The chief executive of the brand known for its provocative televised fashion shows and alluring stores made an admission yesterday. In her mind, the brand has become "too sexy" -- or at least the wrong kind of sexy.

"We have so much gotten off our heritage," CEO Sharen Jester Turney said in a conference call with analysts. Responding to the past year's weak sales and focus-group feedback, she said, "We will return to an ultra-feminine lingerie brand to meet [customer] needs and expectations."

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Changing customer views will be a huge challenge. Sheri Coulter, a 42-year-old secretary in Flower Mound, Texas, worked at a Victoria's Secret store three years ago. "It was like pulling teeth to get the women our age to come in there," she says. "In our 40s and up, we are sexy -- just not the same sexy a college gal is." For a time, she says, the store where she worked stopped carrying sizes 38 or larger, embarrassing some older customers who were turned away. Limited bought Victoria's Secret in 1982, when it had just four stores and a catalog. Under Limited Chief Executive Leslie Wexner, Victoria's Secret improved its quality and toned down racy styles to appeal to mainstream customers.

In the 1990s, professional women shopped the pastel-painted stores for colorful, European-inspired lingerie, supplementing underwear wardrobes previously filled with black, white and beige styles. Soft music played in the background while saleswomen discreetly offered help. But over time, Victoria's Secret adapted to a changing culture. Women began wearing camisoles and bustiers as outer garments, the growth of the Internet made skin-baring photographs ubiquitous, and teen pop stars such as Britney Spears gyrated on stage in revealing costumes.

One reason Victoria's Secret got off track, Ms. Turney said, was the success of its Pink brand, which launched in 2002 and aimed to introduce college students to Victoria's Secret stores. Pink has grown tremendously; in October, an executive said it would probably reach $900 million in sales for 2007. But as teens and 20-somethings snapped up Pink underwear and pajamas, too many other product lines at Victoria's Secret shifted to target that same customer, Ms. Turney said.

Schultz has said the shutdown, which begins at 5:30 p.m. local time, is a way to energize its 135,000 employees and provide some barista re-education in the "art of espresso" at its 7,100 U.S. locations.

In a memo to employees and the public, Schultz said the goal of the closure was to improve the so-called "Starbucks Experience" - the company's shorthand for its mixture of service, ambience and coffee that spurred its explosive growth and success in recent years.

"We are passionate about our coffee. And we will revisit our standards of quality that are the foundation for the trust that our customers have in our coffee and in all of us," Schultz wrote in a memo titled "Howard Schultz Transformation Agenda Communication #8."

After lengthy negotiations, regretfully, the Jenny Craig Company and I did not come to an agreement to continue as their spokesperson.

My relationship with the Jenny Craig Company was nothing short of extraordinary. The people I worked with at Jenny were first rate. The program spoke for itself as the world watched me lose 75 pounds. The last three years have been a win-win for all involved, especially all those other Jenny clients who took the journey alongside me. Just having them there with me was an inspiration and a motivation to continue. Thank you to all of you from the bottom of my heart.

J.C. now has two talented pros on board, and I have no doubt that Valerie Bertinelli and Queen Latifah, along with the excellent products in the J.C. program, will steer the ship to continuing success. I personally wish them the same excellent results and amazing adventures that I experienced as the J.C. spokesperson.

Somehow, I've also fallen into the position of "accidental" role model for, apparently, millions of people out there losing weight by whatever means. This was something I did not bargain for, or foresee happening. Nevertheless, it is something I've grown to embrace and something I intend to continue to pursue.

As for me, I am from the school of "you may not be able to reinvent the wheel but you can sure try to better it," which has proven to be a very successful attitude for Michelin tires. Even my own mentor left a major weight-loss company when she was 51 years old and struck out on her own to create her own brand that we now know as "the Jenny Craig weight-loss program." I had not intended to make this announcement at this time, but after an online PEOPLE magazine article ran last Friday, announcing that I had stepped down as Jenny's spokesperson, I found myself bombarded with inquiries from the media and fans. So I guess it's as good of a time as any to announce that I intend to develop and pilot my own weight-loss brand that I hope to launch in 2009.

Retailer Sharper Image Corp has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing declining sales, three straight years of losses and litigation involving its Ionic Breeze air purifiers.

The San Francisco-based company filed for protection late Tuesday in U.S. bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Delaware. Sharper Image said it had $251.5 million in assets and $199 million in debt as of January 31, according to the filing. Cash on hand totaled about $700,000. Its shares plunged 92 cents, or 64 percent, to 52 cents on Nasdaq.

"Sharper Image is in a severe liquidity crisis," Chief Financial Officer Rebecca Roedell said in a separate filing. She said the company has suffered from increased competition, narrowing margins, litigation, lower consumer and market confidence, tighter credit from suppliers, and poorly performing stores. "The foregoing has been compounded by the ever-tightening and volatile credit and financing markets," she added.

Sharper Image has seen its sales decline steadily since 2004, and has posted net losses in fiscal 2005, 2006, and 2007. According to court papers, the electronics retailer also cited "negative publicity" from the litigation involving its Ionic Breeze air purifiers for its falling revenues. In October, a federal court denied approval of a settlement of class-action suits related to the efficacy of the air purifiers. The product was sold to 3 million consumers, according to a previous filing.

TOKYO--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality."

Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.

This decision will not impact on Toshiba's commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.

"I bought it because it's the best number," said Khouri, whose family made its fortune in real estate. "I bought it because I want to be the best in the world." The oil-rich UAE began auctioning off vanity license plates last May.

Ordinary automobile license plates issued to drivers here -- and even most other vanity series plates -- carry both Arabic and Western numerals and script, defining the issuing city and country. Khouri's plate, however, has only the Western numeral and no letters. The record sale surpassed the $6.8 million that was paid for an Emirati license plate at an earlier auction with the Western number 5 on it -- also without Arabic numerals or letters.

Like red roses and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, perfume has traditionally been one of the fail-safe offerings of Valentine's Day. But this year, as couples sit down to romantic dinners, a small but growing cohort of American women will emit scents that are more corporal and less Chanel. At a time when the number of perfumes on shelves has dramatically increased, consumption of fragrances is declining, industry analysts said. Last year, department stores carried 1,160 different fragrances for women compared with 756 in 2002, according to NPD Group, a market research firm that tracks consumer product sales.

Yet, last year in the United States, spending on upscale women's fragrances declined, as part of a multiyear trend. The group said $1.97 billion was spent, down from $2 billion in 2002. Like Ms. Ware, more women are forgoing scent altogether. Last year, about 15 percent of women said they did not wear fragrance, up from 13 percent in 2003, according to a survey of 9,800 women conducted by NPD. "That may sound like a small number, but nationally that translates into two million more women who are saying 'I don't wear fragrance,'" said Karen Grant, the senior beauty industry analyst at NPD. "Eighty-five percent of women are still buying fragrance, but an increasing number tell us they are wearing fewer scents, less frequently or not at all." Fragrance fatigue is probably inevitable, with heavily fruited scents wafting out of everything from dishwashing liquids to hotel linens to candle displays at the mall. But perfume aversion seems to be tapping into a larger societal phenomenon that may have its origins in bans on cellphones and cigarettes: the idea that the collective demands of the public space trump one's personal space. "People are shying away from fragrances not for the traditional reasons that you'd expect, that it is too expensive or that they are wearing alternative products like body sprays or lotions," Ms. Grant said. "Many people said it bothers them that fragrance has an effect on other people, that they are trying to be considerate by not overcoming others with scent."

Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus, two civil liberties groups in San Francisco, plan to file a lawsuit to force the government to disclose its policies on border searches, including which rules govern the seizing and copying of the contents of electronic devices. They also want to know the boundaries for asking travelers about their political views, religious practices and other activities potentially protected by the First Amendment. The question of whether border agents have a right to search electronic devices at all without suspicion of a crime is already under review in the federal courts.

The lawsuit was inspired by two dozen cases, 15 of which involved searches of cellphones, laptops, MP3 players and other electronics. Almost all involved travelers of Muslim, Middle Eastern or South Asian background, many of whom, including Mango and the tech engineer, said they are concerned they were singled out because of racial or religious profiling.

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The reason for a search is not always made clear. The Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which represents 2,500 business executives in the United States and abroad, said it has tracked complaints from several members, including Udy, whose laptops have been seized and their contents copied before usually being returned days later, said Susan Gurley, executive director of ACTE. Gurley said none of the travelers who have complained to the ACTE raised concerns about racial or ethnic profiling. Gurley said none of the travelers were charged with a crime.

"I was assured that my laptop would be given back to me in 10 or 15 days," said Udy, who continues to fly into and out of the United States. She said the federal agent copied her log-on and password, and asked her to show him a recent document and how she gains access to Microsoft Word. She was asked to pull up her e-mail but could not because of lack of Internet access. With ACTE's help, she pressed for relief. More than a year later, Udy has received neither her laptop nor an explanation.

ACTE last year filed a Freedom of Information Act request to press the government for information on what happens to data seized from laptops and other electronic devices. "Is it destroyed right then and there if the person is in fact just a regular business traveler?" Gurley asked. "People are quite concerned. They don't want proprietary business information floating, not knowing where it has landed or where it is going. It increases the anxiety level."

Udy has changed all her work passwords and no longer banks online. Her company, Radius, has tightened its data policies so that traveling employees must access company information remotely via an encrypted channel, and their laptops must contain no company information.

At least two major global corporations, one American and one Dutch, have told their executives not to carry confidential business material on laptops on overseas trips, Gurley said. In Canada, one law firm has instructed its lawyers to travel to the United States with "blank laptops" whose hard drives contain no data. "We just access our information through the Internet," said Lou Brzezinski, a partner at Blaney McMurtry, a major Toronto law firm. That approach also holds risks, but "those are hacking risks as opposed to search risks," he said.

Liquid chocolate: Really, that is what good hot chocolate should be at its essence. While the drink is defined by the quality of the chocolate, its dairy enrichment, vanilla flavoring and spark of salt conspire to make it all that it is -- which is quite wonderful.

The most engaging and, well, the sexiest of all hot chocolates is made by creating a lush chocolate base that gets whipped into a saucepan of hot milk, resulting in a lightly thickened potion. It qualifies as dessert. The basis for my hot chocolate is dark chocolate cream, an emulsion of chocolate and heavy cream known as a ganache.

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Once this suave chocolate ganache is at hand (it can be used after its 30-minute rest or refrigerated for longer keeping), it is combined with the heated ingredients to turn it flowing. The magic of the drink is in the careful mingling of the elements: The milk-and-sugar base should be cooked only until bubbles appear at the edges of the pan; after the ganache is added, the mixture should be heated just to drinking temperature. At either stage, allowing the liquid to come to a more vigorous boil will diminish the drink's gleaming texture.

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If I'm in a playful mood, I treat the finished drink, one portion at a time, to an animated frothing with a steamer nozzle. That turns the already delicious mixture into the softest, creamiest potion ever.

"Our customers have voiced concerns about products from this region and we have listened," Trader Joe's spokeswoman Alison Mochizuki said in a statement.

"All single ingredient food items sourced from mainland China are scheduled to be out of our stores by April 1," she said.

"We will continue to source products from other regions until our customers feel as confident as we do about the quality and safety of Chinese products."

A series of consumer scares last year involving harmful products from major exporter China, including seafood, cat food, medicines and toys, led to mass product recalls and the tightening of US safety regulations.

Promising to "Redeem your reputation and more," the product line included a "virtuous vanilla"-flavored lip balm and a "Get Tight with Christ" hand and body cream, as well as bags and other items sold by British retailer Topshop and produced by Blue Q, The Straits Times said.

Wing Tai Retail, which manages Topshop in the city-state, removed the range late last month after receiving complaints, the newspaper said. "These products trivialize Jesus Christ and Christianity," it quoted Nick Chui, 27, one of the complainants, as saying. "There are also sexual innuendoes in the messages and the way Jesus is portrayed in these products." On the packaging of one of the products, Jesus, wearing a bright white robe, looks heavenward while a blonde, heavily made-up woman with an arm draped across his shoulder gazes dreamily at his face.

"Why would anyone use religious figures to promote vanity products? It's very disrespectful and distasteful," the report quoted 24-year-old accountant Grace Ong, also Catholic, as saying.

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Christians make up about 15 percent of multicultural Singapore's population of 4.5 million people. About half of Singaporeans are Buddhist, Muslims account for another 15 percent, and Hindus around 5 percent.

Surprising research suggests a popular artificial sweetener has the unexpected and unwelcome effect of packing on the pounds. Purdue researchers report that saccharin altered the ability of rats to control their appetites. However, the head of an artificial sweetener trade group scoffed at the findings, saying they don't necessarily translate to humans.

"We found that the rats that were getting artificially sweetened yogurt gained more weight and ate more food," said study author Susan Swithers, an associate professor of psychological sciences at the Ingestive Behavior Research Institute at Purdue University. "The take-home message is that consumption of artificially sweetened products may interfere with an automatic process."

That process, she said, involves the body's ability to detect that it will soon be full. "We often will stop eating before we've been able to absorb all of the calories that come from a meal. One of the reasons we might stop eating is that our experience has taught in the past that, 'After I eat this food, I'll feel this full for this long,' " she explained.

It seems to be a subconscious process based on automatic estimations of how much energy certain foods will provide, she said. For example, a sweet taste might be a sign that "calories are coming, and I should prepare my body for the arrival of those calories." However, when the sweetness is not followed by a lot of calories, the body's digestive system gets confused, and the metabolism rate does not gear up as much the next time sweetness is tasted.

Saudi Arabia's religious police have banned red roses ahead of Valentine's Day, forcing couples in the conservative Muslim nation to think of new ways to show their love.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has ordered florists and gift shop owners in the capital Riyadh to remove any items colored scarlet, which is widely seen as symbolizing love, newspapers said.

"They visited us last night," the Saudi Gazette quoted an unidentified florist as saying. It is not unusual for the Saudi vice squad to clamp down ahead of Valentine's Day, which it sees as encouraging relations between men and women outside of wedlock, the newspaper said.

If you're sad and shopping, watch your wallet: A new study shows people's spending judgment goes out the window when they’re down, especially if they're a bit self-absorbed. Study participants who watched a sadness-inducing video clip offered to pay nearly four times as much money to buy a water bottle than a group that watched an emotionally neutral clip.

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"This is a phenomenon that occurs without awareness," Jennifer Lerner, a Harvard professor who studies emotion and decision making, said in a phone interview. "This is really different from the idea of retail therapy, where people are feeling negative and want to cheer themselves up by shopping. People have no idea this is going on."

The researchers concluded sadness can trigger a chain of emotions leading to extravagant tendencies. Sadness leads people to become more focused on themselves, causing the person to feel that they and their possessions are worth little. That feeling increases willingness to pay more -- presumably to feel better about themselves. "Because the study used real commodities and real money, results hold implications for everyday decisions," according to the authors of the study, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, and presented Saturday at a meeting of the Society for Social and Personality Psychology.

Edward Charlesworth, a Houston-based clinical psychologist who was not involved in the study, suggested the misery-is-not-miserly phenomenon is rooted in a culture that encourages people to buy to feel better. "Certainly, the advertising industry knows that," Charlesworth, citing as an example a 1970s McDonald's fast-food jingle, 'You deserve a break today.'"

Rachel Zoe was seen screaming and cursing because she couldn't get into the Marc Jacobs show. She tried to fight her way in through the bouncers, but they pushed her back. She ran off to her Town Car while the other celebs enjoyed mini-bottles of Moet and an on-time show inside.

We just happened to be chatting with Jacobs at the after-party at 24 Lexington Avenue when Zoe showed up to tell him the whole sorry tale.

RZ: Marc! [air kisses]

MJ: We were already dressed five minutes before the show was about to start, and I went out onstage and I said "Everybody sit down, I'm starting the fucking show!"

RZ: Literally, Marc, it took me 45 minutes to go twenty blocks. I get out of the car, I get to the gate, they're like, "It's started," and I go "You don't understand, he's my friend, I gotta fucking get in there!" I was so mad.

MJ: I know, Jason told me.

RZ: Oh my God, I was so mad.

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Then we coaxed more details from Zoe. "I am so upset right now," she said. "I was working really late and I left on time for the show and it should have taken seven minutes to get there and it took 45. And I missed it and he's one of my best friends and I literally almost burst into tears at the gate. It was horrible."

Selfridges in Oxford Street, London, have reported an astonishing 150% rise in sales of men's briefs after the first day's sales, following this week's launch of the new Emporio Armani underwear line, modeled by Beckham and revealing his extraordinary physique.

Fans are apparently flocking to the store to drool over wall-mounted black and white photographs of the sports icon, nicknamed "Golden Balls" by his wife Victoria, reclining provocatively in nothing but his smalls.

Victoria, when questioned recently on video about these larger-than-life posters of her hubby, by the International Herald Tribune's Suzy Menkes, answered: "I am proud to see his penis 25 foot long."