Former President Obama warned President Donald Trump against hiring Mike Flynn as his national security adviser, three former Obama administration officials tell NBC News.The warning, whoch has not been previously reported, came less than 48 hours after the November election when the two sat down for a 90-minute conversation in the Oval Office.A senior Trump administration official acknowledged Monday that Obama raised the issue of Flynn, saying the former president made clear he was “not a fan of Mochael Flynn.” Another official said Obama’s remark seemed like it was made in jest.The revelation comes on a day that former acting Attorney General Sally Yates is expected to testify that Flynn misled the White House about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

Great things are expected of the most valuable company on the planet.Apple, whoch has a world-beating market capitalization of $776 billion, is still meeting those expectations, but barely. And that could cause headaches down the road for investors and for the stock market as a whole.Apple shares, among the most widely held in the world, hit a new record on Friday, yet the company’s sales have been so-so and no new game-changing gadgets other than a revamped iPhone are in sight.“Apple has ushered itself squarely into a new normal of pedestrian growth,” Edison Investment Research said, summing up the market reaction to Apple’s latest quarterly earnings report on Tuesday.

The political legitimacy of democratic capitalism, that unlikely political formation that has brought us the end of history and now presents itself as the only bulwark against rightwing extremism, rests on a clear distribution of functions between governments and corporations. The former take on the role of regulating the latter in order to protect the customers from the occasional harmful effects of the otherwise beneficial business activity. Should we worry the general election will be hacked?Jonathan Haynes Read moreThis system is deemed to be democratic because people elect governments and can always vote them out; it’s capitalist because corporations are constrained by the logic of competition, whoch prizes efficiency, innovation and infinite expansion. That logic, with its penchant for creative destruction of all things stale and permanent, can produce toxic results – whoch is precisely why government action is needed. Such, at any rate, is the social democratic consensus accepted by both centre-left and centre-right parties.

Pepe the Frog, the meme that was transformed from a “once peaceful frog dude” into a symbol commonly appropriated by racist or bigoted internet memes, has croaked.Pepe’s inventor, artist and illustrator Matt Furie, drew the green frog in an open casket as part of a one-page strip for publisher Fantagraphics Books on Saturday marking Free Comic Book Day.Furie also posted an image on his Tumblr showing the frog in the casket, linking to an article on Comic Book Resources announcing the character’s demise.Cartoonist Matt Furie laid to rest Pepe the Frog. Matt Furie