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NEW YORK (AP) — Simon & Schuster has been sold to the private equity firm KKR, months after a federal judge blocked its purchase by rival publisher Penguin Random House because of concerns that competition would shrink in the book market.
The private equity giant will buy Simon & Schuster for $1.62 billion in cash, said Paramount Global, the parent company of the storied book publisher. Paramount will use sale proceeds to pay down debt.
Simon & Schuster, whose authors include Stephen King, Colleen Hoover and Bob Woodward, is one of the so-called “Big Five” of New York publishing, with others including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins Publishing, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan. HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, had reportedly been interested in buying Simon & Schuster.
“All of the executives at Simon & Schuster who met with KKR came away from those conversations impressed with the depth of KKR’s interest in our business and their commitment to helping us grow, thrive and become an even stronger company,” said Jonathan Karp, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster, in a statement Monday.
Late in 2020, Paramount had announced the sale of Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House for $2.2 billion, a deal that would have made the new company by far the biggest in the U.S. But the Department of Justice, which under the Biden administration has taken a tougher stance on mergers compared to other recent presidencies, sued to block the sale in 2021.
After a three-week trial in the summer of 2022, with King among those opposing the merger, U.S. District Judge Florence Y. Pan ruled in the government’s favor, saying the DOJ had made “a compelling case that predicts substantial harm to competition.”
Paramount declined to appeal the decision, and instead renewed its efforts to sell Simon & Schuster, which next year marks its centennial. The company, founded in 1924 by Richard Simon and Max Schuster, has changed ownership a handful of times since being purchased by Gulf+Western in 1975.
The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals.
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Raging waters that ate away at riverbanks, destroyed at least two buildings and undermined others were receding Monday in Alaska’s capital city after a glacial dam outburst last weekend, authorities said.
Levels along the Mendenhall River had started falling by Sunday but the city said river banks remained unstable. Onlookers gathered on a bridge over the river and along the banks of swollen Mendenhall Lake to take photos and videos Sunday. A home was propped precariously along the eroded river bank as milky-colored water whisked past.
There were no reports of any injuries or deaths. The city said it was working to assess damages.
Such floods occur when glaciers melt and pour massive amounts of water into nearby lakes. A study released earlier this year found such floods pose a risk to about 15 million people worldwide, more than half of them in India, Pakistan, Peru and China.
Suicide Basin — a side basin of the Mendenhall Glacier — has released water that has caused sporadic flooding along the Mendenhall Lake and Mendenhall River since 2011, according to the National Weather Service. However, the maximum water level in the lake on Saturday night exceeded the previous record flood stage set in July 2016, the weather service reported. Water in the basin comes from sources such as rain and snowmelt and melt from the nearby Suicide Glacier, said Eran Hood, a University of Alaska Southeast professor of environmental science.
CROWN POINT, Ind. (AP) — A former fifth-grade teacher in northwestern Indiana who was charged with felony intimidation after authorities say she told a student she had a “kill list” of students and staff has been sentenced to 2½ years on probation.
Angelica Carrasquillo, 25, of Griffith pleaded guilty Friday to an intimidation charge in Lake County Superior Court, court records show.
The terms of a plea bargain bar Carrasquillo from working at a school or daycare while on probation. It also requires court-monitored mental health treatment, and she is barred from contacting victims in the case, news outlets reported.
If she successfully completes probation, she can petition to reduce the conviction to a misdemeanor, under terms of the plea bargain.
Court documents say Carrasquillo communicated “a threat to commit murder” on Oct. 12.
Once officials at the school where she was employed, St. Stanislaus in East Chicago, learned of the threat, they immediately confronted her and escorted her from the building, the Diocese of Gary said in a message to parents.
When Carrasquillo was asked why she wanted to kill herself and others, she reportedly told school officials: “I’m having trouble with my mental health, and sometimes the kids do not listen in the classroom. I also have trauma caused when I went to high school.”
The threats came to light when a counselor overhead a fifth-grader say, “I heard Ms. Carrasquillo wants to kill herself and has a list.”
The student reportedly said Carrasquillo voiced the threat to him directly and told the student he was on the list.
The principal and an assistant principal said Carrasquillo gave them the name of one student on the “kill list,” but she did not reveal all the names, a court document said.
Carrasquillo allegedly told school officials “she was only joking about it all,” the court document said.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday upheld Josh Duggar’s conviction for downloading child sexual abuse images, rejecting the former reality television star’s argument that a judge should have suppressed statements he made to investigators during the search that found the images.
A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal by Duggar, whose large family was the focus of TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting.” Duggar was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 12 1/2-year prison sentence.
Federal authorities investigated Duggar after Little Rock police detective found child sexual abuse material was being shared by a computer traced to Duggar. Investigators testified that images depicting the sexual abuse of children, including toddlers, were downloaded in 2019 onto a computer at a car dealership Duggar owned.
Duggar’s attorneys argued that statements he made to investigators during the search of the dealership should not have been allowed at trial since his attorney wasn’t present. Prosecutors said Duggar asked the agents, “‘What is this all about? Has somebody been downloading child pornography?” and that he declined to say whether he had looked at such material online, comments that were later used as evidence in the trial.
The appeals panel said that although Duggar was read his rights, the agents questioning him made it clear that he wasn’t in custody and was free to leave. The panel also noted that he wasn’t arrested at the end of his questioning.
“To the contrary, he ended the interview on his own and then left the dealership — hardly an option available to someone in custody,” the court ruled.
Justin Gelfand, an attorney for Duggar, said they disagreed with the court’s reasoning and would evaluate all options.
The court also dismissed Duggar’s argument that his attorneys should have been able to ask about the prior sex-offense conviction of a former employee of the dealership who had used the same computer. Duggar’s attorneys did not ask the former employee to testify after the judge ruled they could not mention the prior conviction.
The panel ruled that the judge in the case struck the right balance by allowing the former employee to be questioned without bringing up the past conviction. The court also rejected Duggar’s challenge to the qualifications of the analyst who testified that metadata on the former reality star’s iPhone connected him to the crime.
TLC canceled “19 Kids and Counting” in 2015 following allegations that Duggar had molested four of his sisters and a babysitter years earlier. Authorities began investigating the abuse in 2006 after receiving a tip from a family friend but concluded that the statute of limitations on any possible charges had expired.
NEW YORK (AP) — New York Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan Monday to house as many as 2,000 migrants on an island in the East River where a migrant center was set up last year and then taken down weeks later.
The state will reimburse the city for the cost of operating a tent city for adult migrants on Randalls Island, Adams said.
“As the number of asylum seekers in our care continues to grow by hundreds every day, stretching our system to its breaking point and beyond, it has become more and more of a Herculean effort to find enough beds every night,” Adams, a Democrat, said in a news release.
“We’re grateful to Governor Hochul and New York state for their partnership in opening this new humanitarian relief center and covering the costs, and we need more of the same from all levels of government,” said Adams, who has repeatedly asked the federal government to provide more financial support to efforts to shelter migrants in New York City.
The city has rented out hotels to house migrants and has placed people in locations including a cruise ship terminal and a former police academy building as tens of thousands of asylum seekers have arrived over the past year.
More than 57,200 asylum seekers are in the city’s care now, Adams said.
