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Overtime payments for the force since 2020 have now passed £45.5m

Christopher and Steve White worked tirelessly for over a year to save a crumbling mansion in Ypsilanti, Michigan they had bought for just one dollar in the 1980s.

The Department for Transport’s Road Investment Strategy, published on Thursday, set out which schemes it will fund and prioritise

Angela's team hired someone who was "good" at SQL. When this person started, the team had some regular jobs which ran in the mornings. The jobs were fairly time consuming, and did a lot of database IO. When their current database person left for another job, they hired someone who had a "good grasp" on SQL. We'll call him Barry.

Barry started out by checking the morning jobs every day. And over time, the morning jobs started getting slower and slower. That was a concern, but Barry swore he had it under control. Barry did not share that a handful of slow queries- queries which took three or so minutes to run- had suddenly started taking 75+ minutes to run. Barry didn't think about the fact that a little time with the query planner and some indexes could have probably gotten performance back to where it should have been. Barry saw this problem and decided: "I'll write a Python script".

import time from datetime import datetime, timedelta import pytz # for time zone current_date = datetime.now() day_number = current_date.weekday() # integer value: 0 is Monday hub_1_ready = False hub_2_ready = False hub_1_results = [] hub_2_results = [] job_ran_later = False # If this job is manually run later in the day, avoid sending a "both hubs failed" email # Monday (day_number 0) runs later than the other 6 days if day_number == 0: end_time = datetime.strptime("08:30", "%H:%M") end_time = end_time.time() # get just the time portion else: end_time = datetime.strptime("07:30", "%H:%M") end_time = end_time.time() # get just the time portion # If this job is run later in the day than the normaolly scheduled time if datetime.now(pytz.timezone('US/Central')).time() > end_time: job_ran_later = True # Starting when Morning jobs are scheduled to kick off, check for completion of both hubs every 3 minutes until end_time. If both hubs are not a Success by end_time, an email is sent while datetime.now(pytz.timezone('US/Central')).time() < end_time: h1 = session.sql("SELECT LOG_STATUS FROM PROD_CTRL.CTRL.DRB_EXECUTION_LOG WHERE LOG_PROJECT = 'SRC_PROD_1' AND date(log_start_date) = current_date AND date(LOG_END_DATE) = current_date").take(1) hub_1_results = [] hub_1_results.append(h1) if str(hub_1_results[0]) == "[Row(LOG_STATUS='SUCCESS')]": hub_1_ready = True h2 = session.sql("SELECT LOG_STATUS FROM PROD_CTRL.CTRL.SRC_EXECUTION_LOG WHERE LOG_PROJECT = 'SRC_PROD_2' AND date(log_start_date) = current_date AND date(LOG_END_DATE) = current_date").take(1) hub_2_results = [] hub_2_results.append(h2) if str(hub_2_results[0]) == "[Row(LOG_STATUS='SUCCESS')]": hub_2_ready = True # If both hubs are Success, then break out of while loop, even if it's not end_time yet if hub_1_ready == True and hub_2_ready == True: break time.sleep(180) # Sleep for 3 minutes before trying again if not hub_1_ready and not hub_2_ready and job_ran_later == False: message = "Neither Hub_1 nor Hub_2 finished in time for Morning jobs." context.updateVariable('METL_MESSAGE', message) raise ValueError("send email: "+message) elif hub_1_ready == False and hub_2_ready == True: message = "Hub_1 did not finish in time for Morning jobs." context.updateVariable('METL_MESSAGE', message) raise ValueError("send email: "+message) elif hub_1_ready == True and hub_2_ready == False: message = "Hub_2 did not finish in time for Morning jobs" context.updateVariable('METL_MESSAGE', message) raise ValueError("send email: "+message) elif job_ran_later == True: message = "This job was run manually later in the day. Check that both Source hubs have completed. If you did not run this job, you can probably ignore this email." context.updateVariable('METL_MESSAGE', message) raise ValueError("send email: "+message)

I don't particularly like any of this. Some of it is just little ugliness, like the fact that job_ran_later and the closing if statements could be written to be much more clear. Or the way that, after our main while loop, which we'll come back to, we compare boolean variables against boolean literals.

The core of it is the while loop, which checks the current time, and while it's before the target end time, it runs a pair of queries. For each query it runs, it empties an array, then append the results (which we know is only one value, because they take(1)) to the array. Then they check the first element of the array against an expected string.

Why the arrays? Who knows. Perhaps at one point they thought they'd keep the results from multiple iterations, then decided against it. Why do the check against the string in the Python code and not the query? No idea, but maybe I don't have a "good grasp" of SQL. That said, with my bad grasp, I'm pretty sure I could figure out how to do all that in one single query and not two that are almost identical.

In any case, if we don't see what we want in the database, we sleep for three minutes, then try again.

At the end of the process, we check what happened and output messages and raise exceptions based on what we did see in the database.

It's also worth noting that Angela's team used a pretty reasonable job management system. All of their other scripts doing similar jobs didn't include retry logic inside themselves- they just failed. That let the job runner decide whether or not to retry, and that allowed all sorts of valuable configuration options that are more fine grained than "sleep for 3 minutes".

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When it comes to generating a high and growing income, investment trusts have a couple of superpowers.

Dante Valentín Bermudes Rumi was rushed to hospital after being found struggling to breathe. He was pronounced dead shortly after arrival despite desperate efforts by medics to save him.

Public policy professor says it will make America less secure but hits Netgear’s lobbying goals

The United States’ ban on foreign-made SOHO routers won’t improve security, and only makes sense as “industrial policy disguised as cybersecurity,” according to Milton Mueller, Professor at the University of Georgia’s School of Public Policy and founder of its Internet Governance Project.…

Kylie Jenner took to social media on Sunday to post more bikini-clad photos from a tropical getaway. The 28-year-old billionaire wore a stringy black triangle top and matching thong bottoms on a beach.

Geena Davis had fans doing a double-take on Friday as she appeared in Chicago looking absolutely breathtaking at 70 years old.

Challenging behaviour dropped to just 37, compared to 137 during the previous year

Samuel Smith, 30, appeared before Chelmsford Crown Court on Wednesday, after he admitted three charges of making indecent photographs of a child.

Joseph Baena, 28, followed in his famous father's footsteps as he made his bodybuilding debut at the NPC Natural Colorado State competition.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Rivian "just won a yearslong battle with car dealers in Washington state that threatens the model of how cars are sold." After fighting to sell its vehicles directly to buyers, Rivian threatened to take its case to voters with a ballot measure to permit direct sales. The dealers blinked. The state's dealer lobby not only dropped its opposition to a sales loophole for Rivian and rival EV-maker Lucid, but also encouraged lawmakers to approve one. The measure became law this month... New auto entrants like Rivian, and Tesla before it, have spent years contending with long-established U.S. state laws that require new cars to be sold through independent franchised dealers. The auto startups — typically makers of EVs — argue that they can offer a better experience by selling directly to consumers, much as Apple sells iPhones through its own stores and online. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe has said the company is committed to direct-only sales because it's more profitable and gives the company control over how its vehicles are sold, marketed and maintained. The Washington compromise riled traditional automakers, including General Motors, Ford and Toyota, which lobbied against it, arguing it unfairly advantages startups. A trade group representing the automakers called it discriminatory and argued the exception could one day open the door to Chinese EV makers... German automaker Volkswagen is currently facing several lawsuits from dealers over its plan to sell new Scout vehicles directly to consumers. Dealers say independent franchises are vital to the car-buying process, creating competition between dealerships that keeps prices affordable for consumers, while providing valuable services such as repairs, warranty work and financing... Yet for Washington's dealers, the prospect of putting franchise laws up for a popular vote laid bare a tough reality: given the choice, many car buyers want the freedom to avoid dealerships. Rivian's polling, which the company shared with lawmakers, showed nearly 70% of respondents favored allowing direct sales when asked whether they would support manufacturers selling cars directly to consumers... The fight comes at a critical time for Rivian, which is launching a new, more affordable SUV in a bid to make consistent profits amid a downturn in U.S. EV sales... Rivian is able to directly sell cars in roughly half of U.S. states, but a number of them limit how many locations the company can operate. They can't disclose the price, though. For that, customers must go online. The article notes that "Following the win, Rivian executives are eyeing other states that, like Washington, ban direct sales but also allow ballot initiatives: Arkansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota..." It adds that lawmakers (from both parties) in the state of Washington had said "they have long felt pulled between giving consumers more car-buying freedom and protecting dealers, essentially small-business owners who are vital to local economies — and politically powerful." But an executive at the Washington State Auto Dealers Association said dealers supported this new law partly because it protects them by barring future automakers from selling directly in the state, and by requiring Rivian and Lucid to adhere to the same regulations that govern how dealers operate.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the game tied at 2-2 in front of a bumper crowd at the Islanders' UBS Arena, tempers frayed between the green of the NYPD and the white and red of the FDNY.

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American fast-food franchise Chick-fil-A opened its first London restaurant earlier this month.

A single consultant has been responsible for one in every ten cannabis medicines prescribed in the country.

Jerusalem's major holy sites, including the church, are closed because of the ongoing Iran war, as the city has come under frequent fire from Iranian missiles.

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Ellie Crampsie, from Glasgow, was found with 17 kilos of the Class B drug stashed in her luggage when she landed in Edinburgh on April 16, 2025.