Paris

May 20 (UPI) — Rising sea levels caused by man-made climate change will see hundreds of millions of people forced to flee inland from coasts even if the rise in the global temperature stays within the 1.5 degrees Celsius target of the Paris Climate Agreement, a British and American team of scientists said Tuesday.

With an estimated 1 billion people around the world living less than 33 feet above sea level and around 230 million at 3 feet 3 inches or less, even 8 inches of rise by 2050 would result in average global flood losses of $1 trillion or more a year for the world’s 136 largest coastal cities, according to their study published in the Communications, Earth and Environment journal.

The scientists from the universities of Durham, Bristol, Wisconsin-Madison and Massachusetts Amherst synthesized multiple lines of evidence to show that a 1.5 degrees Celsius would result in unmanagable sea level rise and that even if it remained at the current 1.2 degrees Celsius of heating a rise of several meters could be expected in the coming centuries.

With the melting ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica now exceeding thermal expansion of the oceans as the main driver, that level of sea rise would cause extensive loss and damage to coastal populations and make adaptation measures, which have long lead times, more challenging to implement.

Analysis of previous periods when the Earth was in a warming phase, recent audits of ice-sheet mass and numerical modeling indicate that even current temperatures could “trigger rapid ice sheet retreat” that would push to the limit any mitigation from adaptation measures.

Even the current 1.2 degrees Celsius of warming might generate “high” rates of sea level rise — categorized as greater than 0.4 of an inch a year — sufficient to create problems that would be very difficult to adapt to.

A cooler global mean temperature was therefore imperative to maintain ice sheet equilibrium because a rapid collapse of one or more ice sheets would result in a sea level rise of several meters with “catastrophic consequences for humanity.”

“To avoid this requires a global mean temperature that is cooler than present and which we hypothesise to be at or below 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial, which is similar to the 1980s when ice when ice sheets were broadly in balance, but further work is urgently required to more precisely determine a ‘safe limit’ for ice sheets,” said the study.

The scientists said some of the worst impacts could be avoided by cutting carbon emissions to rapidly reduce global mean temperatures to below +1.5 degrees Celsius, which the average surface air temperature reached in 2024 for the first time.

However, the study found that even overshooting temperature thresholds temporarily could result in sea level rises of several meters, referencing another piece of research that found that even under a “net zero” emissions scenario sea level rise in the year 2300 would be 1.6 inches higher for each decade the the temperature stays above 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The French city was found to be the best for exploring on foot according to a study by French newspaper Le Parisien. Brits can catch a direct flight to Lyon which takes less than two hours

France is a favourite destination for Brits, and its closeness to the UK makes it an excellent choice for a quick weekend getaway. But where’s the best spot in the country for a city break that you can explore on foot?

A study by French newspaper Le Parisien revealed that Lyon is France’s most walkable city and the easiest to navigate by foot. As the third largest city in France, Lyon is often hailed as the nation’s culinary capital, and its Old Town is among the most beautiful in France.

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Brits can catch a direct flight to Lyon which takes less than two hours, or they can travel by train using the Eurostar and changing in Paris, which takes just under five hours. Skyscanner offers a variety of flight options, or British tourists can plan a train or flight route on Omio.

What to do in Lyon

If you’re short on time, most of Lyon’s top attractions are located in Vieux Lyon. Marvel at the architecture in the city’s cathedral or uncover its intriguing traboules.

The Traboules are secret covered passageways through Lyon’s Old Town, so keep your eyes open as you wander, reports the Express. The city’s top-rated attraction on Tripadvisor is the Basilique Notre Dame de Fourviere, which perches on a hill overlooking the old town.

The Basilique is incredibly stunning, but visitors will also enjoy fantastic views from the top, and there’s also a cafe.

If you have a bit more time, visit the city’s Parc de la Tete d’Or, home to turtles.

What to eat in Lyon

Lyon is frequently hailed as France’s culinary capital, so after all that strolling, be sure to carve out some time to savour its gastronomic wonders.

The city’s food scene revolves heavily around bouchons – eateries specialising in traditional Lyonnaise cuisine. Some of the offerings, like pork tripe sausage, might not be for the squeamish.

However, dishes such as lentils with vegetables and sausages, and le poulet celestine, a chicken dish featuring mushrooms and tomatoes, are firm favourites.

Where to stay in Lyon

If you’re keen on staying in the most pedestrian-friendly part of the city, consider lodging in the old town. Alternatively, hotels across the river tend to be more budget-friendly if you’re watching your pennies.

CANNES, France — Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt arrived in France in 1996’s “Mission: Impossible” clinging to a high speed train through the Chunnel, pursued and nearly skewered by a helicopter. It was, as the French might say, une entrée dramatique. In 2018’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” he leapt from an airplane to plummet four-and-a-half miles down to the glass roof of Paris’ Grand Palais and now, for the big finale of his franchise, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” he’s come to conquer the Cannes Film Festival.

One boisterous fan outside the premiere shoved her Chihuahua at Cruise so he could see it was wearing a pink sweatshirt with his face. Another brandished a DVD of 2000’s “Mission: Impossible 2,” arguably the worst entry in the series. Cruise took a photo with her anyway. “Le selfie!” the red-carpet announcer cried.

The series hasn’t been kind to its French actors: Emmanuelle Béart was shot, Jean Reno blown up by exploding chewing gum, Léa Seydoux kicked out of a window at the Burj Khalifa. (Pom Klementieff, whose character’s name is Paris, has survived to co-star in this eighth entry.) Yet, you didn’t have to parler français to glean the excitement on the ground.

This is only Cruise’s third trip to Cannes and it took him nearly half an hour to walk the 60 yards of red carpet, an exhausting amount of waving, even for someone lauded for his cardio. He took care to acknowledge everyone who’d come to cheer, even trotting back down a few steps to make eye contact and thump on his heart for the fans in the corner flank.

In 2022, as part of the lead-up to “Top Gun: Maverick,” the blockbuster that would defibrillate the pandemic box office, Cruise received an honorary Palme d’Or and a salute from eight zipping French jets. During his first visit, for 1992’s “Far and Away,” times were different and he felt free to be outspoken, telling the press that the then-recent Rodney King verdict “sickened me.” Today, he seems to feel the weight of championing the theatrical experience, just as Ethan Hunt is repeatedly forced to shoulder the burden of saving the world. Neither of them truly has the freedom to “choose to accept it.” More than any of his movie star peers, Cruise seems aware that someone has to symbolize an increasingly bygone era of filmmaking, to be this century’s Charlie Chaplin.

The vibe before the screening of “Final Reckoning” was a bit bar mitzvah. The DJ alternated between dance-floor classics — Kool & the Gang, Joan Jett — and remixes of Lalo Schifrin’s pulsating “Mission: Impossible” theme, one by four beatboxers who mimicked police sirens, another classed-up by a live saxophone and violins. This year’s big Cannes fashion headline is that women are no longer allowed to wear “voluminous” frocks on the steps. Nevertheless, Hayley Atwell, who plays Grace, a pickpocket-turned-secret-agent, wore a gown on the daring end of puffy. Red with large flares at her hips and ankles, she resembled the vintage biplane Cruise dangles from in the film. He could have clung onto her elbow for a teaser.

But when the movie started, the mood turned funereal. This farewell to Ethan Hunt begins with a three-decade-spanning montage of Cruise that could double as the intro to his inevitable honorary Oscar. “I want to thank you for a lifetime of unrelenting and devoted service,” Angela Bassett’s President Erika Sloane tells Ethan in the opening minute. Later, she slips him a code with an important date — May 22, 1996 — which also happens be the day the “Mission: Impossible” franchise launched. The whole film is a panegyric: big speeches and weighty moments with very little sense of play. Tonally, it starts with an ending and keeps on ending for the next 2 hours and 49 minutes.

The eight “Mission” films can be cleaved into two groups. The first four made a point of swapping directors and moods and even Ethan’s core identity: Brian De Palma made him a jaundiced naif; John Woo, a hot-blooded flirt; J.J. Abrams, a devoted husband; Brad Bird, a near-mute human cartoon. The last four are all helmed by Christopher McQuarrie (who’s co-written this script with Erik Jendresen) but neither has added much to his personality. We’re told, over and over, that Ethan is a gambler and a rule-breaker — and paradoxically, that he’s the only human worthy of our trust, an odd thing to say about a spy who wears masks of other people’s faces like party hats.

Of all the “Mission: Impossible” films, this is the only one that needs you to remember what happened in the previous entry, 2023’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” which introduced an all-knowing AI villain called the Entity and its equally unemotional minion Gabriel (Esai Morales) that made a fun foil for Cruise himself, as a sinister duo that values digital trickery over human sweat. Now, the Entity intends to annihilate humanity in four days unless it can be taken offline by a key that accesses a gizmo in the Arctic Sea that connects to a whatsit that Ving Rhames’s weary Luther is attempting to invent from a makeshift hospital bed somewhere in the subway tunnels of London. A grunting Cruise batters a goon while huffing, “You spend! Too much time! On the internet!”

That last film managed to introduce Atwell’s Grace and collect the key while still enjoying a sense of play, like an axle-cracking Fiat chase through Rome and flirtations manifested via close-up magic. Here, the plot weighs everything down. Not just the threat-of-extinction stuff, which includes Bassett’s POTUS debating which American city to blow up as a preemptive gesture, but by its own irritating God’s-eye omniscience that rarely allows the suspense to spool out in the present. The editing is always cutting to the past or the future. There’s flashbacks to things that happened five minutes earlier and flash-forwards to how a stunt could look instead of just getting on with it.

Just as exhausting is how the entire cast trades lines of exposition to explain Ethan’s daredevil feats before he actually does them. There are almost no conversations, only premonitions and plans delivered in bullet-points like a group research project. No one steps on anyone else’s dramatic pauses. They may as well be reciting how to build an IKEA Billy bookcase. I can’t think of anything more thrill-stifling, even with cinematographer Fraser Taggart lighting everybody’s eyeballs to look so shiny that the actors continually appear on the verge of tears. Still, even within those limitations, Simon Pegg is delightful as Hunt’s longtime tech-whiz teammate Benji, as are new and returning ensemble members Tramell Tillman, Lucy Tulugarjuk and Rolf Saxon, the latter of whom plays a throwback character once threatened with manning a radar tower in Alaska — a punishment that did, in fact, come to pass.

But Cruise is reason audiences will, and should, see “Final Reckoning” on a large and loud screen. His Ethan continues to survive things he shouldn’t. (One too-miraculous rescue attempts to distract us from asking questions by inserting an out-of-place close-up of Atwell’s heaving bosom.) Yet, what I’ve most come to appreciate about Ethan is that he doesn’t try to play the unflappable hero. Clinging to the chassis of an airplane with the wind plastering his hair to his forehead and oscillating his gums like bulldog in a convertible, he is, in fact, exceedingly flapped.

The flight chase is fantastic. It’s what Isaac Newton might have made if he’d demonstrated velocity by placing an apple in a bucket and whipping it in circles. But even its exhilaration gets bested by a centerpiece underwater sequence in which Cruise scuba dives alone in silence suffering stunts that you cannot believe. I couldn’t tell you how long he swam — at some point, my heart stopped — but there are images of vertical sheets of water and the star in shivering, fetal isolation that felt like the franchise wasn’t just trying to top itself, but hoping to best “Titanic” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

As the sound design rumbled with queasy creaks over shots of a submarine teetering on the edge of a deep-sea cliff, I found myself thinking most of all of that famous sequence of a frozen shack sliding off a cliff in Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 “The Gold Rush,” which celebrates its centennial anniversary this fall. By coincidence or grand design, a gorgeously restored “The Gold Rush” was also the first movie screened at this year’s Cannes. If there’s a Cannes in 2125, maybe it’ll play a 100-year-old Tom Cruise classic. It won’t be this “Mission: Impossible” over the first, third or fourth. Regardless, I bet the fans will still be cheering.

Reality TV star and business mogul Kim Kardashian has testified before a French courtroom about her experience getting robbed at gunpoint in a Paris hotel.

Taking the witness stand on Tuesday, Kardashian confronted the suspects accused of tying her up and taping her mouth shut on October 3, 2016, while they stole more than $6m in jewellery.

The case concerns a group of about a dozen suspects known in French media as “les papys braqueurs”: the grandpa robbers. The group, many in their 60s and 70s, are part of a crime ring, according to prosecutors. One has died since the robbery took place, while the charges against another have been dismissed due to health concerns.

But Kardashian recounted the terror she felt as members of the group burst into her hotel room after a night at the Paris Fashion Week.

“We were leaving the next morning, so I was just packing up,” Kardashian said. “It was around three in the morning. I heard stomping up the stairs when I was in bed.”

She explained that she figured it was her older sister, Kourtney Kardashian, returning to the hotel room. But instead, it was a group of armed men, dressed as police officers and wearing balaclavas.

Waving a gun at her, one of the men asked her to surrender her $4m engagement ring, a gift from her then-husband Kanye West, a rapper now known as Ye.

“Then I heard one of the gentlemen forcefully say ‘Ring! Ring!’ in English, with an accent, pointing,” she said.

At one point, she said the robbers threw her onto the hotel bed. She was wearing a bathrobe at the time.

“I was certain that was the moment that he was going to rape me,” Kardashian explained. “I absolutely did think I was going to die.”

Her mind flashed to the idea of her sister coming home to find her body, she added. “I thought about my sister, thought she would walk in and see me shot dead and have that memory in her forever.”

But the robbers proceeded to restrain her with zip ties and duct tape. They told her she would be safe so long as she remained quiet.

“I have babies,” Kardashian, a mother of four, remembered thinking. “I have to make it home. They can take everything. I just have to make it home.”

Eventually, she was locked in the hotel room’s marble bathroom while the robbers made their escape. During her testimony, she explained that the suspects did not beat her during the attack.

“I was grabbed and dragged into the other room and thrown onto the floor, but wasn’t hit, no,” she said.

Eventually, Kardashian said she was able to use the bathroom sink to loosen the restraints on her hands. She hobbled downstairs, where she met with her stylist Simone Harouche, who had locked herself in a bathroom one floor below to call for help during the attack.

“She was beside herself. I’ve never seen her like that before,” Harouche said of Kardashian. “She just was screaming and kept saying, ‘We need to get out of here. We need help. What are we going to do if they come back?’”

The attack prompted the entertainment industry to adopt new procedures around security and social media posts, including through the delayed publication of certain images that might help robbers identify targets and locations.

Some critics, however, blamed Kardashian herself for her luxurious lifestyle and lack of on-hand security. The controversial fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, for instance, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as questioning Kardashian’s habit of posting photos of herself on social media.

“You cannot display your wealth and then be surprised that some people want to share it with you,” the late designer said.

That kind of commentary has sparked its own backlash, with some denouncing it as victim-blaming. Still, Judge David De Pas in Paris asked those involved if they had not made themselves targets.

“Just because a woman wears jewellery, that doesn’t make her a target,” Harouche said. “That’s like saying that because a woman wears a short skirt that she deserves to be raped.”

Kardashian added that she had a bodyguard in a separate hotel. “We assumed that, if we were in a hotel, it was safe, it was secure,” she said.

She added that she now keeps five or six guards around her. She also blamed the Paris attack for prompting a copycat robbery at her Los Angeles house.

“I started to get this phobia of going out,” Kardashian said. “This experience really changed everything for us.”

Tuesday’s appearance is expected to be the only time Kardashian testifies in the criminal case, which includes 10 defendants: nine men and one woman.

Five of the men face armed robbery and kidnapping charges that could result in life imprisonment. Others face lesser charges of being accomplices or possessing unauthorised firearms.

Prosecutors say the ringleader in the group was a 69-year-old man named Aomar Ait Khedache, nicknamed “Omar the Old”. He wrote a letter of apology that was read aloud in the court.

“I do appreciate the letter, for sure. I forgive you,” Kardashian replied, looking at Khedache. “But it doesn’t change the feelings and the trauma and the fact that my life was forever changed, but I do appreciate the letter, thank you.”

It has been almost 3,150 days — more than 8½ years — since Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in Paris. On Tuesday, she finally gets to testify against the suspects.

By the fall of 2016, the Kim Kardashian West train had been speeding through the celebrity landscape like a bullet for years, running down anyone in its way and leaving everyone else in the dust. She was everything everywhere all at once, all the time. She had been married, then divorced, then had babies, then got married again. She broke the internet. And that fame train seemed destined to circle the globe in perpetuity.

Then came Paris Fashion Week. What could go wrong?

In the early-morning hours of Oct. 3, 2016, the Kim K. train suddenly derailed: A party of men entered Kardashian’s two-story Paris pad, armed with guns and zip ties and hunting for jewels. Specifically, Kardashian’s jewels, which she had flaunted on social media.

What happened in the Paris apartment?

Shortly after 2 a.m. local time, Kardashian was reportedly lying in bed clad only in a robe when she heard people stomping up the stairs in her two-story apartment at the Hôtel de Pourtalès. It turned out the men had been directed there by the night concierge, who said he had been threatened at gunpoint. She caught a glimpse of two of the guys, rolled off the bed and tried to call her bodyguard before her phone was taken from her.

Her wrists were zip-tied and duct-taped, and she was grabbed by the ankles — at which point, she told the police, she thought she was going to be raped. Instead, her assailants bound her ankles with duct tape and carried her to the bathtub, as Kardashian screamed for them to take her money and jewelry but please spare her life, because she was at that point the mother of two children.

The men did not speak English but kept saying, “Ring, ring,” she told police. After Kardashian told them where to find the massive diamond — a recent gift from then-husband Kanye West that she had been showing off on social media — they duct-taped her mouth.

Kardashian was left lying helplessly on the bathroom floor as the robbers left with their haul. A friend who was staying in a downstairs bedroom heard the commotion and called the reality star’s bodyguard, who had been out with her sisters Kourtney Kardashian and Kendall Jenner at a club nearby and quickly returned to the hotel.

Did people believe Kardashian’s story?

The internet-posting public did not believe her, at least at first. Self-styled pundits immediately suggested she had staged the whole thing for publicity — as if she couldn’t get that on her own simply by waking up and snapping a selfie. The reality star quickly sued MediaTakeout.com for libel after it said she made up the story, lied about the assault and filed a fraudulent insurance claim. Police, meanwhile, quickly dismissed the notion that Kardashian was lying because she was so badly shaken up, but seriously investigated whether it was an inside job. (The night concierge and the bodyguard are slated to testify at trial.)

The libel lawsuit was settled within weeks, CNN reported, with the website issuing a retraction and acknowledging that Kardashian had in fact been robbed at gunpoint.

When did authorities arrest and charge the suspects?

Arrests came Jan. 10, 2017, when 17 people were taken into custody in multiple raids around Paris. Kardashian’s chauffeur was among those arrested, but he was released after questioning. By 2021, the suspects had been narrowed to 12 people who were slated to stand trial. One suspect, however, has died since being questioned, and another has been excused from the trial because he is 81 and has advanced Alzheimer’s, the BBC reported.

In fact, French media has been referring to the main suspects as the Grandpa Robbers, due to their advanced ages — the eldest defendant is 78. They didn’t really know who Kardashian was at the time of the robbery but were reportedly told she was “a rapper’s wife.” Ten suspects remain on the hook, including one woman. Of those, five went into Kardashian’s apartment during the robbery. The rest are accused of aiding and abetting.

What have the suspects been doing since then?

One suspect, Yunice Abbas, told a French outlet in 2022 that since Kardashian “was throwing money away, I was there to collect it, and that was that. Guilty? No, I don’t care. I don’t care.”

Now 71, Abbas, one of two suspects whose DNA was found at the crime scene, has said he plans to apologize when he’s in court. He also says he was unarmed and acted as a lookout on the ground floor of the hotel.

“I saw one of her shows where she threw her diamond in the pool in that episode of ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians,’” he told Vice in 2022. “I thought, ‘She’s got a lot of money. This lady doesn’t care at all.’”

The alleged mastermind behind the plot, Aomar Ait Khedache, wrote an apology letter to Kardashian from prison in 2017, saying he regretted his actions and realized the psychological damage he caused. “Old Omar” has admitted tying up Kardashian but denies being the brains behind the operation.

The other suspects, including Ait Khedache’s son Harminy, have maintained their innocence.

What happened to the jewelry?

About $6 million worth of jewelry was stolen, or maybe it was $10 million worth, depending on which of the many accounts can be trusted. Kardashian and ex-husband Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, reportedly submitted insurance claims worth $5.6 million. In the 8½ years since the robbery, only one piece has been recovered: a diamond cross on platinum that the suspects lost as they escaped on bicycles. Its value was estimated at just over $33,000, per Vanity Fair.

An 18.8-carat diamond ring — which was a gift to Kardashian from Ye — a yellow-gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, seven Cartier and Hermès bracelets and three gold-and-diamond grills were all in the haul, VF reported. Anything that was unique, like the stone in that diamond ring, has likely been broken down into pieces and resold, a jewelry-theft expert told People in 2016.

What happens next?

Kardashian is set to testify in Paris on Tuesday afternoon — around 5 a.m. in California. She will be questioned first by the judge, according to the New York Post, then by her attorneys, then by the prosecutors, and finally by the defendants’ attorneys.

In mid-April, a Kardashian attorney confirmed to the AP that she would testify at the trial, which started April 28 and is scheduled to run until May 23. But until she appears on the stand, the statement said, the reality mogul is “reserving her testimony for the court and jury and does not wish to elaborate further at this time.”

That sounds like it’s French for “no comment.”