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December 31, 2018 at 08:15PM

This year's show for "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2019" will feature Shawn Mendes, Camila Cabello and Halsey, as part of a star-studded lineup for the annual New Year's Eve celebration and New Year's Eve ball drop live stream that will kick off 2019 from Time Square in New York City.

In addition to Mendes, Cabello and Halsey, artists Lauren Alaina, Bazzi, Kane Brown, Ciara, and Weezer were announced as performers.

Ciara will also serve as the host for the night for the show's West Coast component, while Seacrest will host the event in New York City. Jenny McCarthy will act as the Times Square correspondent and actress Lucy Hale will report from New Orleans.

Previously announced performers include Kelsea Ballerini, The Chainsmokers, Dua Lipa, Skylar Grey, Ella Mai, Foster the People, Macklemore, Post Malone, and Charlie Puth.

The celebration will be aired live on December 31 at 8 p.m. EST on ABC. You can watch the New Year's Eve ball drop live here, even if you don't have cable (or even a TV).

The live stream footage of the Times Square ball drop is courtesy the Times Square Alliance/Countdown Entertainment.

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December 30, 2018 at 08:15PM

Travel Channel host Andrew Zimmern is under fire for for saying that Chinese food in the Midwest is served in "horses–t restaurants."

Zimmern, a well-known TV chef, travels around the world trying strange food for his show Bizarre Foods. Zimmern also hosts The Zimmern List.

He made the comments during an interview with Fast Company while promoting his new Chinese restaurant chain, Lucky Cricket, which recently opened in a Minneapolis mall.

"I think I'm saving the souls of all the people from having to dine at these horses - - t restaurants masquerading as Chinese food that are in the Midwest," he said.

Zimmern said he hoped to introduce a "higher form" of Chinese food to people living in the Midwest.

"The full-service Lucky Cricket serves Sichuan, Xi'an, and Hong Kong cuisine," Zimmern continued. "The goal is to coax the flyover rubes to try a higher form of Chinese food. So what I have to do is I have to introduce them to hot chili oil, and introduce them to a hand-cut noodle, and introduce them to a real roast duck."

Minnesota restaurateur Edward Fong told the Post that the comments insulted a dedicated customer base that enjoys Midwest Chinese food.

"I think he understands that he didn't just insult Chinese independent restaurants like ourselves," Fong said. "but he really insulted people who like to come to our restaurants, which is a lot of people."

Eve Wu, co-owner of Minnesota-based Korean restaurant Cook St. Paul told the Post that she wholeheartedly supports Chinese-chain restaurants, including popular chain P.F Chang's.

"I'll back P.F. Chang's and their family any day of the week. Asians forever!" Eve Wu told the Post. "If we have to be the generation that is going to be calling out problematic behavior, because in the past it hasn't been, then I'm going to do it. . . . I will do a 100-year war with him."

Zimmern was born in New York City, but made his name working in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where he lives.

Zimmern later offered an apology for his statement to the Washington Post.

"I let myself get carried away and have too much fun as opposed to realizing that I was working," he told the Post. "You stop being mindful, and you say something flippant. You're not being precise with your words."

The Travel Channel said Zimmern's show had recently changed time slots, but a rep told TIME that the shift in programming is not connected to the interview.

"Any implication that the move of Andrew Zimmern's programs to a weekend time slot was tied to his remarks is factually incorrect," their statement read. "The Zimmern List and Bizarre Foods: Delicious Destinations are currently airing on Travel Channel on Saturday mornings and Bizarre Foods: Delicious Destinations is airing in prime time on Cooking Channel on Wednesdays at 10pm. In addition, all of Andrew Zimmern's series are available on the Travel Channel app."

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December 29, 2018 at 08:15PM

(NEW YORK) — Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert's hedge fund said it submitted a last-minute bid Friday valued at $4.4 billion to keep the struggling retailer from being liquidated.

Transform Holdco LLC, an affiliate of the ESL Investments hedge fund that Lampert heads, said it hoped to keep 425 stores open. The bid includes $1.3 billion in financing from three institutions, ESL said in a statement.

The iconic retailer, once the nation's largest department store chain, faced a deadline of Friday for bids for its remaining stores to avert closing down completely.

Earlier on Friday, Sears said it was closing 80 more stores as it teeters on the brink of liquidation.

The retailer that began out as a mail order catalog in the 1880s has been in a slow death spiral, hobbled by the Great Recession and then overwhelmed by rivals both down the street and across the internet.

The 80 stores are due to close by March. That's in addition to 182 stores already slated for closure, including 142 by the end of 2018 and 40 by February. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October , saying at the time it would close more than 20 percent of all stores, keeping open only its 500 most profitable locations.

Sears Holdings Corp., which also runs Kmart, joins the list of retail brands taken over by hedge funds that collapsed under the weight of debt forced upon them.

Under hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert, Sears has bought time by spinning off stores and putting on the block the brands that had grown synonymous with the company, such as Craftsman. The company's chairman and biggest shareholder, Lampert loaned out his own money and put together deals to keep the company afloat and to turn whatever profit he could for ESL hedge fund. Lampert and ESL have been trying to buy the rest of Sears for up to $4.6 billion in cash and stock.

ESL said that should the $4.4 billion bid be accepted, "we expect that the company that emerges from bankruptcy would offer employment to up to 50,000 associates."

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December 28, 2018 at 08:15PM

Hold the ground chuck: Nestle SA sees the future in a meat-free burger made from soy and wheat protein. Soon you may be able to wash it down with purple walnut milk or a spirulina latte.

The Swiss company is gearing up for its biggest push yet into the booming vegan market: the Incredible Burger, to be introduced under the Garden Gourmet label next spring. As consumers swap meat for leafy greens, Nestle wants to turn the trend in plant-based eating into a billion-dollar business.

It's a big shift for the world's largest food company, whose products include Herta sausages and ham. While Nestle and its competitors have been dabbling in vegan fare for years, growth has become more essential amid stagnant sales of mainstream supermarket brands. Many of whose products contain dairy and meat, which vegans don't consume.

Nestle is racing against rivals Unilever and new entrants like Beyond Meat, backed by Bill Gates and Leonardo DiCaprio, to find alternatives that resonate with a new generation of consumers turned off by animal protein and high cholesterol content. The Anglo-Dutch company in December snapped up Dutch plant-based food maker The Vegetarian Butcher, while the U.S. startup sells a burger that includes beetroot juice to simulate the myoglobin in beef.

The Swiss company's plant-based business may reach more than 1 billion francs ($1 billion) in sales within a decade, according to Laurent Freixe, chief executive officer of the Americas region. That's up from just a few hundred million francs now, with the bulk of Nestle's 90 billion francs in sales still coming from coffee, bottled water and other long-standing businesses. The company says about half of its protein used, including in pet food, comes from plant rather than animal sources.

'Food Tribes'

Nestle Chief Technology Officer Stefan Palzer identified consumers who focus on plant-based eating as one of several fast-growing "food tribes," along with those following gluten-free or lactose-free diets. Veganism's popularity with millennials makes it particularly appealing to food giants.

"While digging deeper into consumer trends, we found they changed a bit in the last couple of years depending on how consumers define a healthy diet," he said in an interview.

Big Food has bolstered its vegan presence through acquisitions over the past two years. Nestle bought California-based Sweet Earth and snack maker Terrafertil, while Danone is looking at adding milk-free ranges to some of its flagship brands, such as Activia and Actimel, following its $10 billion purchase of WhiteWave. Read mo re: Danone Swaps Cows for Almonds in Vegan Yogurt Brand Push

Snacks and drinks are one thing. The holy grail of veganism remains a meat substitute that tastes and feels like the real deal — something a series of pretenders have claimed. Garden Gourmet has also introduced would-be chicken nuggets, while Nestle's Haagen-Dazs now offers a vegan ice cream line. Maggi offers sauces and seasonings that Palzer said complement plant-based meat alternatives, and even Herta sells veggie sausages and lunch meat.

Nestle signaled its interest in plant-based food at an investor seminar in London in 2017, attended by activist shareholder Dan Loeb, who's been pushing the company to revamp itself more aggressively. The company served a vegan dinner for fund managers more accustomed to expense-account steak.

Nuts, Berries

At Nestle's research and development center in Lausanne, Switzerland, scientists are exploring the potential for other vegan proteins. While the bulk of dairy-free milk available to consumers now is soy-based, for example, the company is experimenting with a liquid derived from walnuts and blueberries, with a purple hue. There's also a blue latte featuring spirulina algae.

"Vegetarianism has never been this popular before and it's here to stay, I'm convinced about that," Palzer said.

(Bloomberg) — Tesla Inc. added Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson to its board, picking a controversial Silicon Valley luminary and a respected human-resources expert to show securities regulators that it's giving Elon Musk more oversight.

The year 2018 was very good for the car industry. According to Cox Automotive, U.S. auto sales are expected to total 17.2 million units in this year, which is more than last year and the fourth year in a row to beat 17 million, finishing above the firm's earlier forecasts.

But I am already looking forward to what I can get my hands on in 2019.

For starters, there's the convertible version of the Bentley Continental GT, which was one of my favorite cars from 2018, as well as the convertible version of the McLaren 720S, which got a rather mixed review from me. I'm hoping the open-air version is more exciting—or improved, technology-wise (hey, it could happen!)—than the coupe.

I'm also eager to try the next-generation Porsche 911, the 992. As the next-generation continuation of a 54-year-old icon, it has a lot to prove, and a lot to lose, if Porsche doesn't get it right.

But one car stands out above all the rest as the single most essential vehicle I must drive in 2019: the Porsche Taycan.

A lot is riding on this otherwise humble four-door sedan. For starters, this is Porsche's first move into general-production electrified cars (the 918 Spyder hybrid doesn't count). And it'll play a crucial role in the Volkswagen AG lineup as VW executes a plan to become more agile while it faces major shifts in the auto industry. The strategy centers around streamlining operations in order to goose profits by billions of dollars over eight years—all while VW makes expensive-to-manufacture electric cars such as the Taycan, without passing along the additional costs to consumers.

It's also the brand's first direct challenge to Tesla, which has dominated the luxury electric market since the Model S debuted. From a product standpoint, the Taycan promises some exceptional capabilities. Porsche executives say it will have a range of 250 miles, after charging in fewer than 20 minutes. It is expected to have a total system output of more than 600 horsepower and accelerate to 62mph in fewer than 3.5 seconds.

In theory, it will hit at a time when potential Tesla consumers are less patient with poor build quality, endless wait times, and the latest antics from Tesla founder Elon Musk. It will also need to fend off other contenders on this front, including Volvo's Polestar line. BMW's Vision iNext vehicles, and Jaguar's excellent I Pace SUV.

Taycan won't bethe only Volkswagen Group-mounted attack: Porsche is investing more than €6 billion ($6.9 billion) through 2022 on electric mobility; by 2025, it says, half of the vehicles Porsche produces, such as an electric version of the Macan, will be all-electric or hybrid. (Even the upcoming 992 has room for a hybrid powertrain.) Audi, too, will be sharing the same electric powertrain and 60 percent of the Taycan components in its forthcoming GT. But as the first, it's the most important.

Along with spending all that cash, Porsche has joined with such competitors as Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, Daimler AG, and Ford Motor Co. to develop fast-charging infrastructures in Europe. They're using racing such as Formula E as a testing bed to develop technology they use in those races for electric cars they can sell to consumers. Five years ago, I'd never have expected to see either happen. It all shows how much the automakers need this to work.

Yet this blockbuster car is no sure thing. The few times I was in Stuttgart in 2018, the factory in which the Taycan will be manufactured was under construction.

The biggest challenge Porsche faces might be from its own loyalists. Read through any mention on social media about Porsche's forthcoming electric endeavor, and you'll have to wade through haters, trolls, and brand purists who decry the vehicle as lame, neutered, ugly, and a host of other things unprintable here.

These hardcore gearheads say an electric Porsche is no Porsche. It needs to be aspirated with air or water or something, they say, and the engine needs to rumble and crackle and pop, too. But if it looks like a Porsche and drives well, I don't think the wider population will care one bit.

And having seen it most recently in Mexico City, I can vouch for its relative good looks. (Though I'd like to see it in slate gray, with different wheels.)

One thing is for sure: This will be the most important single vehicle Porsche has launched. And you'll probably see the Taycan coming before you hear it. In the meantime, I need to drive that car!