Bruce Willis sells Westchester home for $5.29M less than asking price

It’s buy hard with a vengeance for the new owner of Bruce Willis’ Westchester estate, who’s snagged the 22-acre property for a significant discount.

Willis and his wife, Emma Heming Willis, have officially parted ways with the spread near Bedford Corners for $7.66 million, or 41 percent off its original $12.95 million listing price, the Wall Street Journal reports. The pair bought it for roughly $12 million in 2014, the Journal adds.

Still, the sale is one of the largest transactions seen in Westchester County in 2019.

The couple lowered the asking price to $9.39 million over the summer, as The Post reported at the time.

The estate is home to a roughly 9,000-square-foot Craftsman-style main residence with five bedrooms, a media room and a wine cellar. It overlooks the Croton Reservoir. Three other cottages on the grounds each come with their own driveway. Elsewhere, the estate has two garages, a saltwater pool, a pool house and a tennis court.

Ann Cutbill Lenane, Nancy Strong and Stacey Oestreich of Douglas Elliman had the listing.

M1 traffic latest: M1 CLOSED after ‘serious collision’ causing travel chaos

The northbound carriageway has been shut between junctions 11A and 12 near Luton and Dunstable. The closure is impacting people trying to get to Luton Airport.

Highways East tweeted: “M1 Northbound J11A to J12 the road is closed due to serious road traffic collision. #Luton #Dunstable.”

More to follow…

Car clocked at double the speed limit on Saskatchewan highway: RCMP

A driver was clocked travelling over twice the speed limit a few days before Christmas, according to the Saskatchewan RCMP.

Police tweeted that officers from the Rosthern detachment pulled over a vehicle for travelling 214 km/h on Monday near Hepburn.

The speed limit on that section of Highway 12 is 100 km/h.

RCMP said the driver received a $1,515 fine and the car was impounded for a week.

Hepburn is approximately 40 km north of Saskatoon.

Man, 34, faces arson charges in connection with series of Saanich fires

Saanich police say a man has been charged in a string of small arsons earlier this month.

Police say they investigated five fires between Dec. 6 and Dec. 20.

One was set in a dumpster on Cedar Hill X Road, while another was inside a residential building in the 1000 block of Cloverdale Avenue, said police.

Investigators say they arrested Justin Dorey, 34, on Sunday, who is now facing arson charges.

Dorey is due in court on Jan. 9 in Victoria.

Michael Bloomberg cuts ties to company using prisoners for campaign calls

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential contender Michael Bloomberg cut ties with a contractor that used prisoners to make calls for his presidential campaign, he said in a statement Tuesday.

The former New York mayor said that his campaign was unaware of the arrangement until a reporter sought comment. Earlier Tuesday, online news site The Intercept reported that Bloomberg’s campaign contracted a New Jersey-based call center company that, in at least one instance, used Oklahoma inmates to make calls on behalf of the billionaire’s campaign.

“We only learned about this when the reporter called us, but as soon as we discovered which vendor’s subcontractor had done this, we immediately ended our relationship with the company and the people who hired them,” Bloomberg said in the statement.

“We do not support this practice and we are making sure our vendors more properly vet their subcontractors moving forward,” he said.

Bloomberg has come under fire from criminal justice reform advocates for his support for controversial tough-on-crime policies while mayor of New York. He launched his presidential campaign with an apology for his embrace of stop-and-frisk policing tactics, which give police wide latitude to detain individuals suspected of committing a crime and have been found to be used disproportionately against minorities.

Gal Gadot Partners With Keshet For Film Adaptation Of Novel About Israeli-Palestinian Romance

Gal Gadot and her husband Jaron Varsano are partnering with Keshet International for a film adaptation of controversial novel “Borderlife,” about a romance between a Jewish Israeli woman and a Palestinian man.

The Wonder Woman star and Varsano will co-produce the film through their Pilot Wave production banner in partnership with U.S.-based Keshet Studios, headed by Peter Traugott.

“Borderlife,” known in English as “All the Rivers,” was published in 2014. The international bestselling novel from Israeli author Dorit Rabinian tells the story of a Jewish woman and Palestinian man who meet in New York and fall in love.

Israel’s education ministry banned the book from high school reading lists because of its depiction of a cross-cultural romance. The decision sparked protests and the novel was later allowed in advanced literature classes.

Gadot will next be seen in Wonder Woman 1984, which opens in June 2020.

KKR to buy digital-library platform Overdrive from Rakuten

Private-equity firm KKR & Co. Inc. KKR, -0.14% announced Tuesday afternoon that it has agreed to acquire Overdrive, which helps libraries and schools deliver digital content to users, from Rakuten Inc. jp:4775. The two sides did not provide a price tag for the Ohio-based property, which Rakuten purchased for $410 million in 2015 , but Rakuten said it would recognize about $365.6 million in profit from the sale in the first quarter of 2020. KKR said that Overdrive serves 43,000 libraries and schools in 75 countries, and that it will use money from the KKR Americas XII Fund for the investment. "OverDrive provides digital tools and services to libraries and schools so that they can lend the widest variety of digital books, audiobooks, and other materials, while at the same time respecting and compensating authors and publishers through the widest range of access models," KKR Member Richard Sarnoff said in Tuesday’s announcement.