AFP UK

Louisiana and Mississippi took stock Tuesday of the disaster inflicted by powerful Hurricane Ida as receding floodwaters began to reveal the full extent of the damage along the US Gulf Coast and the death toll rose to four.

New Orleans was still mostly without power nearly two days after Ida slammed into the Louisiana coast as a Category 4 storm, exactly 16 years after devastating Hurricane Katrina — which killed more than 1,800 people — made landfall.

“Full damage assessment could take several days, as many areas are currently inaccessible,” power provider Entergy said Tuesday.

Four deaths have been confirmed as crews began fanning out in boats and off-road vehicles to search communities cut off by the giant storm. A man was also missing after apparently being killed by an alligator.

Images of people being plucked from flooded cars and pictures of destroyed homes surfaced on social media, while the damage in New Orleans itself remained limited.

New Orleans Airport said all incoming and outgoing flights scheduled for Tuesday were canceled, while airlines had scrapped nearly 200 flights on Wednesday.

Ida — which has now been downgraded to a tropical depression — knocked out power for more than a million properties across Louisiana, according to outage tracker PowerOutage.us.

One person was killed by a falling tree in Prairieville, while a second victim died trying to drive through floodwaters some 60 miles (95 kilometers) southeast in New Orleans, officials reported.

In Mississippi, which has been buffeted by torrential rain, a road collapse left two people dead and 10 more injured, including three in critical condition, the state’s highway patrol said.

The death toll is expected to rise further, Louisiana Deputy Governor Billy Nungesser warned Tuesday, especially in coastal areas directly hit by Ida where search and rescue operations are ongoing.

Meanwhile in St. Tammany Parish, police said a 71-year-old man was attacked and “apparently killed by an alligator while walking in flood waters following Hurricane Ida.”

– Ida heads northeast –

President Joe Biden declared a major disaster for Louisiana and Mississippi, which gives the states access to federal aid.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said his state had deployed more than 1,600 personnel for search and rescue operations, while the Pentagon said over 5,200 personnel from the military, federal emergency management and National Guard had been activated across several southern states.

As Ida travels northeast, considerable heavy rain and flooding is expected to threaten the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys and move onward into the mid-Atlantic through Wednesday, according to the National Hurricane Center.

As of 0900 GMT Tuesday, Ida was about 185 miles southwest of country music hub Nashville, Tennessee, with maximum sustained winds of 30 miles per hour.

Scientists have warned of a rise in cyclone activity as the ocean surface warms due to climate change, posing an increasing threat to the world’s coastal communities.

Kenya has hailed its efforts to crack down on poaching as it released the results of the country’s first-ever national wildlife census, calling the survey a vital weapon in its conservation battle.

According to the census released late Monday, the country has a total of 36,280 elephants, a 12-percent jump from the figures recorded in 2014, when poaching activity was at its highest.

“Efforts to increase penalties on crimes related to threatened species appear to be bearing fruits,” the report, which counted 30 species of animals and covered nearly 59 percent of Kenya’s land mass, said.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned in March that poaching and habitat destruction, particularly due to land conversion for agriculture, was devastating elephant numbers across Africa.  

The population of African savanna elephants plunged by at least 60 percent in the last half century, prompting their reclassification as “endangered” in the latest update to the IUCN’s “Red List” of threatened species.

The census said the numbers of lions, zebras, hirolas (Hunter’s antelopes) and the three species of giraffes found in the country had also gone up, but did not provide comparative figures from earlier years.

The state-funded survey counted 1,739 rhinos including two northern white rhinos, 897 critically endangered black rhinos and 840 southern white rhinos, and said the tourist magnet Maasai Mara National Reserve was home to nearly 40,000 wildebeest. 

“Obtaining this level of information… allows for better policy, planning and assessment of areas that require focus in our interventions to maintain or improve our national conservation efforts,” Wildlife Minister Najib Balala said in the report.

President Uhuru Kenyatta applauded conservation agencies for successfully clamping down on poaching and urged them to find newer, inventive approaches to protect wildlife. 

“The reduction in losses in terms of elephants, rhinos and other endangered species is because of the great work that KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service), its officers and men are doing”, he said late Monday.

– ‘Our children’s legacy’ –

Special attention should be given to antelope species such as sable antelopes and mountain bongos which already number less than 100 each, the report said, warning that they could become extinct unless urgent action was taken.

Exponential growth in human population and the accompanying rise in demand for land for settlement as well as activities such as livestock incursions, logging and charcoal burning are threatening to put brakes on the recent gains, it added.

Kenya, like several of its African peers, is trying to strike a balance between protecting its wildlife while managing the dangers they pose when they raid human settlements in search of food and water.

“(Wildlife) is our heritage, this is our children’s legacy and it is important for us to be able to know what we have in order to be better informed on policy and also on actions needed as we move forward,” Kenyatta said.

“It being a national heritage, it is something we should carry with pride”, he added.

DR Congo’s famed Virunga National Park announced Friday the birth of a mountain gorilla in this tourist region threatened by armed groups.

The birth of a new baby male occurred on the morning of August 22,” the park’s communication officer Olivier Mukisya told AFP.

The discovery was made by “a team of eco-guards” during a routine monitoring visit to the home of the gorillas in the Kibumba area of North Kivu in the east of the country, Mukisya explained. 

The national park said that the new baby belonged to the Baraka family of gorillas which was ‘currently composed of about 18 individuals”.

The Baraka family records its first birth of the year and this last one brings the number to 13 since January 2021,” from all the gorilla families in the region, said Mukisya.

Situated on DR Congo’s borders with Rwanda and Uganda, Virunga covers around 7,800 square kilometres of the North Kivu province, of which Goma is the capital.

Inaugurated in 1925 it is the oldest nature reserve in Africa and a sanctuary for the rare mountain gorillas, which are also present in neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda.

The total population of mountain gorillas in the region covering the three countries is estimated at 1,063, according to the last full count in 2018.

The gorillas Virunga retreat has also become a hideout for local and foreign armed groups that have operated in eastern DR Congo for around 25 years. 

The eco-guards regularly clash with rebels and militias in the area.

Rescuers on Monday combed through the “catastrophic” damage Hurricane Ida inflicted on Louisiana, a day after the fierce storm killed at least two people, stranded others in rising floodwaters and sheared the roofs off homes.

New Orleans was still mostly without power more than 24 hours after Ida slammed into the Louisiana coast as a Category 4 storm, exactly 16 years to the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall, wreaking deadly havoc.

While search and rescue missions focus on those who sheltered in place, local officials urged people who had evacuated not to return yet as there was a lack of services and trees, debris and downed power lines continue to pose a hazard.

“I know people are anxious to get back home, but I am urging you to wait until you get the all clear from your local officials. The storm may have passed but dangers still remain,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said at televised a press conference.

Two deaths have been confirmed as crews began fanning out in boats and off-road vehicles to search communities cut off by the hurricane. A man was also missing after apparently being killed by an alligator.

Images of people being plucked from flooded cars and pictures of destroyed homes surfaced on social media, while the damage in New Orleans itself remained limited.

New Orleans Airport said all incoming and outgoing flights slated for Tuesday were canceled, while airlines had scrapped 197 flights scheduled on Wednesday.

Ida — which was downgraded to a tropical depression on Monday — knocked out power for more than a million properties across Louisiana, according to outage tracker PowerOutage.US.

“I was there 16 years ago. The wind seems worse this time but the damage seems less bad,” said French Quarter resident Dereck Terry, surveying his neighborhood in flip-flops and a T-shirt, umbrella in hand.

“I have a broken window. Some tiles from the roof are on the streets and water came inside,” the 53-year-old retired pharmacist added.

According to Edwards the levee system in the affected parishes had “really held up very well, otherwise we would be facing much more problems today”.

– ‘Total devastation’ –

In the town of Jean Lafitte, just south of New Orleans, Mayor Tim Kerner said the rapidly rising waters had overtopped the 7.5-foot-high (2.3-meter) levees.

“Total devastation, catastrophic, our town levees have been overtopped,” Kerner told ABC-affiliate WGNO.

“We have anywhere between 75 to 200 people stranded in Barataria,” after a barge took out a bridge to the island.

Several residents of LaPlace, just upstream from New Orleans, posted appeals for help on social media, saying they were trapped by rising floodwaters.

“The damage is really catastrophic,” Edwards told NBC’s “Today”, adding that Ida had “delivered the surge that was forecasted. The wind that was forecasted and the rain.”

President Joe Biden declared a major disaster for Louisiana and Mississippi, which gives the states access to federal aid.

One person was killed by a falling tree in Prairieville, 60 miles northwest of New Orleans, the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office said.

A second victim died while trying to drive through floodwaters in New Orleans, the Louisiana Department of Health tweeted.

In St. Tammany Parish, police said a 71-year-old man was attacked and “apparently killed by an alligator while walking in flood waters following Hurricane Ida”.

The man’s wife saw her husband being attacked by the reptile and managed to pull him out of the floodwaters, the sheriff’s office said in a statement. But he had disappeared by the time his wife came back from trying to get help.

Governor Edwards said on Twitter that Louisiana had deployed more than 1,600 personnel to conduct search and rescue across the state.

US Army Major General Hank Taylor told journalists at a Pentagon briefing that military, federal emergency management officials and the National Guard had activated more than 5,200 personnel in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama.

– ‘Way less debris’ –

Most residents had heeded warnings of catastrophic damage and authorities’ instructions to flee.

“I stayed for Katrina and from what I’ve seen so far there is way less debris in the streets than after Katrina,” Mike, who has lived in the French Quarter, told AFP Monday, declining to give his last name.

The memory of Katrina, which made landfall on August 29, 2005, is still fresh in the state, where it caused some 1,800 deaths and billions of dollars in damage.

The National Hurricane Center issued flash flood warnings over the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys as Ida travels northeast.

As of 0900 GMT Tuesday, Ida was about 185 miles (300 kilometers) southwest of country music hub Nashville, Tennessee, with maximum sustained winds of 30 miles per hour.

The storm system is expected to track across the United States all the way to the mid-Atlantic through Wednesday, creating the potential for flash flooding along the way.

Scientists have warned of a rise in cyclone activity as the ocean surface warms due to climate change, posing an increasing threat to the world’s coastal communities.

Fifteen years ago, when darkness used to fall in Yobe Nkosi, a remote village in northern Malawi, children did their school homework by candlelight: there was no electricity.

But that started to change in 2006, when villager Colrerd Nkosi finished secondary school in Mzimba, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) away, and returned home — and found he could no longer live without power.

Aged 23 at the time, Nkosi soon figured out that a stream gushing past the house where he grew up had just enough force to push the pedals on his bicycle.

He created a makeshift dynamo that brought power into his home.

Word spread quickly among the cluster of brick houses and neighbours began paying regular visits to charge their mobile phones.

“I started getting requests for electricity (and) decided to upgrade,” said Nkosi, now 38, sawing through machinery on his verandah in blue overalls.

– Hydro power –

With no prior training, he turned an old fridge compressor into a water-powered turbine and put it in a nearby river, generating electricity for six households.

Today, the village is supplied by a bigger turbine, built from the motor of a disused maize sheller — a machine that skims kernels of corn off the cob.

The gadget has been set up on the village outskirts. The power is carried along metal cables strung from a two-kilometre (one-mile) line of tree trunks topped with wooden planks.

The users pay no fee for the power but give Nkosi some money for maintenance — slightly more than $1.00 (0.85 euros) per household per month.

“The electricity is basically free,” Nkosi said, speaking in local Chichewa.

He admitted that the maintenance income was too small to cover repair costs, which he mainly funded from his own pocket.

Despite the challenges, he is determined to expand his mini-grid to surrounding areas.

“Once more villages and schools have electricity… people will no longer cut down trees (for) charcoal,” he said.

Students “will have a lot more time to study,” he said.

– ‘Changed my life’ –

As dusk settles over Kasangazi Primary School, perched on an adjacent hilltop, chatty groups of learners file into a classroom for a night-time study session.

“Before we had electricity here, we used to use candles to study,” said student Gift Mfune, sorting through a heap of text books on his desk.

“Now… we all have no excuse but to pass our examinations,” he exclaimed.

Courtesy of Nkosi, the building is the only school with power out of 17 others servicing the area. 

Only around 11 percent of Malawi’s 19 million or so inhabitants have access to electricity, making it one of the world’s least electrified countries, according to Sustainable Energy for All, a campaign group backed by the UN.

Just four percent of the southern African country’s rural population is connected to power, compared to 42 percent in urban centres.

Local councillor Victor Muva pointed out that none of the constituency’s more than 18,000 inhabitants were on the national grid.

He has been lobbying the government to help Nkosi expand his work.

The ministry of energy has promised to help “design a system that produces adequate power” and “construct power lines that are safe and reliable,” he said.

Across the valley, loud laughter erupts from a house in which Nkosi’s cousin Satiel and several relatives are watching a Zambian comedy show on a small television.

Young and old cluster around the screen, teenagers wincing at embarrassing comments from their elders. 

“I cannot ably explain in words how this has changed my life,” Satiel said. “I am now able to do so many things.”

Japan and the United States agreed to press China to further reduce carbon emissions, the Japanese foreign minister said Tuesday after high-level talks in Tokyo.

US climate envoy John Kerry is in Japan to drive international action ahead of November’s COP26 summit to combat global warming.

“We discussed our cooperation on efforts to reduce the emissions of major emitter countries, including China,” Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told a press briefing after meeting Kerry.

“China is the world’s largest emitter of CO2, as it is also the world’s second-largest economy… it is important that we call on them to fulfil the responsibility appropriate to their status,” he said.

Kerry will meet Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and then travel to China to hold talks with Xie Zhenhua, the country’s special envoy for climate change affairs.

The 26th edition of the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26, begins on November 1 in the Scottish city of Glasgow.

It is the biggest climate summit since the 2015 Paris negotiation, where nations committed to keeping the global temperature increase to under two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) — and ideally closer to 1.5 degrees by 2050.

Japan announced a series of ambitious new emissions targets in recent months.

Suga has set a 2050 deadline for the country to become carbon neutral — a decade ahead of China’s 2060 goal — and earlier this year he said Japan would target a 46 percent cut in emissions by 2030, more than previously pledged.

At the G7 summit in June, the group vowed to phase out fossil fuel investments, among other agreements. Climate campaign groups have said Japan’s targets and the G7 pledge do not go far enough, and lack enforcement.

“It’s wonderful to be back in Japan and we are enormously grateful for the partnership, and applaud the work on climate and G7 announcement, all of which are very strong,” Kerry told reporters in Tokyo.

Japan’s new 2030 emissions-cut target “allows us to help the fight to keep a limit of warming at 1.5 degrees, so that’s a very significant step”, he added.

The world’s third-largest economy is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, in part because many nuclear reactors remain offline after the Fukushima meltdown a decade ago.

When the world’s leading conservation congress kicks off Friday in the French port city of Marseille it will aim to deliver one key message: protecting wildlife must not be seen as a noble gesture but an absolute necessity — for people and the planet.

Loss of biodiversity, climate change, pollution, diseases spreading from the wild have become existential threats that cannot be “understood or addressed in isolation,” the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said ahead of the meeting in a vision statement endorsed by its 1,400 members.  

Over nine days, government ministries, indigenous groups and NGOs — backed by a network of 16,000 scientists — will hammer out conservation proposals that could help set the agenda at critical upcoming UN summits on food systems, biodiversity and climate change. 

Previous congresses paved the way for global treaties on biodiversity and the international trade in endangered species.

“This is the only place where both governments and conservation organisations, big and small, are all members,” said Susan Lieberman, a 30-year conservation veteran and vice president of the Wildlife Conservation Society. 

“When IUCN says ‘this is our position’, that’s not just one more conservation group,” she added. 

“It’s a position informed by almost every government and every conservation organisation in the world.” 

– ‘Mass extinction’ –

The World Economic Forum has put a hard number on our vulnerability: $44 trillion of economic value generated every year — half of global GDP — largely dependent on services rendered by nature, from water for agriculture to healthy soil in which to grow our food.

The creatures with which we share the planet are at high risk too — from us.

As the human population climbs toward nine billion by mid-century, many creatures are being crowded, eaten, snared, poisoned, poached, hawked and hunted out of existence.

Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN’s Red List Unit, said that if species’ destruction continues on its current trajectory, “we’ll be facing a major crisis soon”.

“I would certainly say that we’re on the cusp of a sixth mass extinction event,” he told AFP.

In each of the previous mass die-offs over the last half-billion years, at least three-quarters of all species were wiped out.

The IUCN has assessed nearly 135,000 species over the last half-century for its Red List of Threatened Species, the gold standard for measuring how close animal and plant life are to vanishing forever.

Nearly 28 percent are currently at risk of extinction, with habitat loss, overexploitation and illegal trade driving the loss.

Big cats, for example, have lost more than 90 percent of their historic range and population, with only 20,000 lions, 7,000 cheetahs, 4,000 tigers and a few dozen Amur leopards left in the wild.  

Invasive species are also taking a toll, especially in island ecosystems where unique species of birds have already fallen prey to rodents, snakes and disease-bearing mosquitos that hitched rides from explorers, cargo ships or passenger planes.

An update of the Red List on September 4 is likely to show a deepening crisis.

– ‘Our right to exist’ –

For the first time in the IUCN’s seven-decade history, indigenous peoples will share their deep knowledge on how best to heal the natural world as voting members. 

One proposal calls for a global pact to protect 80 percent of Amazonia by 2025.

“We are demanding from the world our right to exist as peoples, to live with dignity in our territories,” said Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, lead coordinator for COICA, which represents indigenous groups in nine Amazon-basin nations.

Recent research has warned that unbridled deforestation and climate change are pushing the Amazon towards a disastrous “regime change” which would see tropical forests give way to savannah-like landscapes.

Rates of tree loss drop sharply in the forests where native peoples live, especially if they hold some degree of title — legal or customary — over land. 

“Indigenous peoples have long stewarded and protected the world’s forests, a crucial bulwark against climate change,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.

– An ocean of plastic pollution –

Other motions offer a lifeline to ailing oceans, including one calling for an end to plastic pollution by 2030. 

Plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals, from otters to whales. 

Wildlife trafficking, a multi-billion-dollar business that has flourished in the internet era, will also be in the spotlight. 

This year’s congress was delayed from 2020 and will still be hampered by the pandemic, with a hybrid format of in-person and online attendance.

And then there’s the question of money, and the fact that so little of it has been earmarked for nature.

Current global spending of about $80 billion a year needs to be increased 10-fold, said Sebastien Moncorps, director of France’s IUCN committee. 

“That’s about one percent of global GDP, but when you realise that half of all economic activity depends on nature being healthy, that’s a good return on investment.”

Drivers in Paris faced longer trips Monday as a lower speed limit of 30 kilometres per hour came into effect for most of the capital’s streets, part of Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s pledge to reduce traffic and pollution.

While the measure has been praised by environmental groups and many residents, critics accuse the leftwing Hidalgo, who is weighing a bid for the presidency, of penalising millions of people who drive into the French capital each day for work.

Nearly two-thirds of Paris’s roads were already limited to 30 kph (19 miles per hour), mostly along narrow streets or those near schools, in line with the maximum imposed in other large cities such as Lille or Nantes.

Now only a handful of major thoroughfares, including the iconic Champs-Elysees boulevard, will let people cruise at 50 kph.

The Paris ring road or “Peripherique,” one of Europe’s most heavily used with some 1.1 million users each day, will also remain at 70 kph, though Hidalgo has said she wants to reduce lane numbers to make more room for bikes and pedestrians.

Taxis and delivery drivers in particular have assailed the lower speeds as impractical and unnecessary.

“It’s not easy to stay at just 30 kph in a bus lane,” Smail Chekimi, who has driven his cab for 28 years, told AFP.

“This morning I was a bit stressed, a client was pretty angry because a trip took five to ten minutes longer than normal,” Chekimi said.

“Some taxi drivers might decide to quit because of it.”

– ‘More complicated’ –

For Fabrice Bosc, a glass fitter who relies on his delivery van, the new limits will only create bigger traffic jams in the capital.

“We already have enough trouble working with the 50 kph limit, at 30 kph things are just going to get more complicated,” said Bosc, 55.

The move comes as Hidalgo also pushes ahead with the removal of 60,000 of the city’s roughly 140,000 street-level parking spaces.

City officials say they are responding to tougher pollution rules and a broad public consensus on the need to encourage public transport and other alternatives such as bikes or electric scooters.

An opinion poll commissioned by City Hall late last year found that 59 percent of Parisians approved the lower speed limits — though it was supported by just 36 percent of people living in the suburbs.

“It’s true that there’s too much noise — sometimes you can’t even hear people when they’re talking,” said Marie Hiz, who manages the Carrefour (The Crossroad) cafe on a corner of the busy Miromesnil street.

“At 30 kph, things are going to change. We’ll have fewer cars and people will pay more attention,” Hiz said.

But she sympathised with deliverers and others who drive for a living.

“Imagine a driver who has to go all over Paris, all day, at just 30 kph. Even at 60 kph he still never arrives on time,” she said.

– Will it work? –

So far, however, few drivers appeared to be respecting the lower limits during the Monday morning rush hour.

“You can’t see any difference yet,” said Pierre Morizot, a 32-year-old cyclist who was on the Boulevard Haussmann, where 30 kph is now the norm.

“There are more and more bikes and there are lanes are everywhere, but we’re still very close to cars, so slowing them down will make things safer,” he said.

But many drivers said the lower limits would be nearly impossible to enforce and might have only a minimal impact on actual driving speeds.

“All the cities that have gone to 30 kph put forward the same arguments — pollution, noise, accidents,” Pierre Chasseray, head of the 40 Million Motorists association, told AFP.

“Except that when you look at it closely, you see that the introduction of 30 kph has not led to a reduction in speed. So in the end, there is no reduction in sound, there is no reduction in pollution,” he said.

Drivers in Paris faced longer trips Monday as a lower speed limit of 30 kilometres per hour came into effect for most of the capital’s streets, part of Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s pledge to reduce traffic and pollution.

While the measure has been praised by environmental groups and many residents, critics accuse the leftwing Hidalgo, who is weighing a bid for the presidency, of penalising millions of people who drive into the French capital each day for work.

Nearly two-thirds of Paris’s roads were already limited to 30 kph (19 miles per hour), mostly along narrow streets or those near schools, in line with the maximum imposed in other large cities such as Lille or Nantes.

Now only a handful of major thoroughfares, including the iconic Champs-Elysees boulevard, will let people cruise at 50 kph.

The Paris ring road or “Peripherique,” one of Europe’s most heavily used with some 1.1 million users each day, will also remain at 70 kph, though Hidalgo has said she wants to reduce lane numbers to make more room for bikes and pedestrians.

Taxis and delivery drivers in particular have assailed the lower speeds as impractical and unnecessary.

“It’s not easy to stay at just 30 kph in a bus lane,” Smail Chekimi, who has driven his cab for 28 years, told AFP.

“This morning I was a bit stressed, a client was pretty angry because a trip took five to ten minutes longer than normal,” Chekimi said.

“Some taxi drivers might decide to quit because of it.”

– ‘More complicated’ –

For Fabrice Bosc, a glass fitter who relies on his delivery van, the new limits will only create bigger traffic jams in the capital.

“We already have enough trouble working with the 50 kph limit, at 30 kph things are just going to get more complicated,” said Bosc, 55.

The move comes as Hidalgo also pushes ahead with the removal of 60,000 of the city’s roughly 140,000 street-level parking spaces.

City officials say they are responding to tougher pollution rules and a broad public consensus on the need to encourage public transport and other alternatives such as bikes or electric scooters.

An opinion poll commissioned by City Hall late last year found that 59 percent of Parisians approved the lower speed limits — though it was supported by just 36 percent of people living in the suburbs.

“It’s true that there’s too much noise — sometimes you can’t even hear people when they’re talking,” said Marie Hiz, who manages the Carrefour (The Crossroad) cafe on a corner of the busy Miromesnil street.

“At 30 kph, things are going to change. We’ll have fewer cars and people will pay more attention,” Hiz said.

But she sympathised with deliverers and others who drive for a living.

“Imagine a driver who has to go all over Paris, all day, at just 30 kph. Even at 60 kph he still never arrives on time,” she said.

– Will it work? –

So far, however, few drivers appeared to be respecting the lower limits during the Monday morning rush hour.

“You can’t see any difference yet,” said Pierre Morizot, a 32-year-old cyclist who was on the Boulevard Haussmann, where 30 kph is now the norm.

“There are more and more bikes and there are lanes are everywhere, but we’re still very close to cars, so slowing them down will make things safer,” he said.

But many drivers said the lower limits would be nearly impossible to enforce and might have only a minimal impact on actual driving speeds.

“All the cities that have gone to 30 kph put forward the same arguments — pollution, noise, accidents,” Pierre Chasseray, head of the 40 Million Motorists association, told AFP.

“Except that when you look at it closely, you see that the introduction of 30 kph has not led to a reduction in speed. So in the end, there is no reduction in sound, there is no reduction in pollution,” he said.

For Sherri Tenpenny, God is on the side of those who spurn Covid-19 vaccines. Making money, critics say, is the Ohio osteopath’s higher calling.

From a $240 premium podcast annual membership to $165 webinars on why people “should not take the shot,” health supplements and ticketed public speaking, Tenpenny runs a sprawling enterprise based on anti-vaccine activism, disdain for masks and testing, and denials that Covid-19 is real.

An AFP investigation has found that the 63-year-old widow developed a business around coronavirus skepticism at the same time as she owes US tax authorities at least half a million dollars.

Earlier this year, Tenpenny was named one of the worst known spreaders of falsehoods, myths and misleading statements about vaccines — a group the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate dubbed the “Disinformation Dozen.”

A separate study put her in the cadre of America’s biggest anti-vaccine profiteers.

But in comments to AFP, Tenpenny stood by her claims, maintaining that she is not spreading misinformation and is simply making “a living.”

Her business is an alchemy fueled by social media and mistrust of public health officials, two factors blamed for more than 25 percent of eligible American adults declining to be vaccinated.

While US President Joe Biden’s administration pleads with the vaccine-hesitant to take the shot, Tenpenny brands Covid-19 a manufactured crisis and a means of government control.

In an address to Ohio lawmakers in June, the osteopath pointed to online images purporting to show people who were “magnetized” after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.

“They put a key on their forehead, it sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them, and they can stick,” she said in remarks that were soon debunked, but only after gaining a national audience.

YouTube removed that footage of Tenpenny, saying it broke the platform’s rules on information likely to cause harm. Many of Tenpenny’s other videos have been fact-checked as misleading or false, and several of her social media accounts were suspended or removed.

But much of her prolific output remains accessible — illustrating the whack-a-mole problem of weeding out dangerous online content, which Big Tech has yet to solve.

– ‘Rabbit hole’ –

Rachelle Eaton, who lives a half-hour drive from Tenpenny in the Cleveland area, watched the doctor’s remarks to lawmakers in horror.

“No one wants this life,” said Eaton, who suffered heart and lung damage, has to take oxygen intermittently, and is incapable of remembering simple things because of Covid-19.

“This doctor pulled a lot of people down this rabbit hole of misinformation,” said the 52-year-old, who eight months later is struggling with what is known as “long Covid,” after contracting the disease despite doing “everything right” — wearing a mask and leaving home only to work.

Eaton — who later quit her job as an accountant due to her illness — cut herself off from neighbors and co-workers who did not take the pandemic seriously. She saw people in her community succumb to the “insanity” of Tenpenny’s ideas about vaccines.

“She’s dangerous, and what makes her so dangerous is that I think her audience are these young moms who only want to do what is best for their children,” Eaton said of Tenpenny.

In defense of her claim that Covid-19 vaccines are killing people, the osteopath cites data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a federal government database.

But VAERS is no more than a collation of unverified reports of vaccine side effects, which do not prove causality. AFP has repeatedly fact-checked inaccurate claims about the system.

After watching Tenpenny’s testimony, Eaton says she was puzzled “as to why her governing board didn’t pull her license right then and there.”

A group representing medical regulators, the Federation of State Medical Boards, warned in July that doctors spreading inaccurate Covid-19 vaccine information risk disciplinary action, including suspension or revocation of medical licenses. Tenpenny has so far faced no such sanction.

– ‘Boot camp’ –

Although she is not trained in epidemiology, Tenpenny’s status as a physician — Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine confirmed she graduated in 1984 — lends her posts credibility with followers, despite their medical implausibility.

But her critics describe her as a quack whose online business contributes to needless loss of life by undermining public faith in vaccines — especially the Covid-19 shots that she casts as “deadly.”

Tenpenny sold a weeks-long “boot camp” on vaccines for several hundred dollars, in the autumn of 2020 and then again earlier this year. More recently she promoted an August 5 “Freedom Crusade” event in California at $57 a ticket.

Her products are marketed through two companies, Choonadi, LLC and Requeza, LLC. Public records show them registered in Ohio in 2015 and 2018 respectively.

Tenpenny, who spent years battling the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in court, refused to comment on whether there is a connection between her business activities and her tax debts.

– Tax battle –

Public records have for more than two decades given Tenpenny’s address as a property near Cleveland’s international airport, with Google images showing a tree-shaded suburban house set back on a wide lawn.

It is the address listed on tax liens repeatedly issued to her. One recorded debts exceeding $1.5 million, but IRS documents currently show unpaid assessments of more than $500,000.

In 2013, a judge cited precedent of dismissing “irrational or wholly incredible” claims in rejecting her argument that she is a “non-taxpayer.” Tenpenny had sought an order that the IRS close its books on her and that “all outstanding amounts are zeroed out.”

“The amount that the IRS originally claimed I owed has ballooned by year-after-year compounded interest and penalties to the present amount, which looks exorbitant,” Tenpenny said.

When asked for additional details on her finances, she replied: “None of your business.”

Based on public and proprietary data, business information provider Dun & Bradstreet reported that Tenpenny’s clinic, known as the Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center, has $4.04 million in estimated annual sales.

As well as the “Disinformation Dozen,” she was named in a separate Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) list of “Pandemic Profiteers,” anti-vaccine figures who operate businesses or organizations with significant revenues.

A Facebook page set up a decade ago to mock the osteopath puts it more bluntly. 

Its title: “‘Doctor’ Tenpenny: Getting Rich Off Stupidity.”

Questioned on the accusation of profiteering, Tenpenny wrote: “We do not apologize for earning a living.”

– Christian message –

Known in the anti-vaccine movement for more than 20 years, Tenpenny published a 2008 book titled “Saying No To Vaccines,” which pushed the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism.

She underpins her stance with a Christian message, in step with many of the American conservatives who have railed against lockdowns, masking and other measures to contain the pandemic. Tenpenny starkly displayed these views in a June 15 video broadcast titled “The Satanic Goal Behind the Covid Plandemic.”

In it, she linked “rulers, authorities, cosmic powers in the darkness around us and evil spiritual forces in the heavenly realm” to the disease that has killed more than 630,000 people in the United States, and 4.5 million worldwide.

Those who succumbed and got shots “need to go to the Lord with a really heavy heart and the deepest regret that they could possibly muster. They need to repent for the sin of fear,” she said on stage at a July event dubbed “Reawaken America.”

However far-fetched, her ideas have won a massive audience.

The CCDH earlier this year reported that Tenpenny and other anti-vaccine campaigners had a combined 59 million followers across social media platforms.

The “Disinformation Dozen,” the research found, were responsible for 65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories circulating on Facebook and Twitter between February and March 2021.

Biden referred to the dozen in July as he urged online tech giants to crack down on the spreaders of misinformation that, he said, is “killing people.”

Asked to respond to Biden’s criticism, Tenpenny said: “It’s not just 12. There are millions who have done our research — and are posting all over the internet. This is not misinformation.”

As to whether her advice could be harmful — even fatal — to her followers, she replied: “How responsible will you feel as millions die from this shot?”

– Still spreading –

Pamela Glasner, a Connecticut-based author and filmmaker, filed a complaint with Facebook after watching news coverage of Tenpenny’s false statements on magnetism, and hearing others repeat them.

“It’s irresponsible, and it is harmful,” she said.

For Imran Ahmed, CCDH’s chief executive, “Tenpenny serves up a lethal mix of misinformation and wackadoodle conspiracy.”

In her viral address to lawmakers, Tenpenny referred to the debunked conspiracy theory that there is an “interface” between Covid-19 shots and 5G network towers. The remarks drew attention from social media giants, with consequences for Tenpenny.

Her Twitter account was permanently suspended on July 1 for violating rules on Covid-19 misinformation.

Facebook says it has removed three dozen pages, groups and accounts linked to members of the “Disinformation Dozen.”

Specifically, it said it has “taken action against many of the pages associated with Dr Tenpenny” on Facebook and Instagram, and taken down an account associated with another of her businesses, Vaxxter.

But Tenpenny’s message continues to spread through other online outlets, including the Vaxxter.com website, where she solicits donations starting at $25, two Instagram channels and a personal Facebook account.

She is particularly active on Telegram, a messaging app banned in some countries over its encryption methods. Her followers there have grown from 100,000 to more than 120,000 in recent weeks. Thousands more have turned to her on Gab, a forum that says it champions free speech.

Tenpenny has also flirted with politics, speaking at the “Reawaken America” event alongside Mike Lindell, chief executive of the My Pillow company, who endorses former president Donald Trump’s baseless 2020 election fraud claims. Lindell’s products are marketed on Tenpenny’s personal website.

But sales remain the core of her activities.

Callers to Tenpenny’s Cleveland-area clinic are directed to “please dial three” for a supplement order. Other options offer a “paid vaccine consult” or a speaking engagement.

“If you are calling in regards to ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, please dial four,” the message adds, referring to unproven Covid-19 treatments.

For the likes of Eaton, such a business is irreconcilable with legitimate health care.

“She’s a grifter in a lab coat and those are the most dangerous kind,” she said of Tenpenny.