RadioShack is planning to close 1,784 of their retail stores in the next two months, but the closures are unevenly distributed across the country.

Business Insider combined the full list of the stores scheduled for closure with RadioShack's breakdown of retail stores by state as of December 31, 2013 included in their most recent annual report. This map shows the percentage of stores that are going to close in each state:

While stores are getting hit everywhere, the Southeast and Midwest is losing a higher percentage of stores than Western and Northeastern states.

Here's the breakdown of total stores and stores closing in each state:

SEE ALSO: The shopping-mall crisis is getting more ominous

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On Monday we reported that an Apple employee said the company was working on something that would "give Tesla a run for its money."

It seems unlikely that Apple is working on a car of its own, but you never know.

Last year Apple board member and J. Crew Group CEO Mickey Drexler told Paul Goldberger that Steve Jobs had a car on Apple's radar.

"Steve Jobs, if he had lived, was gonna design an iCar," said Drexler. "I think cars have an extraordinary opportunity for cool design."

Drexler explains then the first Tesla came out, there was an Apple board meeting in which Drexler criticized the first Tesla for being ugly. Jobs shot back that Drexler didn't get it because the Tesla was beautifully designed on the inside, and was more than just a vehicle — they had built an entire platform.

Drexler is stepping down for Apple's board in March.

Here's the full video. Drexler's comments about the iCar start around 1:17:20:

SEE ALSO: Apple employee: We're working on something that will 'give Tesla a run for its money'

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Berlin (AFP) - British actor Robert Pattinson said Monday he learned to sympathise with the paparazzi by playing the photographer who helped make James Dean an icon.

Pattison stars in Anton Corbijn's "Life", which premiered out of competition at the 65th Berlin film festival.

He plays Life magazine photographer Dennis Stock, who befriend Dean in 1955 when the young "Rebel Without a Cause" actor was on the cusp of fame, and just seven months before Dean's untimely death in a car crash aged 24.

"Life" is the fourth feature film by Corbijn, a celebrated rock photographer. 

Pattinson, who shot to global stardom with the "Twilight" series, said he was drawn to the story about the trappings of celebrity and enjoyed, for once, being the one taking the pictures.

"I do feel like being a paparazzi for a second -- I do empathise with their plight," the 28-year-old said with a laugh. 

"I was filled with self-loathing, wretchedness -- I wanted to really kind of harm myself at the end of every day."

Pattinson said he had gone through his own "James Dean phase" in his teens getting started in the movie industry.

"It is someone who's trying to be an artist and his fear of not being as good an artist as he thinks he is the most debilitating part of his life. That's quite a sort of timeless story," he said.

Dean is played in the film by Dane DeHaan, best known from "The Amazing Spider-Man 2", who captures the actor's Beat sensibilities and trademark mumble. 

DeHaan, 29, said Dean had been "really revolutionary" for harnessing baby boomers' youthful longing for freedom in the 1950s in the three films he made during his short life.

He said Stock's photo series of the actor, in which he shot him at home with his family on their Indiana farm and walking through New York, collar turned up against the rain with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, had helped make him immortal. 

"If you're young person who doesn't know who James Dean is, you know that photo of him in Times Square, it's that iconic a photo," he said.

Corbijn, 59, famous for indelible shots of the Rolling Stones and U2, said he was interested in exploring "the balance between the photographer and his subject" and the tensions that can arise.

"Dennis Stock thinks he's doing James Dean a favour and James Dean thinks he's doing Dennis Stock a favour and I've been in similar situations," he said.

"Life" garnered mixed reviews, with US industry bible Variety calling it an "engaging, elegiac portrait of a legend in the making" while Britain's Guardian dismissed it as a "laborious, lugubrious movie". 

The Berlin film festival runs until Sunday. 

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The mobile app-install ad — an ad unit that directs users to download a mobile app – arguably offers the most measurable return on investment (ROI) of any major mobile ad format, and has seen a massive rise in popularity among marketers.

These ads are becoming an essential tool for apps seeking to stand out among the millions of mobile apps on the Google Play and the Apple app stores. On top of strong performance, including high clickthrough rates, marketers like app-install ads because their value can often be accurately quantified.

And, for major mobile platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google, and smaller mobile ad platforms like Millennial Media, the high prices these ads commands make them very attractive inventory. 

New and exclusive data from BI Intelligence finds that US mobile app-install ad revenue will top $4.6 billion this year and grow to $6.8 billion by the end of 2019, increasing by a compound annual growth rate of 14% from 2014. We believe mobile app install ads accounted for about 30% of mobile ad revenue last year.

Access The Full Report And Data Sets By Signing Up For A Trial Membership »

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Mobile app-install ads are becoming extremely popular ad units among different types of app publishers, not just game-app developers. App marketers — including e-commerce companies and a few brands — like these ads because they result in significant downloads and measurable ROI. Social networks and ad exchanges like them because they can sell the units at significantly higher prices than other ads.
• Easy-to-measure ROI drives demand. In many cases, once an app-install ad generates a download, everything a customer does in the app, such as "lifetime customer value," can be attributed back to that specific ad.
• On Facebook, mobile app-install ads cost significantly more than standard units, due to performance and targeting capabilities. The report includes CPM pricing and CTR rates compared to the average Facebook ad.
  
• Prices will hold relatively steady as supply and demand rise in tandem. The mobile install ad is a fairly mature ad unit at this point, and a good deal of competing supply is now available from Twitter and Google. But continued increases in demand for these ads among app marketers will keep prices from declining.
• Top mobile publishers and ad networks are competing fiercely for mobile app-install ad dollars, and for the favor of app developers. Twitter and Facebook are doing their best to lure app builders to their platforms and app-install ads with advanced ad analytics and developer tools.

The report is full of charts, data, and case studies that can easily be downloaded and put to use. 

In full, the report: 

• Forecasts spending on mobile app-install ads in the US over the next five years
• Puts total revenue in context of mobile ad spend and Facebook mobile ad spend
• Analyzes how mobile-app install ads are priced and bought,  and looks at how pricing and performance trends have changed over time 
• Highlights the mobile app-install ad units available from major players like Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Google
• Examines the different types of marketers that have put the ad format to use

For full access receive to all BI Intelligence's analysis, reporting, and downloadable charts and presentations on the digital media industry, sign up for a trial.

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NOW WATCH: Why Bethany Mota Has A Legion Of 10 Million Fans Waiting For Her Next YouTube Video

The Federal Reserve will begin tightening monetary policy, which means higher interest rates are coming. Most economists expect that first rate hike to come mid-2015.

This has investors rightfully worried because higher rates mean higher interest costs, which should be bad for profits and ultimately stocks.

Deutsche Bank Chief US Equity Strategist David Bianco examined the history of Fed rate hikes and their impacts on stocks.

"Stocks typically sell-off on the first of a series of rate hikes, but the magnitude and duration of the sell-off depend on conditions," Bianco writes. "During early cycle hikes the initial sell-off was generally small, quickly recovered and further S&P gains came in next three months and longer (like 2004, 1983, 1972). But many sell- offs on late cycle hikes became corrections or even bear markets."

Unfortunately, it's only in hindsight do we know where we are in the cycle.

"Determining whether it’s early or late in the cycle is subjective, but the shape of the curve, inflation measures, years since the last recession can help," Bianco said. "Next year is likely another mid-cycle year and we don’t expect a severe S&P reaction to hikes, but the risk is the Fed hikes too late or too little and inflation accelerates requiring the Fed to hike to levels higher than expected by the market."

The chart above illustrates the average price move of the S&P 500 during the four months before and the six months after the first rate hike. It's the average of the last seven hikes. It's not the most helpful chart for people who enjoy obsessing over the details.

It does, however, show that the general direction of the stock market tends to be up.

Here's a look at what happened around the three hikes during the 1980s:

...and the four hikes during the 1990s and 2000s.

SEE ALSO: CITI: Here comes $20 oil ...

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NOW WATCH: Nationwide's Super Bowl commercial about dead children is about corporate profits ... in a way that we can all appreciate

Yelp is making a big push to hire more salespeople this year.

During the company's Q4 earnings call last week, chief operating officer Geoff Donaker said Yelp plans on increasing its salesforce by around 40% in 2015.

The company had about 2,700 employees at the end of 2014.

Some business owners have complained about aggressive tactics from Yelp salespeople, who allegedly hint that they can remove or suppress bad reviews, or favor good reviews, if the business buys an ad.

Yelp has repeatedly denied that there's any connection between advertising and organic reviews, and even pointed to an independent study that debunks it.

Yelp has begun to move customers more toward a self-service model, where they buy ads through an automated system based and pay based on clickthrough rates. But on the earnings call, Yelp claimed that the majority of its customers still prefer to work with a salesperson, even if they begin the process of buying an ad themselves.

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NOW WATCH: This 'Fifty Shades of Grey' trailer recreated with Legos is way better than the original

Madrid (AFP) - Spanish clothing giant Inditex, owner of the Zara brand, said Monday it had stopped selling angora garments because of cruelty to rabbits the cosy wool is plucked from in China.

The company, which also owns brands such as Bershka and Massimo Dutti, dropped the soft angora items from its stores last year, a spokeswoman told AFP.

"The Angora products have been removed from the stores, in particular items that were in last year's autumn and winter collection," the spokeswoman said.

The US-based animal rights group PETA launched a campaign in 2013 denouncing the treatment of the angora rabbits in the extraction of their long, silky hair.

The Asian regional branch of PETA released videos of employees pulling out the hair from the skin of screeching live rabbits.

Such wool is also extracted from so-called angora goats and cats, but PETA says about 90 percent of it comes from rabbits in China, which lacks animal protection laws.

PETA said in a statement that other big clothing brands such as French Connection, Calvin Klein, Topshop and Tommy Hilfiger had also banned angora garments.

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Hong Kong (AFP) - A Hong Kong woman was on Tuesday found guilty of severely abusing her Indonesian maid, in a case that dominated headlines and sparked international outrage.

"You are remanded in custody," Judge Amanda Woodcock told Law Wan-tung, after announcing to a packed courthouse that the 44-year-old had been found guilty of 18 of the 20 charges laid against her.

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Beijing (AFP) - China's Wanda Group has agreed to buy Infront -- the Swiss sports marketing group headed by FIFA president Sepp Blatter's nephew - for 1.05 billion euros ($1.2 billion), the two firms said Tuesday.

Wang Jianlin, chairman of the Chinese property and entertainment conglomerate, said in a joint statement that the acquisition will "drive the development of Chinese sports industry and its interest around the globe".

The deal puts Wang -- who recently bought 20 percent of Spanish football champions Atletico Madrid -- and his company firmly in the front row of the global sports business. 

Infront Sports and Media, based in Zug, Switzerland, and directed by Philippe Blatter, handles the media and marketing rights for many international sports events.

It is expected to rake in several hundred million dollars on the next two football World Cups -- in Russia in 2018 and in Qatar in 2022 -- alone. 

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has in the past come under criticism after its decision to award to Infront the sale of TV rights in a number of Asian countries for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

The company, which counts some 600 employees across 12 countries, is also heavily present in all aspects of sports marketing, with sponsoring activities including advertising around sports halls and stadiums.

It also handles media finances for many football clubs, including AC Milan and Inter Milan, and counts the Berlin Marathon, China's professional basketball league and the European Handball Federation among its clients.

Philippe Blatter said in the statement: "We are looking forward to jointly tackle a variety of major expansion projects with the aim to strengthen our leading position in the global sports market."

Wanda is buying Infront from venture capital firm Bridgepoint, which acquired it in 2011.

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London (AFP) - Tottenham Hotspur hero Harry Kane wants his side to carry on from where left off against bitter rivals Arsenal when they face Liverpool at Anfield on Tuesday.

The 21-year-old was the star turn as he scored two goals in Tottenham's come-from-behind win over Arsenal in last weekend's North London derby at White Hart Lane.

Now fifth-placed Spurs are a point and a place in front of Arsenal, one of their rivals for a top four spot -- and the Champions League football that goes with it -- along with Liverpool, currently seventh.

Yet not since 1995 have Spurs finished above perennial Champions League qualifiers Arsenal.

"If we finish above Arsenal, of course we've got a great chance of finishing in the top four because Arsenal have been up there for so many years now," said Kane.

"You'd like to think if you're above Arsenal then you'd be in the top four but the Premier League is a strange league sometimes and you never know what's going to happen. We've got to focus and do what we can do."

Kane is the English top-flight's leading scorer with 22 goals in all competitions, including an impressive run of 11 in his last 14 matches. 

"He is doing well, scoring goals and we have to look after him," Liverpool central defender Martin Skrtel said of Kane.

"But it is not only him, Tottenham are doing well as a team. They are playing much better than they played before so we have to be ready for them."

- Arsenal response -

Saturday's goalless draw in the Merseyside derby represented Liverpool's fourth successive match without conceding and Skrtel added: "We are happy for our clean sheets because from the beginning of the season there was a lot of criticism of the defending."

Arsenal, who had won five successive matches before losing to Spurs, have the seemingly ideal chance to bounce straight back when they face bottom-of-the-table Leicester at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday.

However, Gunners manager Arsene Wenger insisted the Foxes would be no push-overs.

"We play at home against Leicester, a team who fight not to go down," said Wenger. "We have to recover from the disappointment and be ready to respond very quickly."

Leicester, who lost 1-0 at home to Crystal Palace on Saturday, were forced to issue a statement late Sunday insisting Nigel Pearson was still their manager following a report he had been sacked.

Meanwhile relegation-threatened QPR, still without a permanent manager following Harry Redknapp's resignation last week, will go in search of their first away league win of the season against Sunderland.

Chelsea could find themselves 10 points clear at the top of the table come full-time on Wednesday if they win at home to Everton and second-placed Manchester City, the defending champions, lose away to Stoke.

As if to emphasise their goal threat, it was right-back Branislav Ivanovic who scored Chelsea's winner against Aston Villa and Blues manager Jose Mourinho said: "He is a competitive animal. A big heart.

"A team is an artist like (Eden) Hazard, it is a defender like Branislav. The mix and combination of talent makes a team." 

Meanwhile City manager Manuel Pellegrini insisted his side's recent slump could not be blamed on the absence of key midfielder Yaya Toure, who helped the Ivory Coast win the Africa Cup of Nations on Sunday.

City, who drew 1-1 with lowly Hull last weekend, have now gone four games without a league win while Toure has been on international duty.

"You can't have any doubt how important Yaya Toure is for us," said Pellegrini. "But we feel that every game without Yaya we could win. 

"It is not just about one player."

Wednesday also sees third-placed Southampton at home to West Ham and Manchester United, currently fourth, welcome Burnley to Old Trafford.

Fixtures (1945 GMT unless stated)

Tuesday: Arsenal v Leicester, Hull v Aston Villa, Liverpool v Tottenham (2000 GMT), Sunderland v QPR

Wednesday: Chelsea v Everton, Crystal Palace v Newcastle, Manchester United v Burnley, Southampton v West Ham, Stoke v Manchester City, West Brom v Swansea

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Putrajaya (Malaysia) (AFP) - Malaysia's highest court on Tuesday upheld a sodomy conviction against opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, rejecting his appeal against the verdict and casting fresh doubt over his turbulent political career.

Chief Justice Arifin Zakaria said the Federal Court has dismissed Anwar's appeal against the conviction handed down last March, which found him guilty of sodomising a young former male aide, Mohamad Saiful Bukhari Azlan. Last year's conviction brought a five-year jail term. 

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Sony Pictures Entertainment has announced a plan to bring together the worlds of Marvel Studios and Spider-Man.

It's a move that will likely introduce a brand new version of Spider-Man in future films. According to a statement released on the Marvel website Monday night, the new Spider-Man will appear in a Marvel film from Marvel's Cinematic Universe. The announcement says in part:

Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise, on July 28, 2017, in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and his expert team at Marvel and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago. Together, they will collaborate on a new creative direction for the web slinger. Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films.

There have been lots of rumblings of late surrounding Marvel's impending brand overhaul, now it appears this latest news may be just the beginning of a long-awaited rebirth for the company, and for Spider-Man in particular.

The character has existed within the world of Marvel for some 50 years, and has fans spanning several generations. The Spider-Man franchise has so far earned $4 billion across five films released worldwide.

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NOW WATCH: Watch how many people can't walk on the street without having their phones in their hands

Good morning! Here are 10 things you need to know in markets today.

Obama and Merkel announced unity and not much else about Ukraine. US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared Monday that Russian aggression in Ukraine has only reinforced the unity of the US and Europe, as they weighed the prospects of reviving an elusive peace plan to end the conflict. But the Western leaders didn't provide Ukraine with any concrete support.

Falling prices in China are pointing to an economic slowdown. China said consumer prices rose just 0.3% in January dragging the year-on-year rate of price growth down from 1.5% to just 0.8%. Chinese PPI year-on-year to January fell 4.3%, when a 3.8% drop was expected. Weak demand equals no price pressure and eventually, even factoring oil’s big drops, the spiral of lower prices. 

Russian car sales are collapsing. A report from Bloomberg on Monday said car sales in Russia will probably fall 35% this year, according to data from PwC. In an "optimistic forecast," car sales in Russia could fall just 25% in 2015, though with the Russian economy expected to fall into recession this year as Western sanctions, the collapse in oil prices, and the devalued ruble weigh on the Russian economy, the results could be even bleaker.

UBS just approved its biggest dividend since the crisis. UBS in 2014 posted its biggest payout to shareholders since the financial crisis, after the Swiss bank hit capital targets and changed its legal structure, which helped it to hike its dividend. Switzerland's biggest bank said on Tuesday net profit for the fourth quarter of 2014 was 963 million Swiss francs ($1.04 billion).

Citi still thinks oil could drop to $20. Ed Morse, Citi's global head of commodity research, wrote in a note: "It’s impossible to call a bottom point... Which could, as a result of oversupply and the economics of storage, fall well below $40 a barrel for WTI, perhaps as low as the $20 range for a while."

UK industrial production is coming. At 9:30 a.m. GMT, the UK's industrial and manufacturing production figures for December will be released. As it stands, production rose only 1.1% in the year to November, and economists are expecting just a 0.7% hike in the year to December.

The US has at least five more years as the world's top oil supply growth hotspot. The United States will remain the world's top source of oil supply growth up to 2020, even after the recent collapse in prices, the International Energy Agency said, defying expectations of a more dramatic slowdown in shale growth.

Asian markets are mostly down. Japan's Nikkei closed 0.33% lower, followed down by Hong Kong's Hang Seng, which is 0.14% lower just ahead of the close. The Shanghai Composite Index is up 0.94%.

Microsoft and Samsung ended their patent battle. Microsoft and Samsung have ended their contract dispute over patents, Microsoft said in a statement on Monday. Microsoft sued Samsung last year in a federal court in New York, accusing Samsung of breaching a collaboration agreement by initially refusing to make royalty payments after the US company announced its intention to acquire Nokia's handset business in September 2013.

The US is considering reopening opening legal proceedings against HSBC. HSBC could see its 2012 deferred prosecution deal with US authorities over anti-money laundering lapses reopened as a result of separate, ongoing probes into the bank's alleged role in manipulating currency rates and helping Americans evade taxes, a US law enforcement official said on Monday. 

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NOW WATCH: This Video Of The Largest Breakage Of Ice From A Glacier Ever Filmed Is Absolutely Frightening

Military newspaper Stars and Stripes has posted the full interview with NBC News anchor Brian Williams that led to him stepping down from his post temporarily after admitting that he exaggerated a story from his coverage of the Iraq invasion.

The interview gives the fullest explanation we've seen yet from Williams about how he misremembered an incident in which a helicopter ahead of his got shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq in 2003.

Williams has recounted this story several times over the past 12 years and has embellished his role in the incident over time. Earlier this month, he said on NBC that the helicopter he was flying in was "was forced down after being hit by an RPG." Crew members who were on the helicopter that was actually hit by a rocket-propelled grenade then came forward to say Williams was on another helicopter that arrived at the site later.

Here's what Williams said when Stars and Stripes reporter Travis J. Tritten asked how he could misremember which aircraft he was on:

It was my first engagement of the war and remember I was — we were all I think — scared. I have yet to meet the veteran who doesn’t admit to cinching up a little bit when it starts, and it all became a fog of getting down on the ground, what do we do now, taking our direction from the air crews — I’m traveling with a retired four-star general — and then the arrival of the armored ‘mech’ platoon. So, a professional will look at this differently. They go into a kind of hyper-drive. I did what a civilian, an untrained civilian, would do in that instance and it was being scared. I think anyone in my shoes would admit that. It could not have been a more foreign environment. All we knew is we had been fired upon. All we knew was we had set down and then with the arrival of the sandstorm, how do we defend our little desert bivouac area.

Whether or not Williams' helicopter was hit with small-arms fire (as opposed to an RPG) is in some dispute.

Some crew members have said that Williams' copter was not fired on and arrived at the site 30 minutes to an hour after the helicopter that was hit by an RPG landed, while another crew member said he remembers Williams' aircraft getting hit with small-arms fire.

In the Stars and Stripes interview, Williams maintains that his helicopter came under some sort of fire.

"Because I knew we had all come under fire, I guess I had assumed that all of the airframes took some damage because we all went down," he said.

Williams announced over the weekend that he is stepping down from anchoring NBC "Nightly News" for "several days" in light of the fallout over this story.

Read Williams' full interview with Stars and Stripes here >

SEE ALSO: Maureen Dowd: NBC execs were warned a year ago that Brian Williams was 'constantly inflating his biography'

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China's inflation figures just hit a five-year low. Price growth is falling for consumers, and companies producing goods are already recording sharp deflation.

Why does it matter? One simple reason: Debt. 

China's debts as a proportion of GDP climbed from 144% in 2007 to 245% in 2014. That's debt worth one entire Chinese economy's total output for a year, accumulated in just seven years. That's a lot, and it puts the country in a pretty grim situation.

Here's how it looks:

Debt was actually falling as a portion of GDP for the few years running up to the financial crisis, before rapidly picking up afterwards.

Deflation and lower inflation only make that worse. What matters for reducing your debts is nominal growth. 

The economic growth figures that you usually see strip out the effect of inflation. Nominal GDP doesn't do that: is a simple measure of how much money there is in the economy without trying to remove the effect of rising or falling prices, and it's very important for debt.

Michael Pettis, one of the most authoritative voices in the world on the Chinese economy, explained this during the last round of Chinese inflation data (emphasis ours): 

For nearly two decades, when nominal GDP growth was as high as 20-21% and the GDP deflator at 8-10%, (economists use a deflator to remove the effect of inflation) even if they were horribly mismanaged the nominal value of assets soared relative to debt... Under those conditions it was pretty easy to ignore debt costs, and even easier to pick up very bad investment habits. Now that nominal GDP growth has dropped to around 8-10%, and could be substantially lower in a deflationary environment even if growth did not continue to decline, as I expect it will, those bad habits have become brutally expensive.

In short, it's easy to keep borrowing if your income is growing by a fifth every year, but those habits (and your existing debts) are a lot harder to deal with if that falls to a tenth, or a twentieth. The debts you've made are suddenly not being inflated and grown away like they previously were. That's what's happening in China, and the lower both inflation and growth fall, the worse that will get.

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NOW WATCH: Watch 2 armed gangs fight on a busy road in China

Lille (France) (AFP) - 08:07 GMT - WELCOME TO AFP'S LIVE REPORT on the trial of ex-IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn who is set to take the stand for the first time to answer pimping charges.

Strauss-Kahn will have three days to fend off accusations that he procured prostitutes for sex parties along with 13 others on trial at the courthouse in Lille, southern France.

The former French presidential hopeful, known in France as DSK, is expected to argue that while he is a libertine who enjoyed orgies, he had no idea the women involved were prostitutes.

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Denmark just joined the deflation club. 

Consumer prices fell by 0.1% in the year to January, according to figures just released. That's Denmark's first bout of falling prices since at least 1954.

Denmark's central bank has cut interest rates an astonishing four times in the last four weeks.

That's because it's importing deflation from the eurozone: Denmark's currency, the krone, is pegged against the euro as part of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

Unlike Switzerland, which recently abandoned its peg against the euro after more than three years of use, Denmark has managed its currency as part of the ERM since the 1980s. 

In practice, this means that Denmark's central bank has to keep buying up euros to try to strengthen the eurozone's currency, and weaken its own. Here's what Capital Economics said about that when the Nationalbank last cut rates on 5 February: 

Nationalbank Governor Lars Rohde today said that “there is no upper limit to the size of the foreign exchange reserve”, no doubt in an effort to set the Denmark apart from Switzerland, where the growing FX reserve eventually led to the abandonment of the cap. But given the ineffectiveness of the measures taken so far, Danish QE is looking increasingly likely.

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NOW WATCH: This Video Of The Largest Breakage Of Ice From A Glacier Ever Filmed Is Absolutely Frightening

Juba (AFP) - Rebel fighters in South Sudan bombarded government positions Tuesday in the oil town of Bentiu, where 53,000 civilians are sheltering inside a United Nations camp, the defence minister said.

"The rebels are shelling our positions in Bentiu," Defence Minister Kuol Manyang told AFP. "This is a violation of the cessation of hostilities agreement, and we will act in self defence."

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New York (AFP) - NBC has suspended star presenter Brian Williams for six months without pay for embellishing an Iraq war story, the American news broadcaster said Tuesday.

The measure takes effect immediately, NBC said on its website, under pressure to deal with the 55-year-old Williams, who reportedly earns about $10 million year.

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Looks like the Storm eBike is going to be a smash hit, if its uber successful crowdfunding campaign is a predictor.

The bike has raised $3.16 million on Indiegogo since the campaign started on February 1. They blew by their  $75,000 goal.

There's several reasons why people are going so nuts for this bike. The great design of the bike. The very low cost of the bike. The amazing story of bike's creator. The pledge that the bike company will support charity. The fact that the bike creator hired crowdfunding marketing expert Chris Olenik to help orchestrate the campaign and they very smartly did a big demo day with the tech press and potential sponsors.

Design

This bike is a beach cruiser with a motor, with big fat tires that make for a comfy ride. It's got a 350-watt motor, a promised range of 30 to 50 miles on a charge, or about 90 minutes, and it weighs 55 pounds.

"It’s the 1987 Honda Civic of electric bikes, stripped down to the basics. There’s no regenerative braking, or a fancy housing to disguise the massive batteries," writes TechCrunch's Kyle Russel.

Price

"Under $600."

You can't beat that with a stick. That's about what you'd pay for a decent commuter bike, without the motor. Of course, you need a motor to get a 55-pound bike up a a steep hill in addition to pedaling with our legs (we're looking at you, San Francisco).

The story

After the bike's creator, surfer dude Storm Sondors, got injured in an accident, he wanted a stylish beach cruiser that he could still ride around even though he couldn't pedal very well. He was a designer/manufacturer for McDonald's Happy Meal toys. So he designed the bike he wanted, worked his Asian toy manufacturing contacts to source materials and hooked up with co-founder Jon Hopp to make it all happen.

Already giving back

Thanks to the millions raised via crowdfunding, the team is already looking for charities to sponsor, the co-founders wrote on their Indiegogo post:

"With the amazing outpouring of support over the past few days, we now have the opportunity to do some great things. We would like to align ourselves with a few charities that help people get to and from where they need to go. Do you guys have any ideas of some great ones? Possibly a Veteran’s organization, as we have had many comments about how the eBike could help them out."

Tons of interest

In addition to the demo day with journalists in the Bay Area, they also held one in Santa Monica (the company is based in Southern California).

"There has been a lot of speculation about the bike over the past few days and we want to assure you that it is real, it exists and it is quality,"the co-founders promised on Indiegogo. The event immediately sold out, so they are planning more events in other Southern California cities. 

Here's the promo video that got everyone so stoked:

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