by TV broadcaster Sky Italia.

“I told him that we have adopted some precautions, some measures to protect our interests that demand very high levels of security … not only from Huawei but any company entering into the 5G arena,” he said.

Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny after the United States told allies not to use its technology because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

(Writing by by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Angelo Amante)

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U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Indianapolis from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday was expected to announce his intention to revoke the United States’ status as a signatory of the Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama but never ratified by Congress, two U.S. officials said.

Trump was expected to announce the decision in a speech in Indianapolis, to the National Rifle Association, the officials said. The NRA, a powerful gun lobby group, has long been opposed to the treaty, which was negotiated at the United Nations.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)

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A remote controlled robot for the 'Isotopium: Chernobyl' game is seen at the game's location in Brovary
A remote controlled robot for the ‘Isotopium: Chernobyl’ game is seen at the game’s location in Brovary, Ukraine April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

April 26, 2019

By Margaryta Chornokondratenko

KIEV (Reuters) – A Ukrainian computer game that brings to life a town abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster may not sound like everyone’s idea of fun but has attracted 60,000 people globally since its launch in October.

Players of “Isotopium: Chernobyl” drive tanks around the ghost town of Prypyat near Chernobyl, knocking out competitors as they search for an energy source called isotopium and collecting points every time they find some.

While the game takes its theme from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, which marked its 33rd anniversary on Friday, it was also inspired by the 2009 science fiction film “Avatar”.

Newcomers to the game think they have entered a virtual world when in fact they are controlling a real robot, equipped with a camera and computer, which makes its way around a model of the town rendered down to the tiniest detail.

“When playing our game, for the first 5-10 minutes many players don’t understand that it is not fictional,” said the game’s co-founder Sergey Beskrestnov. “They message us saying: ‘You have cool texture, you have good graphics, your designer is good, well done. You have a cool operating system.’

“People then reply: ‘It is not an operating system, it is real,’ and the player can’t believe it is real,” said Beskrestnov, speaking mid-game from Prypyat city square as he towers over surrounding five-storey buildings.

Kiev-born Beskrestnov was just 12 years old when on April 26, 1986 a botched test at the nuclear plant in the then Soviet Union sent clouds of smoldering nuclear material across large swathes of Europe, forced over 50,000 people, including Beskrestnov’s family, to evacuate and poisoned unknown numbers of workers involved in its clean-up.

Beskrestnov and his partner Alexey Fateyev used Google maps and hundreds of pictures from the Chernobyl area to recreate Prypyat landmarks, including residential buildings, a hotel, concert hall, amusement park and a stadium.

The game’s real-scale model occupies a 180 square meter (1,938 sq. ft) basement of a residential building in the Ukraine city of Brovary, just 150 km (93 miles) from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and 30 km east of Kiev.

Miniature radioactivity warning signs, graffiti on the walls of abandoned buildings and tables and chairs left scattered inside a small cafe all add to the creepy atmosphere of a once lively town.

“It’s a really neat concept …,” Shaun Prescott wrote in a review of the game published by PC Gamer magazine in January. “Controlling the tanks is kinda cumbersome, but they are tanks, after all.”

An attentive player will notice at least one inaccuracy – the real Chernobyl nuclear power plant is not located in town as it is in the game.

It costs $9 to immerse in the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic town for an hour but only 20 people at a time can play simultaneously. Beskrestnov’s company, Remote Games, said 62,615 people around the world have registered to play the game, including around 15,000 in France and 10,000 in the United States.

A camera fixed on top of a moving tank broadcasts high quality signal in real time, allowing players from as far apart as Australia and Canada enjoy the game without facing any time delay in delivering video signals.

Its creators next ambition is to devise a game featuring the colonization of Mars in which 1,000 people will be able to simultaneously control robots on different missions involved in the operation.

“Many people advise us to contact Elon Musk directly because it resonates his dreams and ideas,” Beskrestnov jokes.    

(Editing by Susan Fenton)

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FILE PHOTO: A Starbucks sign is show on one of the companies stores in Los Angeles, California
FILE PHOTO: A Starbucks sign is show on one of the companies stores in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 19,2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Initial optimism over first-quarter results from Starbucks Corp was waning fast on Wall Street on Friday, as analysts questioned the longer-term prospects of its new sales push given subdued overall customer traffic numbers especially in China.

The company on Thursday beat brokerage estimates for quarterly same-store sales on the back of demand for its new Cloud Macchiato, Matcha tea and cold brews in the United States.

However, BTIG’s Peter Saleh was one of a number of sector analysts who said while customers forking out for higher-priced new drinks had helped drive growth in same-store sales, “anemic” traffic at cafes remained a concern.

He and others pointed to a 1 percent decline in footfall at cafes in the Chinese market, viewed as crucial to the chain’s growth for the foreseeable future.

More broadly, transaction numbers, the substitute analysts use for customer traffic, were unchanged in all three of the company’s global regions.

Shares in the company, which hit a record high after the results on Thursday, fell 1 percent in morning trade.

“We remain cautious given near-term headwinds surrounding China, including cannibalization, increasing competition (and) a slowing economy,” Wedbush analyst Nick Setyan said.

Starbucks has also poured money into beefing up its delivery network in China as it battles with local startup Luckin Coffee, whose speedy growth led it to file for an IPO in the United States earlier this week.

New menu items and partnerships with delivery services, the heart of the company’s strategy to win back customers lost to artisanal coffee shops and cheaper fast-food rivals, did help Starbucks’ sales in its home market.

However, analysts said growth in China may continue to be subdued.

Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog said she expects store expansion in China to take priority over comparable sales growth.

She downgraded her rating on Starbucks’ to “market perform” from “outperform”, arguing that the company facing tough sales comparisons later on in 2019 from last year and the current rich valuation of shares meant the stock had limited room to rise.

“Investors will be hesitant to invest new money in a stock with a topline that, while still strong, is unlikely to meaningfully accelerate,” Herzog said.

Still, the company’s solid same-store growth in the United States, improving profit margins and a lower tax rate for the rest of the year led at least 6 Wall Street brokerages to raise their price targets on the stock to as high as $81.

11 of 29 brokerages rate Starbucks “buy” or higher, 17 “hold” and 1 “sell” or lower. Their median price target is $75.

(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru)

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