the times | Saturday October 17 2020 2GM 45
Wo r l d
France
Charles Bremner Paris
The makers of smartphones, televi-
sions and household appliances will
have to specify how their products can
be repaired under a French move to
curb “planned obsolescence” — build-
ing them to fail after a certain time.
A “repairability rating” between one
and ten is to be displayed on packaging
and advertising from next year
so consumers can see whether they
can expect to have it fixed.
President Macron’s government,
which detailed the rules this week, aims
to make electronic products and com-
mon appliances work longer in the face
of manufacturers’ efforts to hasten
their obsolescence and their replace-
ment by newer models. From January 1
on Brügger’s reading of John le Carré
novels and taking lessons in counter-
surveillance from a former CIA agent,
the pair targeted the Korean Friend-
ship Association.
By 2013 Mr Larsen and Jim Latrache-
Qvortrup, a former foreign legionnaire
and cocaine trafficker, had earned
enough trust from the North Koreans
to secure an invitation to Pyongyang.
As the years went by they recorded
increasingly wild schemes on their
hidden cameras, including the acquisi-
tion of long-range missiles and a con-
tract to build a hidden armaments and
methamphetamine factory on a Ugan-
dan holiday island.
The Danes are preparing to hand
their intelligence to the UN, but North
Korea said it was “a fabrication”.
The Mole: Undercover in North Korea
is available on BBC iPlayer.Eiffel
TowerPARIS
River
Seine5 milesPontoise
Conflans-Sainte-Honorine
The suspect was fatally shot by police who had chased him to a nearby town after the attack. Officers patrolled the streets as President Macron visited the scene, saying terrorists “would not divide France”
France brings in repair rating
to mend throwaway culture
Charles Bremner the rating will be compulsory for five
categories: smartphones, television
sets, laptop computers, front-loading
washing machines and lawnmowers.
Barbara Pompili, the environment
minister, said the “repair” label would
become a “durability rating” in 2024.
Sixty per cent of personal electronics
and household appliances are thrown
away or recycled because repairs are
too expensive or simply impossible.
The government aims to reduce that to
40 per cent within three years.
Ministers and environment groups
fear many devices will be replaced this
year with the launch of 5G networks.
Under government pressure,
Orange, France’s biggest mobile phone
operator, has promised to raise the
share of reconditioned phones it sells.
With oil, cognac and precious US
dollars smuggled in and coal, sand and
weapons heading in the opposite
direction, North Korea has found ever
more ingenious ways to slip through
the net of UN sanctions.
Yet an undercover sting by a chef and
a former drug dealer from Copenhagen
has revealed a more exotic item on
Pyongyang’s black-market shopping
list: premium Danish bull semen.
In the apparent hope of improving
his country’s cattle stock, a North Kore-
an diplomat in Sweden, named only as
Mr Ri, asked the spies to help him to
obtain a variety pack of bovine sperm,
according to Mads Brügger, the docu-
mentary maker who masterminded the
espionage operation. “Mr Ri, the secre-Exposed: Kim’s quest for Danish bull semen
tary of the embassy in Stockholm,
wants the mole to acquire samples of
Danish beef cattle semen from various
breeds, the right containers for trans-
portation and then get it to the embassy
in Stockholm [so he could] take care of
getting it to Pyongyang,” Brügger said.
“It was an absurd discussion. It’s not
in the film because people would defi-
nitely think that it has to be fiction.”
Ordinary bull semen, used for insem-
inating cows, is sold for less than £15 a
dose but samples from the most sought-
after specimens can command £4,000.
The detail is one of the more peculiar
fruits of an investigation that ostensibly
penetrated the regime’s sanctions-eva-
sion machinery over 11 years.
In 2009 Brügger, who had just made
The Red Chapel, a documentary film
about North Korea, was approached by
Ulrich Larsen, a former chef. DrawingNorth Korea
Oliver Moody Berlin
A suspected terrorist was shot dead by
police yesterday after he decapitated a
teacher on the outskirts of Paris in what
appeared to be the latest attack in the
name of radical Islam.
The killing, near a middle school in
Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 20 miles
northwest of Paris, took place after the
history teacher had held a lesson about
ten days ago on freedom of expression.
During the lesson he showed carica-
tures of the Prophet Muhammad pub-
lished in Charlie Hebdo, the satirical
magazine, police said. Muslim parents
of pupils complained to the school at
the time.
Witnesses heard the attacker shout
“Allahu akbar” as he stabbed the 47-
year-old teacher in the street and de-
capitated him. The victim has not been
named. Police, who were called to re-
ports of a man loitering near the school
at about 5pm, chased the attacker, who
was carrying a large blade. They
opened fire in the neighbouring town of
Éragny when he threatened them. He
died an hour later of his injuries.
BFMTV reported that the suspect
was an 18-year-old Chechen, who was
born in Moscow.
The killing followed the wounding of
a man and a woman on September 25
by a Pakistani migrant in the name of
radical Islam outside the former offices
of Charlie Hebdo in central Paris. The
25-year-old attacker, who has become a
hero in his Pakistani village, is in prison
awaiting trial.
Fourteen alleged accomplices of
terrorists who massacred the staff of
Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 are on
trial in Paris. Said and Cherif Kouachi,
the brothers who killed 12 people in theattack, were shot dead by police three
days later. The latest incident appeared
to be another “lone wolf” act of the kind
that followed the French atrocities of
2015 and 2016, in which a total of 250
people died. While Islamic State and al-
Qaeda operations have been largely
neutralised with military defeat in Syria
and Iraq, their followers are actively
attempting attacks on French soil, the
government says.
Half a dozen attacks have beenthwarted so far this year by the police
and the internal security service, the
DGSI. “The level of terrorist threat re-
mains very important,” Jean-François
Ricard, the chief anti-terrorist prosecu-
tor, said on the eve of the Charlie Hebdo
trial. The threat came mainly from
home-born radicals inspired by the Isis
cause and French fighters who have
managed to return from the war zone
undetected, he added.
Yesterday’s killing took place only a
few miles from the spot where, two
weeks ago, President Macron launched
a broad offensive against the radical
Islamist creed that he said was making
ever greater inroads into French
society, creating a “separatist” Muslim
population that wants to break from
mainstream France.
Police are trying to keep track of
8,000 people listed as potential jihadist
threats. Speaking in August GéraldDarmanin, the interior minister who
cut short a trip to Morocco to return to
Paris yesterday, said he had added 1,200
new officers to the DGSI.
Mr Macron visited the scene of the
yesterday’s attack, in a middle-class
town on the outskirts of the capital. “A
citizen has been murdered today
because he was a teacher and because
he taught freedom of expression,” Mr
Macron said near the school. “The
whole country stands behind its
teachers. Terrorists will not divide
France,” he said. In parliament, MPs
stood in homage to the dead teacher.
Conservative and right-wing politi-
cians voiced outrage over the latest
atrocity. “This shows the level of
barbarity that our country is facing,”
Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-
immigrant National Rally, said. “The
country must fight this evil with all its
might.”Teacher decapitated after Prophet lesson
BFMTV