(NEW YORK) — It’s 2022, and Victoria’s Secret is coming in hot with its first fine fragrance in five years.
“Bare,” the brand’s latest scent, launched this week. According to the company, “Bare” celebrates individuality and self-expression.
“This soft, warm scent transforms on skin, creating a signature that’s uniquely yours,” the company captioned the video revealing the launch.
“Bare Eau de Parfum” includes an alluring blend of musky mandarin, floral Egyptian violet petals and warm Australian sandalwood. Victoria’s Secret says the fragrance was formulated to adapt to every person’s body chemistry to create a unique scent for anyone who wears it.
The packaging for the latest fragrance is created with upcycled materials and responsibly sourced ingredients. Additionally, it uses a new cryptosym technology — created and trademarked by Symrise, a German chemicals company based in Holzminden — which has the capability to encrypt scent formulations to preserve its novelty and protect it from future replication.
“Bare Eau de Parfum is our most intimate fragrance yet. It’s about a quiet confidence that comes from knowing your authentic self, and celebrates individuality in its most natural form,” Kristen Lagoa, Victoria’s Secret vice president of merchandising, beauty and accessories, said in a statement.
The ad campaign for the new fragrance features a diverse lineup of women, ranging from social advocates and herbalists to artists and creatives — all with different backgrounds and body types.
Throughout the imagery, models are seen alongside inspiring quotes such as “Comparison is the thief of joy” and “It’s really the simple things that hold the most space for our healing.”
The latest campaign marks a major transformation from Victoria’s Secret’s past branding. In 2018, the company faced criticism after Ed Razek, the former chief marketing officer for L Brands — Victoria’s Secret’s parent company — told Vogue he didn’t think the brand should add plus-size or transgender models to its annual fashion show “because the show is a fantasy.”
Razek later apologized for his comments and resigned from the company.
The brand ultimately said farewell to its famed “Angel” models last year and launched The VS Collective to revamp its image, featuring a diverse lineup of “ambassadors,” including Valentina Sampaio, who is transgender, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and LGBTQIA+ activist and professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe, along with several others.
“Bare” is available nationwide now online and in-stores. It’s also slated to launch worldwide starting Aug. 23.
Will we see Kelly Clarkson and Michael Bublé jump into the studio together? If Randy Jackson has his way, it’ll happen very soon.
The possibility was floated on The Kelly Clarkson Show, where the American Idol winner welcomed both Randy and Michael on set. The topic of a possible collab came up after Michael paused the conversation to ask about television theme songs.
“I know you’re going to cut me out of this, but I love TV themes. What is your favorite… If you had to pick one television theme, what is it?,” asked the Canadian crooner as both Kelly and Randy laughed.
Michael went first by singing the Cheers television theme, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name.”
Randy picked the theme from I Dream of Jeannie,while Kelly was torn between Step By Step and Full House.
Michael started singing the latter theme and joked, “I might just record that now.” Kelly then began belting out Step By Step’s “Second Time Around.”
“Wait a minute,” Randy exclaimed while pointing at the two singers. “A duet. Tonight.”
“Why [not] all three?” Michael replied before briefly engaging with Kelly in a duet of the Three’s Company opening credits song.
The conversation ended with the “Sway” singer expressing he feels “so cozy” sitting with Kelly and Randy, which morphed into an invite to Kelly’s Montana ranch for a game of poker.
“It’s cold as hell, but it’s fun,” she grinned. She agreed to have the “same panel” on her show and declared, “Let’s have this date again.” The “Stronger” singer also suggested they play a game next time they’re all on the show.
Muse has premiered a new song called “Kill or Be Killed,” a track off the band’s upcoming album, Will of the People.
“‘Kill or Be Killed’ is Muse at their heaviest!” says frontman Matt Bellamy. “We wanted to update our hard rock sound on this album and with ‘Kill or Be Killed’ we found a modern metal sound featuring double bass drum action and even a death growl.”
He adds, “Lyrically the song takes influence from my favorite Paul McCartney song ‘Live and Let Die,’ a dark take on how life’s adversity can sometimes bring out the worst human instincts to survival at any costs.”
The track is available now via digital outlets and is accompanied by a video showcasing footage from Muse’s famously bombastic live shows. You can watch that streaming now on YouTube.
“Kill or Be Killed” is the fourth cut to be released from Will of the People following “Won’t Stand Down,” “Compliance” and the title track. The album — Muse’s ninth studio effort and the follow-up to 2018’s Simulation Theory — arrives in full on August 26.
Muse will play a run of U.S. tour dates in support of Will of the People in October.
(NEW YORK) — The unrelenting heat wave pounding the U.S. is still going strong, with 24 states and 103 million Americans on alert for dangerous temperatures Thursday.
Triple-digit heat is still hitting the West with Thursday temperatures forecast to reach 113 degrees in Palm Springs, California and 114 in Las Vegas. If “Sin City” reaches 114, it’ll break its record high of 113.
In the South, Dallas hit a record high of 109 degrees on Wednesday as Texas’ ongoing heat wave continues to fan spreading wildfires.
The heat is spreading from hard-hit Texas to Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas.
The heat is also slamming the Northeast. The heat index — what temperature it feels like with humidity — is expected to skyrocket Thursday to 107 degrees in Philadelphia, 103 in New York City and Washington, D.C., and 101 in Baltimore and Hartford, Connecticut.
The Northeast heat is expected to intensify over the weekend when actual temperatures could approach 100 degrees. Record highs are possible on Sunday from Philadelphia to New York City.
If New York City stays above 90 degrees for seven days in a row, the city will mark its longest heat wave in nine years.
Philadelphia has issued a heat health emergency that’ll begin at noon Thursday.
High temperatures are also still inundating Europe, where it’s forecast to hit 103 degrees in Madrid and 99 degrees in Milan.
Looks like Lainey Wilson’s stint as a Season five regular on Yellowstone is in full swing. The country singer hopped on social media this week to share a snapshot from the set, where she plays a musician named Abby.
Lainey might be relatively new to acting, but she looks right at home in the photo, which shows her sitting in a director’s chair that has “Yellowstone” written across the back.
Lainey’s one of a handful of new additions to the fifth season of the wildly popular Paramount Network show, also including Dawn Olivieri, who played Claire Dutton in the Yellowstone prequel, 1883.
She’s also keeping busy with her music career. Following back-to-back number-one hits with “Things a Man Oughta Know” and her Cole Swindell duet, “Never Say Never,” she recently released her latest single, “Heart Like a Truck.”
(ST. PAUL, Minn.) — Former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane will be sentenced in federal court on Thursday morning for violating George Floyd’s civil rights.
Lane, 39, is one of three former Minneapolis police officers who were convicted earlier this year of depriving Floyd of his right to medical care as the handcuffed, unarmed 46-year-old Black man was pinned under the knee of their senior office, Derek Chauvin, for more than nine minutes on May 25, 2020. Floyd’s videotaped killing in Minneapolis sparked anti-racism protests and calls for police reform across the United States and around the world.
Lane’s former Minneapolis police colleagues, 28-year-old J. Alexander Kueng and 35-year-old Tou Thao, were also convicted of failing to intervene to prevent Chauvin, 46, from applying bodily injury to Floyd. Lane, who was heard on video twice asking his fellow officers whether they should turn Floyd onto his side, did not face that charge. Chauvin knelt on the back of Floyd’s neck, while Kueng knelt on his back, Lane held his legs and Thao kept bystanders away.
During their trial in February, Lane, Kueng and Thao each took the witness stand and attempted to shift the blame to Chauvin, who was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department. Lane told the jury that Chauvin “deflected” all his suggestions to help Floyd, while Kueng testified that Chauvin “was my senior officer and I trusted his advice” and Thao attested that he “would trust a 19-year veteran to figure it out.”
The jury handed down convictions after deliberating for roughly 13 hours.
Magnuson has not yet set sentencing dates for Kueng and Thao.
Lane faces a separate sentencing in state court on Sept. 21, after changing his plea to guilty to a reduced charge of aiding and abetting manslaughter. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the top charge against him of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder, according to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Thao and Kueng, who have rejected plea deals offered by prosecutors, are scheduled to go on trial in state court on Oct. 24 over charges of aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Earlier this month, Chauvin was sentenced to 21 years in prison on separate federal civil rights charges in Floyd’s killing and in an unrelated case involving a Black teenager. He had already been sentenced to 270 months, minus time served, which equals about 22 1/2 years in prison, after being convcited in state court last year of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
ABC News’ Kiara Alfonseca, Bill Hutchinson, Janel Klein, Whitney Lloyd, Mark Osborne and Stephanie Wash contributed to this report.
Jordan Peele shut down a fan who called him the greatest of all time when it comes to making horror films.
The moment went down on Twitter Wednesday, when one fan raved about the Nope director, writing,”I know this is a hot take but at what point do we declare Jordan Peele the best horror director of all time?”
“Can you think of another horror director that had 3 great films, let alone 3 in a row? I can’t,” the fan added.
Attached to the tweet was a screenshot of Peele’s recent films and their Rotten Tomatoes rankings, with Nope scoring 88 percent, 2019’s Us with 93 percent, and 2017’s Get Out with a near perfect 98%.
While Peele seemed flattered, he felt that filmmaker John Carpenter, known in part for the Halloween series, as well as the horror classics The Fog and the 1982 remake of The Thing, was much more deserving of the G.O.A.T title.
“Sir, please put the phone down I beg you,” Peele replied. “Sorry. I love your enthusiasm but I will just not tolerate any John Carpenter slander!!!”
Ethan Hawke is taking a deep dive into the lives of legendary Hollywood power couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the six-part documentary The Last Movie Stars.
Hawke was tapped to direct the documentary by Newman and Woodward’s daughter Clea Newman, who wanted the story told with an actor’s point of view. In order to achieve that, Hawke enlisted famous actors to read interview transcripts from the couple and the people closest to them, casting George Clooney as Paul and Laura Linney as Joanne, among others.
“The bad news was it was a giant international pandemic. The good news is everybody was bored,” Hawke says. “So I could call up [Sam] Rockwell and say, ‘Hey, you want to play the director of Cool Hand Luke?’ And he’s like, sure, you know, I mean, why not?”
The pandemic also gave Hawke the time he needed to binge-watch the couple’s extensive filmography, including Newman classics The Hustler and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Woodward’s Oscar-winning turn in The Three Faces of Eve, as well as the 16 films they worked on together during their more than 50-year relationship.
But the best part for Hawke was learning that off-screen, Newman and Woodward were exactly the kind of people he thought they were.
“They’re just on the right side of history,” he says, adding, “And then the biggest funny surprise is, I just would have never known that Paul Newman was as insecure as he was. You know, like, it’s kind of a relief to realize that he was sweating through three shirts and a nervous wreck and worried he wasn’t good enough. And you’re like, wow, we’re all like that!”
The Last Movie Stars premieres Thursday on HBO Max.
Father and son Kurt and Wyatt Russell have been tapped to star in Apple TV+ and Legendary Television’s Godzilla series, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series, part of Legendary’s Monsterverse franchise, is set in the aftermath of the battle between Godzilla and the Titans that decimated San Francisco in 2014’s Godzilla. It follows a family’s journey to uncover its buried secrets, and a legacy linking them to the secret organization known as Monarch. Details on the Russells’ roles are being kept under wraps…
Apple Original Films announced on Tuesday that it has landed the rights to Causeway, a new film produced by and starring Jennifer Lawrence. The movie is described as “an intimate portrait of a soldier struggling to adjust to her life after returning home to New Orleans.” Atlanta and Bullet Train actor Brian Tyree Henry stars alongside Lawrence…
Peacock dropped the full-length trailer for the horror film They/Them. Kevin Bacon leads the cast of the film, which follows a group of LGBTQ+ campers who arrive at a conversion camp run by Owen Whistler — played by Bacon — to “help them find a new sense of freedom.” according to the film’s official logline. “But as the counselors attempt to psychologically break down each of the campers, a mysterious killer starts claiming victims, and they must reclaim their power if they’re going to survive the horrors of the camp.” Carrie Preston, Anna Chlumsky, Theo Germaine, Quei Tann, Anna Lore, Monique Kim, Darwin del Fabro, Cooper Koch and Austin Crute also star…
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating Jan. 6 is holding its second prime-time hearing on Thursday, which will focus on the Trump White House’s reaction to the insurrection as it unfolded.
Following a recent and highly publicized hearing, renewed attention is on witness tampering and the possibility that it was committed by Trump.
During a recent hearing, Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, said that Trump attempted to call a witness in the committee’s investigation into last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation — a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call and, instead, alerted their lawyer to the call,” Cheney said at the time.
The committee warned against witness tampering as it continues its investigation. “Let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously,” Cheney said.
But what is witness tampering, and did Trump possibly commit it?
What is witness tampering?
Witness tampering is a federal crime and is considered a form of obstruction of justice.
According to the Department of Justice, witness tampering occurs when someone tries to “influence, delay or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding.”
“It’s either threatening a witness with some type of harm if the person doesn’t testify in a certain way or doing this thing, which is defined by Congress as correctly persuading someone to say something,” Robert Weisberg, faculty co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, told ABC News. “Unfortunately, Congress has done an absolute horrible job defining the crime.”
Congress has the authority to investigate if a crime took place, but it doesn’t have the power to charge someone with witness tampering — that is left up to the Department of Justice.
A person could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of witness tampering.
Jan. 6 witness Trump allegedly tried to call was White House support staff, sources say
Donald Trump’s alleged witness tampering
The committee has examined not only the insurrection at the Capitol, but also then-President Trump’s possible role in the events leading up to, during and after that day, actions the committee says were a “dereliction of duty” on his part.
Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, has repeatedly criticized the House select committee for its investigation into the Jan. 6 riot, calling it one-sided and politically motivated.
Cheney’s bombshell accusation about Trump raises questions on if he committed a crime and, if so, if there’s enough evidence to charge him.
“It would depend on the strength of the case,” Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor, told ABC News. “When people make calls like that, usually it’s a little more guarded and a little bit of a wink wink, nudge nudge.”
Trump allegedly attempted to call a White House support staffer, a person he wouldn’t normally call, sources said.
Despite not reaching the witness during the purported call, a crime still allegedly took place, this according to guidance from the DOJ under section 18 U.S.C. 1512, “Protection of government processes — Tampering with victims, witnesses or informants.”
“There is no requirement that the defendant’s actions have the intended obstructive effect,” it reads.
Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich sharply criticized Cheney’s accusation while also going after the media — but did not deny her claims.
“The media has become pawns of the Unselect Committee. Liz Cheney continues to traffic in innuendos and lies that go unchallenged, unconfirmed, but repeated as fact because the narrative is more important than the truth,” he tweeted on July 12.
Cheney’s claim against the former president isn’t the first time Trump has been accused of obstructing justice.
Michael Cohen
Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, was convicted in 2018 for tax evasion, violating campaign finance rules and lying to Congress.
For years, Cohen had signaled loyalty to Trump. But after the FBI raided his home in 2018, he was open to cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the then-president.
Cohen’s lawyer said that Trump’s advisers were hinting that he would pardon Cohen following the FBI’s raid into his home. Once Cohen agreed to testify, Trump began publicly attacking his former lawyer and suggested that his father-in-law should be investigated.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform said at the time that “efforts to intimidate witnesses, scare their family members, or prevent them from testifying before Congress are textbook mob tactics that we condemn in the strongest terms. Our nation’s laws prohibit efforts to discourage, intimidate, or otherwise pressure a witness not to provide testimony to Congress.”
In 2019, after a delay, Cohen testified in front of the House Oversight Committee about his time working for his former boss. Cohen said he initially delayed his testimony because of “ongoing threats against his family from President Trump.”
Could Trump be charged?
It’s unlikely Attorney General Merrick Garland will charge Trump, especially if he plans to run for president again, according to Weisberg.
“If he declares he’s running for president, even though that doesn’t give him any immunity from indictment, we know that’s exactly the situation Garland fears, namely indicting someone amidst a presidential campaign, because he doesn’t want the criminal justice systems to distort the political process,” Weisberg said.
“There’s a weird kind of leverage that Trump has here,” he added.
