Features

SUDAN (Capital Markets in Africa) – Sudan appeared to back away from any rapid move toward normalization with Israel, less than two days after the military leader who heads the power-sharing government held a historic meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu. “The transitional government as a whole must ensure accountability, responsibility, and transparency in all decisions made,” Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said Wednesday on Twitter. Under a new pact agreed after the ouster of longtime President Omar…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – President Donald Trump’s inevitable acquittal in the Senate’s impeachment trial on Wednesday has some House Democrats fretting that they should have delivered a more complete case to argue for his removal. Trump is emerging from the two-week Senate trial looking as strong as ever, barely wounded by the relentless details of his efforts to force Ukraine to investigate one of his main political rivals. Instead, the Republican base appears…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – Pete Buttigieg maintained his lead in the Iowa caucuses after the second tranche of results was released on Tuesday, cementing his status as a credible contender after an extraordinary rise from the little-known mayor of a small Indiana city to the top tier of the presidential race. With 71% of precincts reporting, Bernie Sanders was a close second with his promises to deliver Medicare for All and lead a political…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – Donald Trump didn’t mention impeachment in his State of the Union address, but the partisan tension gripping the Capitol was made plain in the evening’s two enduring images. The president turned his back on Nancy Pelosi’s outstretched hand as he assumed the dais, and the House Speaker then ripped her copy of his speech in two after he concluded his remarks. The dueling displays of rancor overshadowed an address the…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – The U.K.’s departure from the European Union frees it from parts of the bloc’s trademark law that British courts have viewed skeptically, attorneys say. EU laws that provide guardrails for national statutes, and EU court precedents that for decades have created the binding case law guiding trademark conflicts, won’t apply in the U.K. British judges may continue to look to EU case law, but there are parts of trademark…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – When Donald Trump was running for president in 2016, one of his central campaign promises was to enact “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Shortly after he took office, he issued an executive order that was quickly dubbed the “travel ban,” triggering months of court cases and a series of amended orders. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Trump’s third version of the policy, issued…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa): The Trump administration is going ahead with controversial new rules that would clear the way for the U.S. to start applying punitive tariffs on goods from countries accused of having undervalued currencies, the Commerce Department said Monday. The move would give new muscle to U.S. complaints about currency manipulation that have in the past targeted economies like China and Japan and thus turn the more than $6 trillion-a-day global…