Energy use from US cryptomining firms is contributing to rising utility bills

An investigation revealed that companies use enough energy to power Houston, and contribute to growing carbon emissions

The largest US cryptomining companies have the capacity to use as much electricity as nearly every home in Houston, Texas; energy use that is contributing to rising utility bills, according to an investigation by Democratic lawmakers.

Cryptomining is a highly energy intensive process involving the use of specialized computers running constantly to solve complex math problems in order to create new virtual coins.

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Trump, battered by January 6 testimony, mulls 2024 run – and not all Republicans are happy

Republicans are odds-on to take back the House and Senate in November, and the last thing the party needs, experts say, is a Trump distraction

On Thursday the Trump campaign sent out a begging-bowl email to hundreds of thousands of supporters, previewing the former president’s rally in Arizona this weekend and teasing the recipients with a portent of momentous things to come.

Donald Trump “wants to make sure it’s one of his best rallies yet”, his loyal followers were told. “He is preparing the speech that he will give in front of the American people.”

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Fist bumps as Joe Biden arrives to reset ties with ‘pariah’ Saudi Arabia

Oil markets top of the agenda for US president who receives subdued welcome three years after Jamal Khashoggi comments

Three years after Joe Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia a pariah state over the assassination of a prominent dissident, the US president greeted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with a fist bump as his administration attempts to reset relations and stabilise global oil markets.

Donald Trump was personally welcomed to the conservative Gulf kingdom on his first presidential visit by King Salman. Biden, however, was met on the tarmac on Friday evening by the governor of Mecca and the Saudi ambassador to the US in a subdued ceremony. He then travelled to the city’s al-Salam palace, where he held talks with the 86-year-old king and his powerful heir, Prince Mohammed, before a working meeting.

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‘Narco of narcos’: drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero arrested in Mexico

Co-founder of Guadalajara cartel was one of FBI’s most-wanted fugitives after being freed from prison in 2013

Rafael Caro Quintero, a drug lord known as “the narco of narcos” who was behind the killing of a US drug enforcement agent in 1985, has been captured by Mexican forces nearly a decade after walking out of prison, according to the country’s navy.

Caro Quintero was arrested after a search dog named Max found him hiding in brush in the town of San Simon in Sinaloa state during a joint operation by the navy and the attorney general’s office, a navy statement said. The site was in the mountains near Sinaloa’s border with the northern border state of Chihuahua.

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Biden pledges executive action after Joe Manchin scuppers climate agenda

West Virginia senator refuses to support funding for climate crisis and says he will not back tax raises for wealthy Americans

Joe Biden has promised executive action on climate change after Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator who has repeatedly thwarted his own party while making millions in the coal industry, refused to support more funding for climate action.

In another blow to Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, the West Virginia senator also came out against tax raises for wealthy Americans.

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‘I will not back down’: Biden vows executive action if Senate cannot pass climate bill – as it happened

The Guardian’s Lois Beckett reports on an overlooked aspect of the bipartisan gun safety bill passed last month that will pay for efforts to reduce gun violence in neighborhoods across the country:

In 2013, a month after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, a group of Black pastors and other activists visited the Obama White House to press the administration to do more to prevent gun violence in communities of color.

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January 6 panel examines whether erased Secret Service texts can be revived

Sources say committee investigating whether watchdog can use forensic tools to reconstruct messages from 5 and 6 January

The House committee investigating the Capitol attack is examining whether Secret Service text messages from 5 and 6 January 2021 that were erased around the time of an internal review can be reconstructed, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The panel was perturbed that texts between agents on perhaps two of the most important days in the history of the Secret Service – the day before the Capitol attack and the day itself – could be lost in such an abrupt manner, the sources said.

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Man with methamphetamine in system was driving truck that killed US college golf team

NTSB report corrects initial statement that son, 13, was driving truck that hit van, leaving six golfers and their coach dead

Seven members of a New Mexico college golf team were killed when a pickup truck driver with methamphetamine in his bloodstream hit their van head-on in Texas earlier this year, a preliminary report from federal investigators revealed on Thursday.

The report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) also corrected its initial statement that the driver’s 13-year-old son was driving the truck at the time of the fiery 15 March collision that left a total of nine people dead.

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House approves legislation to protect abortion access across US

Vote was largely symbolic as two bills stand all but no chance of overcoming Republican opposition in the evenly-divided Senate

The House of Representatives on Friday approved legislation that would protect abortion access nationwide, the first action by Democrats in Congress to respond to the supreme court decision in late June overturning Roe v Wade.

The vote was largely symbolic – the bills stand all but no chance of overcoming Republican opposition in the evenly divided Senate, where 60 votes are needed to move legislation forward.

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US and Russia agree to fly each other’s astronauts to the ISS as tensions thaw

Nasa and Roscosmos made the announcement of integrated flights shortly after the Russian space program leader was replaced

The US and Russia have struck a deal to fly each other’s astronauts to the International Space Station, an apparent break in tensions between the nations over the war in Ukraine that includes the removal of the Russian space program’s bellicose leader.

Nasa and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos made the announcement of integrated flights Friday, shortly after Moscow said President Vladimir Putin had replaced Dmitry Rogozin with the less confrontational Yuri Borisov, the country’s deputy prime minister and a former minister of defense.

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Joe Biden lands in Saudi Arabia seeking to halt shift towards Russia and China

Analysis: US president aiming to convince Jeddah to increase oil supply in order to calm global energy markets

Joe Biden landed in the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah to a tepid welcome from the Saudi crown prince whose country he once pledged to make a “pariah” on the world stage.

While Saudi Arabia announced it would open its airspace to flights from Israel, making Biden the first US president to fly directly from Tel Aviv to the kingdom, expectations of further gains during his visit remained low. The US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told journalists onboard Air Force One not to expect any bilateral announcements in response to American demands that Saudi Arabia pump more oil to calm global energy markets after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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‘MBS crushed civil society’: Saudi exiles speak out as Biden meets crown prince

Trio of dissidents in US condemn president’s trip to Saudi Arabia and accuse him of ‘normalising’ murderous regime

Khalid Aljabri, Lina al-Hathloul, and Abdullah Alaoudh grew up within a few blocks of each other in their Al-Falah neighborhood in Riyadh, but never knew each other.

On Friday, as Joseph Biden touched down in Jeddah, in their native Saudi Arabia, the three exiles met for the first time for a Middle Eastern breakfast in Arlington, Virginia, in the outskirts of Washington.

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Joe Biden greeted by protests during brief visit to Palestine

US president promises $300m in aid amid anger in Bethlehem and East Jerusalem at sidelining of quest for Palestinian state

Joe Biden was greeted by small groups of protesters and billboards decrying the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories as apartheid during his brief visits to East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, signs of disappointment at the sidelining of the Palestinian quest for statehood during the president’s tour of the Middle East.

The president visited Augusta Victoria hospital in East Jerusalem on Friday morning, where he promised $300m (£250m) in assistance for the Palestinians, before travelling in a convoy to Bethlehem to meet the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and visit the Church of the Nativity.

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UN urged to move Cop27 from Egypt over ‘LGBTQ+ torture’

US adviser to the White House and partner call on UN to move climate crisis summit over fears they would be targeted

A White House adviser and his partner have called on the United Nations to move a key climate change summit from Egypt due to the country’s treatment of LGBTQ people, citing fears that they and other activists would be targeted by security forces if they attend the talks.

The couple, Jerome Foster and Elijah Mckenzie-Jackson, have written to Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to condemn the choice of Egypt as host of the Cop27 talks due to its “LGBTQ+ torture, woman slaughter and civil rights suppression” and that the decision “places our life in danger in the process of advocating for the life of our planet”.

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Amazon to create more than 4,000 jobs in UK

US company says recruitment drive will take permanent workforce in Britain to 75,000

Amazon is creating more than 4,000 permanent jobs across the UK this year, the online company has announced.

The US firm said the recruitment drive would bring its permanent workforce in the UK to 75,000, having created 40,000 new jobs in the past three years.

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Woman who accused Emmett Till says she didn’t want him dead in memoir

Carolyn Bryant Donham, 87, mentions in her unpublished book that she didn’t wish Till any harm nor could she protect him

The white woman who accused Black teenager Emmett Till of making improper advances before he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 says she neither identified him to the killers nor wanted him murdered.

In an unpublished memoir obtained by the Associated Press, Carolyn Bryant Donham says she was unaware of what would happen to the 14-year-old Till, who lived in Chicago and was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was abducted, killed and tossed in a river. Now 87, Donham was only 21 at the time.

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Secret Service agents’ January 6 texts were erased after oversight request

Office of Inspector General revealed that messages from 5 and 6 January were destroyed only after the request was made

Texts sent between US Secret Service agents on 5 and 6 January 2021 were erased after the agency’s oversight body sought the communications in a review into the Capitol attack, according to a letter from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).

The disclosure in the letter, sent on Thursday to the House homeland security and Senate homeland security and government affairs committees, marked the latest failure for the Secret Service amid increasing scrutiny for their actions over the attack.

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Ivana Trump, first wife of Donald Trump, dies aged 73

Czech-born skier and model, and mother to Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric, praised by ex-president as ‘beautiful and amazing woman’

Donald Trump has announced the death at 73 of Ivana Trump, his first wife and the mother of his three oldest children, Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric.

In a post to his Truth Social platform, the former president said: “I am very saddened to inform all of those that loved her, of which there are many, that Ivana Trump has passed away at her home in New York City.

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Constance Wu says she attempted suicide after Twitter backlash in 2019

In her first post in nearly three years, the Hustlers actor said she tried to kill herself after a negative response to tweets she had sent

Constance Wu has said that she attempted suicide after backlash to a series of “careless” tweets in 2019.

In a statement marking her first return to Twitter in nearly three years, the Hustlers actor announced her upcoming book, Making a Scene, and explained that she was “afraid of coming back on social media because I almost lost my life from it: 3 years ago, when I made careless tweets about the renewal of my TV show, it ignited outrage and internet shaming that got pretty severe.”

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org.

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Yosemite wildfire continues to grow as it pushes east into Sierra national forest

Giant sequoias still safe as firefighters face challenges from the warm and dry conditions fueling the blaze

The wildfire sweeping through Yosemite national park swelled to more than 4,375 acres (1,770 hectares) by Thursday morning, and is now pushing east into the Sierra national forest.

Raging across steep and rugged terrain, firefighters have faced challenges battling the blaze, which has exhibited extreme fire behavior, officials said. Warm and dry conditions as well as dried out vegetation have upped the intensity, spurring flames that, in some areas, stretched high into the canopies of the tall trees and produced large plumes of smoke that billowed into the sky.

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