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More than 700 people took to the streets in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Thursday to protest against the government’s economic policy in a sign of mounting public anger in the oil producer grappling with recession.

Africa’s largest economy is mired in its first recession for 25 years as low oil prices have hammered public finances and foreign reserves while driving up annual inflation to almost 20 percent.

President Muhammadu Buhari was elected in 2015 on pledges to diversify the economy and fight corruption. But critics say he has made little progress, with Nigeria still heavily dependent on crude exports whose price has halved since 2014.

The 74-year-old former military ruler is currently on medical leave in Britain.

“The Buhari administration came to power on the promise of change,” said Ismail Bello, a labour union and protest leader.

“We are yet to feel the impact of change. We are rather feeling the pain of lack of good governance, we are feeling the pain of corruption, we are feeling the pain of joblessness,” he said.

The protesters marched to the presidential villa to see Vice President Yemi Osinbajo who asked for patience.

“Every time you fight corruption the way we are trying to fight corruption, there is a major fight back, because corruption in this country is wealthy, powerful, influential and it is in every aspect of our lives,” Osinbajo said.

“Things might be difficult today, but I am completely sure if we stay the course this country will not only get out of recession but always go to the path of sustainable development,” he said.

There was also a smaller demonstration in the commercial capital Lagos.

Buhari has been in Britain since mid-January for treatment for an unspecified medical condition and, with no indication of when he might return, many Nigerians suspect his health is worse

than officials admit.

Hundreds of people had already staged a similar protest on Monday in Abuja and other cities.
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A small U.S. manufacturing company is growing and hiring more people, in part because of lessons it learned from discovering revolutionary processes for making lobster traps and applying those skills to other projects, such as security fencing for the U.S. border with Mexico.

Riverdale Mills has expanded from 60 people to 185 employees during the past few years, and Chief Executive Officer Jim Knott says he is trying to hire another 35 workers. The expansion comes at a time when about one-third of U.S. manufacturing jobs nationwide have disappeared because of trade problems and a rising tide of automation.

The Northbridge, Massachusetts, firm says its wire mesh products are used in most of the lobster traps in the United States and Europe, replacing traditional wooden devices. Riverdale uses proprietary processes to improve its rustproofing and preserve the rust protection in harsh environments. A government report says commercial landings of American lobsters totaled 67 million kilograms and were valued at $567 million in 2014.

Lessons from lobstering inform other designs, including security fences that protect nuclear facilities, U.S. embassies and borders. Knott would like to sell more security fence as part of President Donald Trump’s plan to put a wall along the Mexican border, but says the government’s plans and specifications are not yet clear.  

Riverdale’s products are also used in the aquaculture industry to help grow oysters and fish in environments that pose a challenge for many materials. That could also lead to more sales and jobs, because a report from Grand View Research, a business consulting firm in San Francisco, says aquaculture is expanding as demand for healthy protein grows and stocks of some wild caught fish falter.

Riverdale can make thousands of different kinds of mesh out of steel and other materials. It draws steel rods through ever smaller openings until it gets wire of just the right thickness. The wires are then arranged in a crisscross pattern on huge, highly automated, noisy machines that can apply hundreds of welds at a time.  

The completed mesh is then run through a vat that holds many tons of molten, glowing zinc, a process that yields a rust-resistant product that can survive in saltwater. For lobster traps and other marine applications, the mesh may also be coated with a plant-based plastic powder that offers further protection.

Riverdale has expanded the proportion of its products that are exported, recently rising to 45 percent. Knott says exports are one key reason the firm has been able to grow.
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President Donald Trump told airline and airport executives Thursday that he supports privatizing America’s air traffic control system, according to a top airline industry lobbyist who was in the meeting.

Nick Calio, president and CEO of Airlines for America, the trade association that represents the major airlines, said after the White House meeting that Trump was “extraordinarily positive” when airline executives urged him to spin off air traffic control operations from the Federal Aviation Administration and place them under the control of a private, nonprofit corporation.  

That corporation would most likely be dominated by the major airlines.

Asked if Trump committed to back a bill to do that, Calio said: “I think he’s on track to do that.”

Airlines have complained the FAA is taking too long to modernize the air traffic system. Republican congressman Bill Shuster, chairman of the House transportation committee, introduced legislation to privatize the system last year, but the bill stalled after opposition from other top lawmakers and from business aircraft operators.

Business aircraft operators fear the corporation’s board would be dominated by airlines, and that they would lose access to larger airports to make more room for airlines.

WATCH:  Trump’s remarks to airline CEOs

Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest Airlines, told Trump during the meeting the top priority for helping airlines would be to “modernize the air traffic control system.” He complained that money spent on the system has not helped improve it in the past.

“I hear we’re spending billions and billions of dollars, it’s a system that’s totally out of whack,” Trump said. The president asked why airline corporations had allowed the government to invest in a faulty system. Kelly said airlines are not “in control” of those decisions.

Trump said he believes the system could potentially work better if FAA was run by a pilot. The current administrator, Michael Huerta, a holdover from the Obama administration, isn’t a pilot.

FAA officials maintain that they have made significant progress over the past 10 years of the modernization effort, and that airlines have begun to reap the benefits of those changes.

Besides Southwest, Trump met with the chief executives of Delta, United, and JetBlue, executives from air cargo companies, and officials from several airports.
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The White House is rushing to the defense of Ivanka Trump’s company _ the latest sign the president can’t seem to separate the presidency from his family’s businesses.

President Donald Trump added to a string of presidential firsts on Wednesday, and drew fire from ethics lawyers, with a Twitter attack on Nordstrom. The Seattle-based retailer stoked Trump’s rage by dropping his daughter Ivanka’s clothing and accessory line.

The implication, intended or not: Hurt my daughter’s business, and the Oval Office will come after you.

“My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom,” the president tweeted. “She is a great person – always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”

The government-led cheerleading for Ivanka Trump’s private enterprise didn’t end there.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, in an interview Thursday with Fox News from the White House briefing room, encouraged people to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff.” She boasted that she was giving the brand  “a free commercial here.”

While Trump himself is not subject to the standards of ethical conduct for federal employees, Conway is. Among the rules: An employee shall not use his or her office “for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise.”

Ivanka Trump does not have a specific role in the White House but moved to Washington with her husband, who is one of Trump’s closest advisers. She followed her father’s approach on business ties by handing over operating control of her fashion company but retaining ownership of it.

Though Trump has tweeted about companies such as Boeing, Carrier and General Motors, ethics experts say this time was different. It involved his daughter’s business, which raises conflict-of-interest concerns.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump was responding to an “attack on his daughter” when he posted the tweet and that “he has every right to stand up for his family and applaud their business activities, their success.”

WATCH: Spicer on Trump’s Nordstrom tweet

The Ivanka Trump flare-up follows revelations that first lady Melania Trump expected to develop “multi-million dollar business relationships” tied to her presence in the White House, according to a lawsuit she filed on Monday.

Ethics experts have criticized Trump’s plan to separate himself from his sprawling real estate business by handing managerial control to his two adult sons. The experts want him to sell his company. Most modern presidents have sold their financial holdings and put the cash raised in a blind trust whose investments remained unknown to them.

Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert, said the Nordstrom tweet is problematic because other retailers may think twice now about dropping the Ivanka Trump brand for fear of getting criticized publicly by the president. She said it was especially disturbing that Trump retweeted his message on the official White House account.

“The implicit threat was that he will use whatever authority he has to retaliate against Nordstrom, or anyone who crosses his interest,” said Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

Clark defended the president’s right to use his personal Twitter account to express his views, however. She noted that government workers recently set up alt-EPA accounts to criticize the president’s policies.

“A government employee, even a president, is allowed to tweet in his personal capacity,” she said.

One of the president’s fiercest ethics critics, Norman Eisen, described the tweet differently – a “bullying” tactic beneath the dignity of the president’s office.

“This is a shot across the bow to everybody who is doing business with Trump or his family,” said Eisen, who was President Barack Obama’s chief ethics counselor. “It’s warning them: Don’t withdraw their business.”

Eisen joined with other legal scholars and lawyers to sue the president last month for allegedly violating a clause in the Constitution that prohibits government officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments. Though other legal scholars disagree, Eisen said such payments include foreign diplomats staying at Trump’s new Washington D.C. hotel and holding events there and at the other Trump venues.

Trump and his top aides have repeatedly said that Americans do not care about what Eisen and other ethics critics say. “Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world,” Trump wrote on Twitter Nov. 21.

Two surveys released in January show that’s not entirely the case. A Quinnipiac University poll found that about 60 percent of registered voters were at least somewhat concerned that the president would “veto a law that would be good for the country because it would hurt his business interests.” And a Pew Research Center poll found that 57 percent of American adults were at least somewhat concerned that Trump’s businesses could  “conflict with his ability to serve the country’s best interests.”

Yet Trump seems to have calculated that his base of supporters forgives – and maybe even encourages – his protective bluster about his family businesses.

Nordstrom reiterated Wednesday that its decision was based on the brand’s performance, not politics. The company said sales of Ivanka Trump items had steadily declined over the past year, particularly in the last half of 2016, “to the point where it didn’t make good business sense for us to continue with the line for now.”

Retailers drop brands all the time because of poor performance, said brand consultant Allen Adamson. But given a highly charged political environment, perception is reality for loyal Trump fans.

“It is clearly hard for Nordstrom to tell the story that it is dropping [the brand] for business reasons,” said Adamson, founder of the firm Brand Simple.
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