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Express closing stores, along with a new corporate strategy.

A nother struggling retailer has succumbed to store closures; this time, it is fashion apparel company Express (EXPR). Express announced the closures on Wednesday, along with a new corporate strategy.

Express said it has plans to close about 100 stores by 2022. The retailer already closed nine locations in 2019 and said it will close 31 by the end of January and another 35 by the end of January 2021.

While Express did not indicate which locations would be closing, it did say that it expects to see a sales reduction of $90 million by 2022. Express reported that it had 411 mall-based stores and 215 outlet stores as of Nov. 2, according to a public filing (via USA Today).

With the news that it would be closing stores, Express narrowed its Q4 guidance. Comparable sales for the company are expected to be down 3% with adjusted net income in the range of $11 million to $12.5 million. Express also expects a tax restructuring charge of between $6.5 million and $7.5 million during the fourth quarter.

“Our expected results show the third consecutive quarter of sequential improvement in our comp sales trends,” Tim Baxter, CEO at Express, said in a statement. “I am encouraged that the new initiatives we have put in place are resonating with our customers.”

“Today we are unveiling our new corporate strategy, called The EXPRESSway Forward, and we are focused on profitable growth. My expectation is that we will return to a mid-single-digit operating margin through a combination of low-single-digit comp sales growth, margin expansion and cost reductions. This will of course take some time, but we have a clear path,” he added.

As part of its new EXPRESSway Forward strategy, Express is looking to improve engagement with its current customer base as well as bring in new customers with a relaunched loyalty program and private label credit cards in Fall 2020 as well as a series of other initiatives.

Express is also taking the popular path of curated apparel for customers to offer more versatility, along with reinvigorating its brand with new self-expression and confident strategy for both men and women.

Shares of Express stock were up 17.8313% as of 11:40 a.m. EST on Wednesday.

The Witcher Netflix record, is a big hit. However.

Netflix has officially announced that its fantasy series, The Witcher, is a big hit. However, some of its popularity is due to how streamer recently changed up how it measures its viewing metrics. In a fourth-quarter earnings call, Netflix said that during its four weeks on the platform, 76 million member households watched The Witcher.

However, as explained by The Hollywood Reporter, the company previously counted a view as a member account watching at least 70 percent of one episode or 70 percent of a feature-length film. Now, it’s cut that time down to as little as two minutes.

Essentially, if any user clicks on The Witcher on Netflix, that’s “long enough to indicate the choice was intentional,” according to a footnote in the earnings report. With these new metrics, the streamer now says The Witcher may score the platform’s biggest first season ever.

“Our new methodology is similar to the BBC iPlayer in their rankings based on ‘requests’ for the title, ‘Most Popular’ articles on The New York Times, which include those who opened the articles, and YouTube view counts,” the company also noted in the report. “This way, short and long titles are treated equally, leveling the playing field for all types of our content including interactive content, which has no fixed length.”

The Witcher stars Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, a white-haired, yellow-eyed witcher widely known as a war hero and urban legend. The series, which premiered on Dec. 20, is based on the work of author Andrzej Sapkowski, who first started creating the fantasy world in 1992.

While the show received some mixed reviews after its premiere, it’s clearly become a popular choice for Netflix viewers, although there were repeated gripes that the show’s multiple timelines were too confusing. Netflix even responded with an official timeline of the show’s events to help clear things up for casual viewers.

Some of the show’s success has been attributed to the Game of Thrones-sized hole left in the TV landscape after HBO’s sword-and-sorcery epic concluded this past spring. Obviously, comparisons between the two series were all but inevitable, but Cavill has managed to keep things in perspective.

“I think comparisons are always going to be made and it’s fun,” said Cavill, via ET. “It’s fine when they’re two ends of a spectrum in a fantasy genre. But that’s like saying someone’s going to be the next Tom Cruise. No one’s going to be the next Tom Cruise.”

The Witcher was renewed for a second season prior to its first season’s debut, which is currently available to stream on Netflix.

Tulsi Gabbard sues Clinton for alleged ‘Russian asset’ smear.

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard sued former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday for allegedly defaming her by suggesting the Hawaii congresswoman is a “Russian asset.”

“Clinton’s false assertions were made in a deliberate attempt to derail Tulsi’s campaign,” said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The suit claims that Gabbard has suffered “actual damages” of ”$50 million — and counting” from Clinton’s comments. But the suit does not cite a specific amount of damages it is seeking.

Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee who previously was a senator from New York, said in an October interview that an unnamed Democratic presidential candidate was “the favorite of the Russians.”

Clinton did not mention Gabbard, a four-term congresswoman, by name in that interview with the podcast “Campaign HQ With David Plouffe.”

But Clinton’s spokesman, Nick Merrill, said after the interview that “If the nesting doll fits,” when asked if she had been referring to Gabbard, who is also a major in the Army National Guard and a combat veteran of Iraq.

Merrill later said in a tweet that Clinton was referring to the Republican Party grooming Gabbard. But it is Russians, not the GOP, who are known for making nesting, or Matryoshka dolls.

Clinton, wife of President Bill Clinton, lost the 2016 election to Republican nominee Donald Trump.

The report by special counsel Robert Mueller as well as a probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee have both found that Russian agents tried to damage Clinton’s candidacy, and that they tried to promote the third-party candidacy of Green Party nominee Jill Stein in order to harm Clinton’s chances of winning the White House.

When asked about the suit, Merrill told NBC News on Wednesday, “That’s ridiculous.”

The suit suggests that Clinton smeared Gabbard with a false accusation in “retribution” for Gabbard’s endorsement of Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders in his 2016 candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“Clinton — a cutthroat politician by any account — has never forgotten this perceived slight,” said Gabbard’s suit, which also names the congresswoman’s presidential campaign committee as a plaintiff.

Clinton “lied about her perceived rival” for reasons that could include “personal animus, political enmity, or fear of real change within a political party Clinton and her allies have long dominated.”

Clinton “did so publicly, unambiguously, and with obvious malicious intent,” the suit claimed.

DC Trump inaugural committee illegally enriched president’s hotel (News).

The attorney general for the District of Columbia on Wednesday sued President Donald Trump’s official inaugural committee, as well as the Trump Organization and the Trump International Hotel in Washington, alleging they worked together to illegally enrich the Trump family business.

The suit claims that the nonprofit inaugural committee violated laws barring the use of charitable funds to enrich private individuals when it agreed to pay Trump’s hotel more than $1 million for the use of ballroom space during the January 2017 inaugural festivities.

The lawsuit alleges that the Trump inaugural committee knowingly misused its funds when it paid $175,000 per day to reserve the ballroom of the Trump hotel for four days during the president’s inauguration week but held only two events there, one of which was only for Trump’s adult children and their guests.

“District law requires nonprofits to use their funds for their stated public purpose, not to benefit private individuals or companies,” said District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine in a statement Wednesday. “In this case, we are seeking to recover the nonprofit funds that were improperly funneled directly to the Trump family business.”

According to the legal complaint, the contract the Presidential Inaugural Committee, or PIC, had with the Trump Hotel for event space “violated the PIC’s articles of incorporation by causing the PIC to pay amounts to the Trump Hotel that were unfair, unreasonable and unjustified and that acted ultimately to confer improper private benefit on the Trump Entities.”

“District nonprofit law required the PIC to seek out and pay reasonable fair market value for services rendered. The PIC did not do so, instead choosing to host its events at the Trump Hotel and pay far more than market value, ultimately for the private benefit of the Trump Entities.”

A spokeswoman for Trump Hotels defended the pricing, saying in a statement that “the rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude.”

Much of the lawsuit appears to hinge on the question of whether the Trump inaugural committee agreed to book a block of rooms at the Trump hotel. According to the lawsuit, “it was the Trump Hotel’s usual policy to provide event space for free or at reduced rates when a group agreed to rent out a large block of rooms.”

This policy is consistent with hotel industry practices, and with the terms of contracts that Trump’s inaugural committee inked with other luxury hotels during the inauguration.

According to emails contained in the legal filings, the inaugural committee’s director, Rick Gates, verbally agreed in meetings with the Trump hotel’s manager that the committee would be responsible for filling up 80% of the guest rooms in the hotel during the days when they were renting event space.

Yet despite Gates’ agreement to fill a block of rooms, the Trump Hotel still charged, and the inaugural committee paid, event space fees of $175,000 per day for ballroom space.

A spokeswoman for Trump Hotels defended the pricing, saying in a statement that “the rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude.”

The lawsuit also contained two contracts that the inaugural committee had signed with comparable Washington hotels during the same week in early 2017. They showed that the inaugural committee had reserved blocks of rooms, and in exchange, the hotels had either waved event rental fees altogether, or charged only $20,000 for an event space.

The Trump Hotel’s final contract with the inaugural committee, however, contained no mention of the room block that the Gates had agreed to reserve, even though it was referred to in emails.

The lawsuit is merely the latest in a series of controversies surrounding how the Trump inaugural committee raised and spent its funds in late 2016 and early 2017.

Trump’s inaugural committee raised more private money for inaugural events than any president in modern history, around $107 million. But it put on significantly fewer official events than Trump’s predecessor. In 2008, Barack Obama raised and spent just over $50 million on 10 official inaugural balls. Eight years later, Trump’s committee raised more than $100 million, and spent it on just three official inaugural balls.

Questions about the cost overruns have dogged the Trump inaugural committee for years, although aides who worked on the events say the money was spent in good faith, and everything was just very expensive.

Emails contained in Wednesday’s lawsuit support these claims and show that inaugural event planners strenuously objected to how much the Trump hotel was charging for space.

In one email from Gates to Ivanka Trump in mid-December, he told the president’s eldest daughter, who was an executive at the Trump Organization, that both he and the chief event planner had “concerns” about the price the Trump hotel had quoted for the event space.

“First, the cost itself seems quite high compared to other property. Second, I am a bit worried about the optics of PIC paying Trump Hotel a high fee and the media making a big story out of it,” Gates wrote.

Now, three years later, the inaugural committee has been disbanded, and its last remaining funds have been donated to charity. In place of funds from the committee, the District of Columbia is asking the judge to make the Trump Organization and its Washington hotel turn over the amount that the inaugural committee spent on event space, $1,033,757, and that it be given to charity.