
Best energy-efficient fridge freezers for sustainable living 2025
Best for: 'A' class pure class for the deep of pocket
Miele, maker of white goods wonderment. Ludicrously expensive. Built to last. Imbued with all the innovation. And that's me generalising about all their appliances, before I focus fully on its KFN 4795 AD, which – spoiler alert! – is ludicrously expensive, built to last, and imbued with all the innovation.
From the outside, it's a big box with a stunning 'BlackSteel' finish and nicely bold, chunky handles for both fridge and freezer sections. A 70/30 design, the Miele features a full 'A' class rating for energy efficiency and offers you, the lucky/rich owner, a capacious 371 litres of space inside, split 268 to 103 litres respectively in the fridge and freezer. And exerting effortlessly precise control over the airflow in those two spaces is 'DuplexCool', keeping cooling separate, 'DynaCool' to ensure temperature distribution is uniform, and a no frost system to keep you from having to get your hands cold as you chip away at ice build-up.
Storage-wise, there are tons of places to put your stuff in the fridge, thanks to a full 5x shelves, 4x door shelves, a crisper drawer and bottle rack, while the freezer features a further three drawers for all your frozen fare.
With an annual energy consumption of 103.66kWh, at prices as of April, that works out at a cost of £28.02 per year, which shouldn't break the bank, so you may have spent the lion's share of 2.4K on a fridge-freezer, but tested to last 15-years but at least you know that powering the thing for the next decade and a half won't cost anywhere near as much as running a far cheaper, less efficient option.
As with all the best appliances, the Miele also comes Wi-Fi-enabled, letting it link up with your home network for monitoring over the Miele@home app, so that'll keep the tech-heads happy too. And last but not least, running at a whisper-like 34dB the KFN 4795 AD is also the proud owner of a Quiet Mark award, so the complete package of peace of mind when it comes to both pocket and planet, and peace of ear too – for those with the requisite amount of pennies, it's worth every one of them.

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The Independent
40 minutes ago
- The Independent
‘Vote-a-rama' drama as these 5 in GOP threaten McCain-like ‘thumbs-down' moment on Trump's ‘Big Beautiful' bill
The beginning of the Senate's marathon 'vote-a-rama' session is underway as the upper chamber debates final passage of the so-called 'one big, beautiful bill' addressing several of Donald Trump's legislative priorities. It was still unclear by Monday morning whether the vote would pass. Republicans have only 53 seats in the Senate, which is not enough to overcome a filibuster by the Democrats. As a result, they plan to use a process called budget reconciliation. This would allow them to pass the legislation with a simple 51-vote majority as long as the bill relates to the federal budget. Vice President JD Vance can cast a tie-breaking vote. A massive piece of legislation increasingly representing the norm on Capitol Hill, the 'big, beautiful bill' is more than a simple budgetary package. It includes an extension of the 2017 Republican tax cuts, a costly proposition, as well as a surge in funding for Trump's mass deportation efforts. The legislation would fund the hiring of nearly 20,000 new immigration agents, including 10,000 new ICE personnel alone. Republicans found funding for those measures through cuts to Medicaid and food stamps (SNAP). The imposition of work requirements in the bill is estimated by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to result in millions losing Medicaid coverage over the next decade if passed, and changes to the legislation in the Senate would also effectively end the expansion of Medicaid in states that chose to do so after passage of the Affordable Care Act — resulting in millions more losing coverage. Democrats are hoping to pick up four Republican defections in an effort to defeat the bill. The 'vote-a-rama' process allows for both parties to introduce amendments to the legislation, and it's possible that the bill could change significantly before the final vote — which was set for late in the afternoon. 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As of Monday morning, meanwhile, two Republican senators looked to be hard "no" votes: Sens. Rand Paul and Thom Tillis. Paul, the Senate's leading libertarian, is demanding steeper spending cuts in the budget package, while Tillis opposes the extent of cuts to Medicaid, including the rollback of the program's expansion. Tillis's home state of North Carolina began the expansion of Medicaid coverage in the state under the ACA's provisions in late 2023. President Trump threatened Tillis plitically over the announcement that he would oppose the legislation in a Truth Social post. The senior North Carolina Republican then announced that he would not seek re-election next year. Tillis, in turn, fired back in a tweet urging Trump not to endorse Mark Robinson, the state's scandal-plagued former lieutenant governor, for his seat upon his retirement. Robinson, Tillis said, would lose his election by 20 points. Three other Republicans are thought to be on the fence. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are both publicly critical of calls for cuts to Medicaid; neither have announced how they will vote on final passage. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is the last outlier, having expressed his own reservations about insufficient deficit reduction efforts though he seemed to get on the same page with GOP leadership Sunday evening. With Vance set to break a tie, Collins and Murkowski are the likeliest candidates to block the bill — though they'd have to vote as a bloc to do so. To be successful, their votes would also require Paul and Tillis to remain in opposition, though Tillis at least seems immovable. If Monday's vote succeeds, Republicans will still have to put the legislation through the House of Representatives one final time for passage. Several members of the lower chamber, where Republicans hold an equally thin majority, have already expressed reservations about changes made to the legislation in the Senate. The scope of the legislation and disagreements within the disparate factions of the House Republican caucus have already caused their share of drama in the weeks and months leading up to Monday's vote-a-rama in the Senate. The House narrowly passed the legislation after arguments between Speaker Mike Johnson and members of his caucus over raising the cap on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT), as well as the bill's Medicaid provisions. A major rift also erupted between the president and Elon Musk, formerly one of his chief advisers, over projections that the bill would add nearly $4trn to the national debt over a decade. Musk, who spun out publicly and made accusations about Trump's involvement with the sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein before deleting them, criticized the legislation again on Saturday as voting neared. 'The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!' he wrote. 'Utterly insane and destructive. 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NBC News
3 days ago
- NBC News
Congress set to hand Trump billions to recruit more ICE agents
President Donald Trump is on the verge of getting billions of dollars from Congress to recruit and retain agents to carry out the mass deportation campaign that was one of the central promises of his campaign. Trump has been on a roll in his efforts to combat illegal immigration and remove undocumented immigrants from the country, and both advocates and critics of his plans say that bolstering border security and interior enforcement will make it easier for him to execute on his vision. The issue, a key tenet of his MAGA movement for a decade, helped him win back the White House in 2024. It remains his strongest issue, with 51% of adults approving of his handling of immigration and 49% disapproving, according to an NBC News Decision Desk poll powered by SurveyMonkey that was released this month. Illegal border crossings, as he and other administration officials often point out, have dropped precipitously, even without the completion of a long-pursued border wall. And the Supreme Court ruled Friday in a way that allows him to continue his push to deny the 14th Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship to some people born in the U.S. — at least for now. But the heart of his campaign to deport millions of undocumented people has been beating more slowly than he would like. Administration officials say they can kick-start it if Congress delivers on a budget measure Trump nicknamed the "big beautiful bill," which would spend billions of dollars to boost the ranks of border agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. The House-passed version includes $8 billion to hire an additional 10,000 ICE employees over five years, boosting the agency's ranks by nearly 50%, and $858 million more for signing and retention bonuses. At full employment of 30,000 people, the money would cover about $28,600 per employee. Customs and Border Protection would get $2 billion to spread around for such bonuses to its larger workforce, which currently can range as high as $30,000 for new recruits. It can be hard to hire and keep immigration agents, especially at a time when highly trained investigators who normally work on complex issues such as anti-trafficking and anti-money-laundering probes are being pulled into more routine immigration enforcement, said Chris Musto, the former assistant special agent in charge of the Homeland Security Investigations at ICE's Newark, New Jersey, field office. "There are hundreds of agents that are leaving," said Musto, who retired in June 2024. "Anybody that's eligible is departing." Beyond ICE, the federal government has diverted resources from across the government to focus on immigration — an indication both of the priority Trump has placed on executing his policy and the need for more help to do that. In Los Angeles, where the administration has met resistance from state and local officials, as well as protesters, Trump deployed the National Guard to protect federal agents and Marines to bolster the Guard. Critics predict that new money, and new agents, will mean a landscape that looks like Los Angeles across the country. "It's going to be unrecognizable in American history, the level of immigration enforcement, street harassment, that you will see by border patrol, ICE and all the law enforcement they have helping them out," said David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the nonpartisan, libertarian-oriented CATO Institute. "The average American probably hasn't seen an ICE raid in action, but they will if this bill passes," Bier said. "It's going to be everywhere." White House officials say the money, part of a bigger injection that includes appropriations for detention facilities and other needs for scaling up deportation efforts, is necessary to execute on Trump's vision. "We got over 600,000 illegal aliens with criminal histories walking the streets of this country. We got less than 5,000 deportation officers," Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, said Thursday at the White House. "More agents means more bad guys arrested, taken off the streets of this country every single day," he added. "Every day we arrest a public safety threat or national security threat, that makes this country much safer. Who the hell would be against that?" But for the most part, arrests and deportations under Trump have not focused on his promise to go after the "worst of the worst." Instead, as White House officials lean on agencies to increase the raw number of enforcement actions, the vast majority of people scooped up have no criminal record. In mid-May, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller tore into ICE officials over the failure to detain more undocumented immigrants. According to two people who spoke with the attendees, Miller was 'screaming' and threatening to fire senior ICE officials if they did not begin detaining 3,000 migrants a day. Since then, the Trump administration has expressed, and then reversed, a commitment to exempt what the president called "good, long time workers" in the agricultural and hospitality industries. The focus matters, both to members of Congress and in public opinion polls. The more Trump goes after hardened criminals, the more popular his effort is. But he has less support for workplace raids, ending temporary protections for immigrants who were given asylum in this country and blocking asylum claims. 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The Independent
4 days ago
- The Independent
Protesters blockade Palantir's offices calling for an end to ‘totalitarian police surveillance' as tech company aids ICE deportations
Protesters blockaded the offices of Peter Thiel 's data company Palantir on Thursday, calling for it to stop building surveillance systems for ICE and working with the Israeli military. Between 130 and 200 demonstrators chanted and banged drums outside the firm's building in Palo Alto, California, blocking the street and climbing on top of large box trucks that had been parked by Palantir in front of the entrance. In New York City, six people were arrested after police broke up a protest at Palantir's Manhattan office. A crowd of about 35 linked arms to bar access to the building, at one point briefly entering the lobby, while another 20 or so people gathered in support. "This is a billion dollar company that is profiting from and enabling ICE that are separating our families," 27-year-old Marcus Romero of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) told the crowd in Palo Alto. "Today, Palantir and the Trump administration are targeting immigrants. Tomorrow, it'll be anyone who disagrees with the MAGA agenda." A spokesperson for Palantir clarified that the trucks were hired for an event and were unrelated to the protest, but otherwise declined to comment. ICE did not respond to a request for comment. Palantir's stock has soared by more than 250 percent since the 2024 election as it takes an increasingly central role in President Donald Trump's push for "mass deportations", earning a reported $113m through new and existing contracts. Founded in 2003, with backing from arch-conservative Peter Thiel and the CIA, Palantir sells data-crunching services to companies, government agencies, intelligence services, and militaries. Its name comes from the all-seeing crystal balls used by Sauron's forces in Lord of the Rings. Having first started working with ICE under Barack Obama, it is now alleged to be helping the Trump administration build a comprehensive surveillance system that pools data from many government departments, as well as working extensively with the Israel Defense Forces. Palantir has pushed back on the former claim, saying: "To be very clear, Palantir is not building a master database, and Palantir is neither conducting nor enabling mass surveillance of American citizens." "Our product is used on occasion to kill people," said CEO Alex Karp in an interview with Axios in 2020. "If you're looking for a terrorist in the world now you're probably using our government product... I have asked myself, 'if I were younger at college, would I be protesting me?'" Thursday's demonstrations were organized by the campaign group Planet Over Profit, with help from a coalition of local groups including ACCE, Bay Resistance, and the immigration rights group Mijente. The demonstration in Palo Alto was lively but peaceable, featuring drums, an amplified electric guitar, a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty, 'Stop AI' activists warning about the coming machine apocalypse, and no arrests. The Independent counted around 130 to 140 people in attendance, while organizers estimated roughly 250 had come and gone over the course of the event. After blocking the street outside Palantir's unassuming redbrick office, and briefly making way for an ambulance, the crowd marched to a nondescript building nearby where organizers said the company was holding a developer conference to recruit new talent, slapping rhythmically on the windows and chanting "quit your jobs!" "We shut their s*** down! They left! It's an abandoned event space right now," one organizer announced soon afterwards, to wild cheers. "Our intel tells us that... one of the most important things we can do to hurt Palantir right now is disrupting their recruitment pipeline by hurting their brand image, to the point where even very apolitical recent college graduates [feel] that it's social suicide." Laila Ali, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, led the crowd in chants of 'free, free Palestine!', while another — a dissident Google employee going by the alias 'Jam' — described Palantir as part of an effort by tech moguls to build "a totalitarian police surveillance state at a scale unprecedented in human history". "The oligarchs see Trump's authoritarian tendencies, his deep disinterest in the truth, his vanity and his naked corruption, and they see their chance to ride the wave of fascism with the resources of history's most powerful economic and military empire, the United States," Jam said. "They need this surveillance state because they also see another holy grail on the horizon. They believe that generative AI can realize a fantasy that they have dreamt of for centuries: a perfectly obedient workforce that they don't have to argue with, that doesn't pester them with basic needs." Although Palantir did not confirm whether its event was disrupted, one visibly confused event worker did try to deliver equipment, only to find their intended recipients had vanished. In New York, things got spicier. Caroline Chouinard, a Brooklyn resident who was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, told The Guardian that police had begun arresting people before giving them a chance to disperse, and that people identifying themselves as Palantir employees had tried to physically push past the demonstrators into the building. "From NYC to LA to Gaza, Palantir is one company making unspeakable horrors happen. We need to shut them down. I do not want this vile stain on my communities," she said.