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Tropical Storm Nate is being blamed for more than 20 deaths across Central America even as it tracks toward a likely U.S. landfall this weekend as a hurricane.

“The system is forecast to strengthen over the Gulf of Mexico, and could affect portions of the northern Gulf Coast as a hurricane this weekend, with direct impacts from wind, storm surge, and heavy rainfall,” the National Hurricane Center said Thursday. “However, it is too early to specify the timing, location or magnitude of these impacts.”

Nate is expected to reach the northern Gulf Coast at hurricane strength this weekend before making landfall early Sunday somewhere between southeast Louisiana and the Florida Panhandle.

Residents in part of Louisiana’s coastal St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, have been ordered to evacuate as the state prepares for Nate. The evacuation for areas outside of the parish levee system was set to begin Thursday evening.

A state of emergency was declared for 29 Florida counties and the city of New Orleans.

Even as the threat of Nate draws near, several parts of the country are still struggling to recover from previous storms.

​Hurricane Maria

A group of Puerto Ricans who recently arrived in Florida met Thursday with Vice President Mike Pence as he prepared to go to Puerto Rico to survey the damage caused by Hurricane Maria.

Everlinda Burgos, who flew into Orlando from her home in Naranjito, told Pence, “Don’t go to San Juan. Go inside the country like where I live.’’ Burgos told Pence that President Donald Trump went to “another part’’ earlier this week. But she says the vice president should “go to the center’’ Friday “because that’s where the disaster is.’’

Some two weeks after the catastrophic Category 5 Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory is still reeling from its devastating effects. 

Governor Ricardo Rossello Nevares said just 8.6 percent of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority clients have had their power restored; 365 of 1,619 telecommunication towers have been repaired, but landlines are functioning at 100 percent.

The government’s hope is to have the power back on for a quarter of the island within a month’s time, and for the entire territory of 3.4 million people by March.

While 63.3 percent of the San Juan metropolitan region has safe drinking water, just 14 percent in the northern part of the island and 30 percent in the west region has such access.

As part of his daily news briefing on recovery efforts, the governor reported that 76 percent of island gas stations are open and 70 percent of the supermarkets are reported open.

​Hurricane Irma

The Florida Keys, devastated by Hurricane Irma last month, have reopened just in time for prime tourist season. The keys, which stretch about 200 kilometers off Florida’s southern tip, were closed after Irma made landfall Sept. 10 as a Category 4 hurricane.

Tourism-related jobs account for about 50 percent of the workforce in the area.

Meanwhile, the last shelter used for Hurricane Irma evacuees closed in Miami-Dade County Wednesday.

As Irma approached Florida, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez issued evacuation orders covering 600,000 residents. The county opened 43 shelters capable of housing about 100,000 people. Some 32,000 people ended up taking shelter in county facilities.

​Hurricane Harvey

Texas lawmakers, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, urged Congress to approve $18.7 billion more in funding for relief and recovery efforts from Hurricane Harvey. The request came a day after the Trump administration sent Congress a proposal for $29 billion in disaster aid to Puerto Rico, Florida, Texas and Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

While some Federal Emergency Management Agency money has reached Texas, the substantial funds needed for extensive home repairs or rebuilds, could take up to 32 months to work their way through several layers of government agencies.

The Houston Chronicle reports the bulk of the requested funds, $10 billion, would go to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for repairs and upgrades to dams, waterways and ports. Another $7 billion would be allocated for Community Development Block Grant disaster recovery funds, doubling the amount that was allocated in September.

Another $800 million would go to state educational agencies for repairs to schools and colleges, and rest of the funding would be applied toward small businesses, economic aid and transportation infrastructure.

More than 185,000 homes were damaged or destroyed by the Category 4 hurricane.
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A new party led by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said on Friday it hopes to pursue policies to revive the economy that do not rely excessively on fiscal and monetary stimulus steps in a party platform unveiled ahead of a national election on Oct. 22.

Koike’s Party of Hope said it would seek to boost Japan’s potential growth through deregulation in a package of measures dubbed “Yurikonomics.”

Taxing companies’ huge cash-pile and using the proceeds to create jobs would be among its proposed steps, along with increasing capital expenditure and revitalizing Japan’s stock market, according to the platform.

The party, which is challenging Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling coalition, also vowed to end nuclear power by 2030 amid public safety worries after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Abe announced the snap election last week in the hope his Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition would keep its majority in parliament’s lower house, where it held a two-thirds “super majority” before the chamber was dissolved.

However, Koike’s new party — launched last week as a “reformist, conservative” alternative to Abe’s equally conservative LDP — has clouded the outlook amid signs voters are disillusioned with Abe after nearly five years in power.
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Experts met in Stockholm this week to assess progress on securing land rights for indigenous people and local communities and how businesses connect to them.

More than half of land rights conflicts in the developing world are not resolved, pitting companies, governments and businesses against indigenous communities, according to research published at the conference.

Here are the views of 10 experts interviewed by Reuters during the two-day conference on the role of local communities, technology and business in ensuring secure land rights.

Boubacar Diarra, Pilot Coordinator, Helvetas

“Tenure rights, in a country like Mali that has just experienced a crisis, are very important for … development because more than 60 percent of the population is rural and lives from the land and … more than 50 percent of them are women. So the issue of land rights, especially women’s land rights, is very important.

The issue of land rights is also strongly linked to the question of climate change. The more people have rights over their lands, the better they protect them, the better they manage them to fight against climate change.”

Candido Mezua Salazar, Executive Board Member, Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests

“For indigenous people, having secure land rights means securing their lives now and for future generations. It is also very important for protecting our climate, it contributes to maintaining forests and in general it contributes to the development of indigenous people. … If there is no legal recognition, our forests are more likely to disappear.

Unfortunately, the reality is still that the dollars that are invested in indigenous lands still count more than the well-being of our communities.”

Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation

“We have two existential threats to the planet. The first is climate change, and the second is inequality. By working on land rights, secure tenure for indigenous people and local communities, we can achieve first a reduction of inequality in the world by providing these people with the assets and resources that improve their economic well-being.

At the same time, as the research shows that by giving land to indigenous people, they protect their forest and reduce deforestation, which in turn contributes to a better climate.”

Carin Jamtin, Director-General, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency

“Land rights matter in different ways, in the fight against climate change, but also … in eradicating poverty and in reaching the [United Nations’] Sustainable Development Goals. It matters because knowing who has the right to use a forest, the land, et cetera in different ways … gives indigenous people and local communities possibilities to support themselves, to build their own capacity … their own present but also their own future.

Therefore, land rights are important to make a clear distinction of who has the responsibility of actually combating and stopping climate change and the possibility of eradicating poverty.”

Mikhail Tarasov, Global Forestry Manager, Ikea

“Land rights are a very important issue. It’s really critical to secure that businesses are responsible. … Securing land rights is critical for addressing the biggest challenges we are facing today. It’s deforestation, it’s climate change, it’s gender equality, it’s rights of people.

But it’s also about the livelihoods and the rights of those people living in rural areas who own the resources.”

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, U.N. Special Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples Rights

“Land rights are very crucial for the continuing survival, dignity and well-being of indigenous peoples. If their lands are taken away from them, it really means their identities, their cultures are also going to be destroyed.

So it’s not a simple matter of land as an asset or a means of production. It’s really land that is the source of life, of identity, culture. Not recognizing those land rights basically means ethnocide. In some cases, it’s genocide and will lead to the disappearance of the people.”

Adam Klaptocz, Co-Founder, We Robotics

“Technology is always a tool that can be used to scale the work of organizations working on land rights issues. Drones can capture aerial data in a much faster, more efficient and higher quality way to provide a basis for land rights organizations to show the current state of land.

In a very accurate way, [drones can] demarcate people’s own property and lands of communities and provide a specific proof of what the current state of land looks like that can then be used to provide people with rights to the land on which they live.”

Kate Mathias, Group Development Consultant, Illovo Sugar

“As an agribusiness, land and people are very much at the foundations of our business. … We can’t operate in an unhealthy environment. We need to investigate land rights on our own estates and in our supply chain and need to identify and understand the challenges to find sustainable solutions.

We’re also looking at assisting farmers to address their own land rights challenges to improve the transparency and sustainability of our supply chain and enable them to take better control of their livelihoods, make better choices on how they use their land and feel more secure in how they engage with us or with anybody else they choose to engage with.”

Nonette Roca, Executive Director, Global Tenure Facility

“Humans are the stewards of the earth, of the land and the natural resources. To be able to be good stewards, we have to recognize [indigenous people’s] land rights. This is the purpose of our work: We assist them and help them in the process of recognizing these rights, so they can do the work they do so well. Stewardship is part and parcel of their lifestyle. … It is their contribution to the earth. Ours is the recognition and assistance to help them in the recognition of [their] land rights.”

Jean De Dieu Wasso Milange, Coordinator, Africapacity, Democratic Republic of Congo

“Forests are vital for communities. It’s where they live, where they find their food, their culture, their education and it is in these forests that they find everything that is indispensable for their lives. If we chase them from their traditional forests, they become beggars, they become people without roots and they lose their culture and their way of life. And so they are condemned to die.”
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Students who attended for-profit colleges were twice as likely or more to default on their loans than students who attended public schools, according to a federal study published Thursday.

The report by the National Center of Education Statistics looks at students who began their undergraduate education in 2003 and defaulted on at least one loan over the next 12 years. Fifty-two percent of the students who attended for-profit schools defaulted on their loan. That’s compared to 17 percent for those who attended a four-year public institution and 26 percent at community college.

The report also finds that the for-profit students defaulted on their federal student loans in greater numbers than their predecessors eight years before.

The report comes as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rewrites rules that had been put in place by the Obama administration to protect students who said they were defrauded by their for-profit colleges.

The study also found that this group of students is defaulting on their federal student loans in greater numbers than their predecessors eight years before.

Default rate

Of the students who started college in 2003, 27 percent had defaulted on at least one loan after 12 years, the study found. For those who started their undergraduate education in 1995, the default rate was 18 percent. The rate of full repayment was 20 percent in the younger group, compared to 24 in the older group.

Robert Kelchen, a professor of education at Seton Hall University, suggested that the higher rate among the 2003 freshmen might be due to them entering the labor market at the height of the Great Recession.

Default rates were higher for those students who never completed their education, the study said.

“Degree completion is a key component of a student’s ability to repay their loan,” said Joshua Goodman, a professor of public policy at Harvard University. “Simply attending college without completion doesn’t really pay off.”

Among borrowers in the 2003 group, the median amount owed after 12 years was $3,700 for those who earned undergraduate certificates, $11,700 for students getting associate’s degrees and $13,800 for bachelor’s degrees or higher.
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At 52 years old, with two grown children, Newton Gunathileka thought he should be working less by this point. Instead he has never worked so hard — and earned so little.

Gunathileka, from the Sri Lankan village of Periyakulam, in the North Western Puttalam District, is among hundreds of thousands of rural Sri Lankans who have borne the brunt of the worst drought in four decades.

He has not seen any substantial rains on his farm in at least a year and has lost two harvests, resulting in a loss of more than 200,000 Sri Lankan rupees ($1,325) — and growing debts. He has now abandoned his two acres of rice paddy land and spends his time looking, mainly unsuccessfully, for other work in 40 degree Celsius heat.

“There is no work. Everyone, big or small, has lost out to the drought,” he said.

According to data released in September by the United Nations, there are hundreds of thousands of households like Gunathileka’s facing serious food security issues in Sri Lanka.

With rice production for 2017 expected to be the lowest in a decade, “over 300,000 households (around 1.2 million people) are estimated to be food insecure, with many households limiting their food intake and in some cases eating just one meal a day,” the United Nations update said.

The worst affected areas are the North Western, North Central, Northern and South Eastern Provinces that rely heavily on agriculture. The U.N. Office in Colombo said that affected households were in some cases limiting their food intake, which was hampering people’s day-to-day lives.

Eating their seed

Gunathileka, who hails from the North Western Province, said his family was now eating some of the rice that he had put away to use as seed for the next growing season.

“For the next month or two we are okay with rice, but we have been limiting eating meat, eggs and vegetables we buy from outside. The other big problem I have is my children’s higher education. If we can’t get a harvest at least by the end of the year both of them will have to work,” he said.

His daughter is taking a course in secretarial work while the son is getting ready to sit university entrance exams. The family now survives on about Rs 800 ($5) or less a day, and both Gunathileka and his wife earn cash doing whatever work they can find.

The U.N report also said that household debt was rising due to the drought. A World Food Program survey released in August said that debts of surveyed families had risen by 50 percent in the last year.

“Households reported that the amount of money owed in formal loans has not increased, indicating that families are turning to informal lenders for credit,” the WFP survey said.

Gunathileka said that he was thinking of using the deeds to his paddy rice land as collateral and seeking a small loan from local money lenders.

“The banks will not lend because I can’t show any income. [But] if I don’t get to pay back the money lenders, I lose my land,” he said.

Rain and aid

Government officials said they anticipated the island had weathered the worst of the drought, and rains expected in late October would bring more relief.

Recent rains have dropped the overall number of people affected by drought from 2.2 million a month ago to 1.7 million now, said G.L. Senadeera, director general of the government Disaster Management Center.

He said the government planned to distribute relief food packs worth Rs 5000 ($34) to about 200,000 drought-hit families and provide compensation up to Rs 8500 ($56) per acre for harvest losses this year.

The government’s drought relief efforts, which began in August and were accelerated in September, officials say, are expected to cost about Rs 2.5 billion (about $16 million), according to the Treasury department.

The World Food Programme said in its August report that of 81,000 families surveyed in the 10 worst-hit districts, only 22 percent had access to government relief by early August.

For now, Gunathileka and his wife look up to the sky each time they step out looking for work.

“All we see are clear skies. All we want to see are dark clouds over the horizon,” he said.
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Greece welcomed Wednesday a decision by senior archaeologists to conditionally permit a major tourism project in Athens, saying it cleared the way for the country to turn the site into one of Europe’s biggest coastal resorts.

The 8-billion-euro ($9.4 billion) project to develop the disused Hellenikon airport site is a key term of Greece’s international bailout and is closely watched by its official creditors and potential investors in the crisis-hit country.

Greek developer Lamda signed a 99-year lease with the state in 2014 for the 620-hectare (1,530-acre) area, once the site of Athen’s airport. But the project has faced delays, partly over a long-running disagreement between developers and those who fear it will damage the environment and cultural heritage.

Protection urged for part of site

After three inconclusive meetings in recent weeks, the Central Archaeological Council, an advisory body, recommended Tuesday that about 30 hectares (74 acres) of the 620-hectare plot under the project be declared an archaeological site.

“The decision is fine,” Deputy Economy Minister in charge of investments, Stergios Pitsiorlas, told Reuters. “The fact that a small area is declared of archaeological interest shields the whole process from future litigation.”

Pitsiorlas said the recommendation meant that archaeologists will have a closer supervision of construction work.

Backed by Chinese and Gulf funds, Lamda submitted its detailed development plan for Hellenikon in July, setting off a licensing process that will wrap up with a decree.

The Council approved the plan Tuesday and designated specific areas where construction should not be allowed. It was not immediately clear how the Council’s recommendation could affect Lamda’s construction plan.

​Impact on development

Lamda said it was waiting to be officially notified over the decision before making any public statement, saying “the importance of the archaeological findings has been included from the beginning in the company’s undertakings.”

It said it should be able to assess the impact of the Council’s decision on its development plan once it has reviewed the resolutions and accompanying diagrams.

The recommendation is not binding, however, the culture ministry always respects the body’s decisions.

Greece on Monday overcame another hurdle to the project by winning an appeal over objections by forestry officials.

Hellenikon has become a major political issue in Greece, which is slowly emerging from a multi-year debt crisis.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose leftist party strongly opposed it before coming to power in 2015, is now seen as keen to implement the deal to help boost economic activity and reduce unemployment, the euro zone’s highest.

Referring to the council’s decision, Deputy Foreign Minister Giannis Amanatidis said it was “a complicated process which was resolved in the best possible way.”
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Anti-corruption activists hoping to shine a light on the hundreds of millions of dollars funneled through London every year are organizing tours of properties allegedly bought with dishonest money.

The “Kleptocracy Tour” is billed as a journey to the dark side of globalization. This is the first such tour which focuses on Nigeria.

“The international community, specifically the United Kingdom, the United States, other financial centers, are playing a huge role in facilitating elite corruption in Nigeria, through offshore corporate tax havens, lax banking and property laws,” said tour guide Matthew Page, a former U.S. State Department Nigeria analyst, now with Transparency International.

The tour’s first stop is the capital’s wealthy Belgravia district. Tax papers leaked from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca suggest two multi-million dollar properties are linked to Nigerian Senate President Bukola Saraki. He has denied the allegations.

Also among the several tour stops are lavish properties that have been subjected to asset forfeiture proceedings by a court in Houston, Texas. The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating allegations they were received as bribes by Diezani Alison-Madueke, the former Nigerian Oil Minister and OPEC Secretary.

Nigeria analyst Clementine Wallop says Nigeria’s president is following through, though slowly, on pledges to crack down on corruption.

“It contributes to poverty. It contributes to poor education. It contributes to terrorism,” Wallop said of corruption. “You have communities where the young men are compelled to or driven into the arms of organizations like Boko Haram as a result of the depravation which results from corruption.”

Nigeria’s Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, told VOA the West must do more to help repatriate corrupt money.

“The government will not relent in pursuing these people,” Mohammed said. “But we also need the cooperation of many foreign countries, because sometimes we are hampered by the foreign jurisdictions.”

An estimated $100 billion of corrupt money passes through London each year. Activists say fears over the economy in a post-Brexit world are stalling government efforts to clamp down on global corruption, an industry with the British capital at its core.
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Amazon has to pay $295 million in back taxes to Luxembourg, the European Union ordered Wednesday, in its latest attempt to tighten the screws on multinationals it says are avoiding taxes through sweetheart deals with individual EU states.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU official in charge of antitrust issues, also took Ireland to court for failing to collect a massive 13 billion euros ($15.3 billion) in back taxes from Apple Inc.

She argued that, like in Amazon’s case, the company had profited from a deal with the country that had allowed it to avoid paying most of the taxes the EU felt were due.

The EU has taken aim at such past deals, which member states had used to lure foreign companies in search of a place to establish their EU headquarters. The practice led to EU states competing with each other and multinationals playing them off one another.

EU states are now trying to harmonize their tax rules, but Wednesday’s and previous rulings seek to redress years of tax avoidance.

Vestager said that U.S. online retailer Amazon had unfairly profited from special low tax conditions since 2003 in tiny Luxembourg, where its European headquarters are based.

Vestager insisted she was not specifically targeting U.S. companies with her cases, which have also included big fines on Google.

“This is about competition in Europe, no matter your flag, no matter your ownership,” she said, adding she had specifically investigated the allegations of bias in the EU Commission and had found none.

Amazon said it believed it “did not receive any special treatment from Luxembourg and that we paid tax in full accordance with both Luxembourg and international tax law.” It said it would consider appealing.

EU states like Luxembourg and Ireland that have deals with such multinationals are put in difficult positions with such rulings. They don’t want to scare away the multinationals by hiking their tax bills but also want to fall in line with the EU’s efforts to create an even playing field — as well as show taxpayers that big foreign companies are paying their fair share. The issue of corporate tax avoidance became a hot topic in the EU after the financial crisis, when governments had to raise taxes and slash spending to get public finances back into shape.

Luxembourg said it might appeal Wednesday’s ruling, but stressed it is “strongly committed to tax transparency and the fight against harmful tax avoidance.”

The investigation was made particularly awkward by the fact that the current European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, was Luxembourg’s prime and finance minister at the time the tax system for Amazon was set up.

“We try to investigate behavior from member states. It is not a criminal investigation trying to incriminate different persons in the positions that they hold,” Vestager said.

Vestager said that as a result of Luxembourg’s tax deal, “almost three quarters of Amazon’s profits were not taxed.”

“In other words, Amazon was allowed to pay four times less tax than other local companies subject to the same national tax rules,” she said.

The issue was not so much that the companies got tax breaks but that they were available only to them, Vestager said. “Member states cannot give selective tax benefits to multinational groups that are not available to others.”

Vestager had already ordered Ireland to claw back up to 13 billion euros from Apple last year, but said Wednesday that Ireland hadn’t recovered any money so far.

Ireland, which is appealing last year’s decision, reacted angrily, saying it “is extremely disappointing that the Commission has taken action at this time.”

It said it was busy working on the complex deal and had already made “significant progress.”
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Ford Motor Co.’s new CEO plans to cut $14 billion in costs, drop some car models and focus the company’s resources on trucks, SUVs and electric vehicles as part of a renewed effort to win over skeptical investors.

Jim Hackett, who became Ford’s CEO in May, met with around 100 investors Tuesday in New York to lay out his plans for the future. He said getting the company lean and flexible will help it handle the changes the auto industry is facing, from car-sharing to self-driving vehicles, to the shift to electric cars.

“I feel a real sense of urgency for what we’re doing here,” Hackett said.

Hackett and his executive team spent the summer reevaluating Ford’s operations after former CEO Mark Fields was ousted in May. Hackett traveled to Russia and Turkey and visited North American plants and Ford’s Silicon Valley research center as part of his review.

He said he was impressed by the talent at Ford, but wants to update factories and speed product development and decision-making. One of his first moves was to pare down the number of people reporting to him. Hackett has eight direct reports, compared to 18 for Fields.

Ford told investors it expects to reduce material costs by $10 billion by 2022 through new deals with suppliers and simpler designs. The company plans to share more parts between vehicles and reduce the options available for configuring a car. For example, customers can now order a Ford Fusion sedan in 35,000 possible combinations. Ford is reducing that to 96.

Ford also says it will cut $4 billion in engineering costs through 2022 by making fewer prototypes and reducing product-development time.

It plans to cut one-third of its engine development costs and redeploy them to electric and hybrid vehicles. Ford plans to introduce 13 new electrics and hybrids over the next five years, including a small electric SUV coming in 2020.

The company plans to reallocate $7 billion from cars to SUVs and trucks. Global demand for those vehicles is rising, and they are critical to Ford’s bottom line. Jim Farley, head of Ford’s global markets, said Ford plans more off-road SUVs like the upcoming Bronco for North America and more low-end small SUVs and seven-passenger SUVs for China.

The automaker plans to cut some cars from its lineup, but didn’t name them Tuesday. Farley said Ford will still offer small cars, like the Focus, but will stick to more expensive — and more profitable — versions.

Smarter vehicles

Ford emphasized that it’s open to new partnerships, such as its recent agreement with Indian automaker Mahindra Group to cooperate on mobility, electric cars and other projects. It is also working with ride-hailing company Lyft on self-driving technology and with China’s Zotye Automobile Co. about an electric car partnership.

The company says its vehicles will get smarter, with 90 percent of its global vehicles getting modem connectivity by 2020. That will allow things like software updates or apps that help drivers find parking. Ford can differentiate itself by offering, say, connected commercial vans that help small businesses keep track of their deliveries.

Marcy Klevorn, Ford’s head of mobility, said Ford launched a medical van service eight weeks ago that can pick up wheelchair-bound patients and take them to the doctor. The service uses Ford-developed software for scheduling appointments, and it will help the company figure out ways that consumers will eventually use self-driving vehicles.

“We have created a box of assets that we can pull out and use for various things,” Klevorn said.

Share price

Ford stuck to its previous guidance for 2017 on Tuesday. The company expects adjusted earnings of $1.65 to $1.85 for the full year. Ford earned $1.76 per share 2016.

Hackett, the former CEO of office furniture company Steelcase Inc., joined Ford’s board in 2013. He briefly led Ford’s mobility unit before being tapped as CEO.

Ford hired Hackett, in part, to turn around its share price, which has languished for the last two years even as rival General Motors Co. saw its shares rise to their highest level in seven years. Ford sunk below Tesla Inc. in market value earlier this year, even though it earned $4.6 billion in 2016 and Tesla has never made a full-year profit.

Ford’s shares rose 2 percent to close at $12.34 Tuesday before Hackett’s presentation. It’s not yet clear if his pitch will improve investors’ confidence.

“Straddling the now and the future will be tricky, especially in terms of profitability,” said Michelle Krebs, an executive analyst for the car-buying site Autotrader.com.

Investors have been critical of Ford for waiting too long to bring a long-range electric vehicle to market, as GM did with the Chevrolet Bolt. They also struggled to understand Ford’s plans to compete on autonomous cars.

“In the past few years, Ford simply hasn’t had a compelling narrative that investors could latch onto,” Barclay’s analyst Brian Johnson wrote in a recent note to investors.
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