Alongside its new news and payment services, Apple today also unveiled Apple TV+, a place for its new slate of original shows. The new service, billed as a place for the "highest-quality storytelling," will be available in over 100 countries and released starting this fall through the Apple TV app. From a report: It will be ad-free, on-demand and available both streaming online and downloadable. Pricing will be announced this fall. Apple TV Plus is the company's way of jumping into the streaming video game, where Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and others have already established themselves and brought in millions of cord-cutter customers fleeing cable subscriptions. The new service also works as a way for Apple to grow its thriving services business, helping it continue to grow despite lagging iPhone sales. The company in 2017 hired Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg from Sony Pictures Television to oversee "all aspects of video programming." The two were responsible for shows such as Breaking Bad, The Crown and Rescue Me. And in the past year, Apple has continually announced original content it's producing -- including a multiyear partnership deal with Oprah and deals with Reese Witherspoon, J.J. Abrams and dozens of others. The company has reportedly gone well past its original $1 billion budget to bring in this list of movie and television A-listers, who are slated to create about 30 shows and a handful of movies.

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In a recent redistricting case in Mississippi, a federal judge ruled that black voting strength had been illegally diluted in a particular district and ordered that several majority-black precincts be added to it. The case was appealed, and a three-judge appellate panel upheld the ruling, 2-1. The dissenting judge, Edith Brown Clement, unsurprisingly disagreed with the majority on a number of points of law.

But that’s not all. She also explicitly accused the majority of ruling in favor of the black defendents because they themselves were non-white:

This case presents several extraordinary issues. Unfortunately, this court’s usual procedures do not appear to permit en banc review of this denial of a stay even if a majority of the active judges would otherwise grant it. I am afraid defendants have simply had the poor luck of drawing a majority-minority panel. I trust that in light of this, the State will pursue a stay in the Supreme Court because of the injustice that results from the joint efforts of the district judge and the motions panel majority.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has eight white justices and one black justice. I guess that’s more to Judge Clement’s liking.

I have seen the superbloom up close!

Well, maybe not the superbloom. More like a very commendable bloom, I suppose. However, this bloom is about 20 minutes from my house and has no crowds, so I’ll take it. For you locals, these pictures were all taken at a very nice poppy bloom on Silverado Canyon Road near the post office:

March 24, 2019 — Orange County, California March 24, 2019 — Orange County, California March 24, 2019 — Orange County, California

And here’s what the bloom looks like from a distance. This is not the one on Silverado Canyon Road, which is easily accessible even for pitiful couch potatoes like me. It’s on a hillside to the west of Santiago Canyon Road, and probably not accessible at all. I didn’t even try to find out.

March 24, 2019 — Orange County, California

A new study points toward lifelong neuron formation in the human brain's hippocampus, with implications for memory and disease. From a report: For decades, scientists have debated whether the birth of new neurons -- called neurogenesis -- was possible in an area of the brain that is responsible for learning, memory and mood regulation. A growing body of research suggested they could, but then a Nature paper last year raised doubts. Now, a new study published today in another of the Nature family of journals -- Nature Medicine -- tips the balance back toward "yes." In light of the new study, "I would say that there is an overwhelming case for the neurogenesis throughout life in humans," Jonas Frisen, a professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said in an e-mail. Frisen, who was not involved in the new research, wrote a News and Views about the study in the current issue of Nature Medicine.

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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders hit new rhetorical heights in the ongoing Republican campaign to claim that the Mueller report (of which we have seen 98 words so far) exonerates Donald Trump (despite the fact that 17 of those words were “while this report does not conclude the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him”). Sanders put on her best “can you believe this nonsense” tone of bemused outrage to hype up exactly what Democrats were looking for from the Mueller investigation.

Democrats “accused the president, the United States president, of being an agent of a foreign government,” Sanders said. “Take a minute and realize how outrageous and how serious and how malicious an accusation like that is,” says the spokeswoman for someone who ran on a promise to imprison his political opponents for things like improper email security.

“They literally accused the president of the United States of being an agent for a foreign government,” Sanders said, then took a couple of Olympic-caliber rhetorical leaps. “That's equivalent to treason. That is punishable by death in this country.” Did someone call Donald Trump an agent of a foreign country who’d possibly committed treason? Certainly! Was it the dominant claim coming from people calling for investigations? Nope.

Trump, meanwhile, insisted on Monday that the investigation sprang from “a lot of people out there that have done some very, very evil things, very bad things, I would say treasonous things against our country.” He previously accused FBI agent Peter Strzok of “treason.” But, you know, totally outrageous thing to say … or apparently even to ask questions about by calling for an investigation of a campaign’s many questionable ties to the foreign government that interfered in American democracy to get that campaign’s candidate elected president.

Following the event today, Apple has not released any new hardware but it has rebranded the 2015 fourth-generation Apple TV as the Apple TV HD. The set-top box, formerly known as simply ‘Apple TV’, now has a better name that it distinguishes it from the newer Apple TV 4K.

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Following its big media event on Monday, Apple has released the iOS 12.2 update with several new features and improvements. The software has been in beta testing for a number of weeks, and now it's available to the public for compatible iPhones and iPads.

Hacker and unc0ver lead developer Pwn20wnd has released unc0ver v3.0.0 beta 47 on Monday with a new exploit with 90% success rate for A7-A12(X) devices.

• Today’s comic by Tom Tomorrow is Exonerated!

• What you missed on Sunday Kos …

• Women's History Month: They ran—and are running—for the highest office in the land, by Denise Oliver Velez
• Trump, GOP keep bullying Twitter and Facebook because they keep caving in, by Eric Boehlert
• Violent white supremacy is nothing new, especially in America, by Sher Watts Spooner
• Vaccines are essential for a healthy society, by Mark E Andersen
• How to deal with the socialism attack, by David Akadjian
• Rep. Omar criticized Israel again. This time, the result was very different, by Ian Reifowitz
• We can’t allow coerced narratives to force actions that are detrimental to all, by Egberto Willies
• The inevitable backlash of the Alpha Boys and White ISIS, by Frank Vyan Walton

• Egg Boy isn’t always right:

An Australian teen known around the world as “Egg Boy” conceded on Monday that egging a far-right senator was not the right thing to do, but said the gesture united a world reeling from a white supremacist’s alleged massacre of 50 Muslims in New Zealand.

• Not a shock:

White people make up just 10 percent of Detroit’s population but got nearly half of the home mortgage loans made in 2017 for which the race of the applicant was known.

• Discuss:

Look at Edvard Munch’s Scream and what do you see? According to the British Museum, you may have it all wrong.

Many people believe it shows a man screaming. Not so, says the museum, which is about to display a black and white print of the image.

“This rare version of the Scream that we’re displaying at the British Museum makes clear that Munch’s most famous artwork depicts a person hearing a ‘scream’ and not, as many people continue to assume and debate, a person screaming,” said Giulia Bartrum, curator of a forthcoming exhibition devoted to the Norwegian artist.

On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin and Armando spend Monday mulling Mueller. Well, Barr, technically. On the policy front, Dems plan an ACA 2.0 reintroduction this week. Then, we revisit the chilling idea that "collusion" might just be a president's prerogative, after all.

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Apple today unveiled a news subscription service called Apple News+ at its services event in Cupertino, Calif. The $9.99 service gives paying subscribers access to over 300 magazines as well as select newspapers and premium digital news services. From a report: "We believe in the power of journalism and the impact it will have on your lives," said Apple CEO Tim Cook. Some of the magazines part of the service are including GQ, Esquire, Popular Science, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, New York Magazine and Vogue, as well as Variety and the Rolling Stone. Newspapers included in the package are the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. Digital publications include theSkimm, TechCrunch and The Highlight by Vox. For now, it is available just in the U.S., and come to three more markets -- Canada, Australia, and the U.K., later this year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continuing with its slew of announcements on Monday, Apple has revealed its new original video subscription service: Apple TV+. The company says the service will feature "a brand new slate of programming from the world's most celebrated creative artists," ad-free and on demand.

In addition to its new Apple TV+ service, Apple also shared some other big announcements today regarding its TV strategy: a new à la carte  offering it’s calling “channels” and a redesigned TV app that will support over 150 streaming...

Apple has lifted the curtain on its original content television show plans and showed the first snippets today of its own-produced TV shows. The company previewed what it has in a store in a fast-cut montage trailer. The Apple TV+ service will debut in the fall — pricing is yet to be announced.

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Nothing short of seeing the full report special counsel Robert Mueller delivered to the Department of Justice will clear up the many lingering and problematic questions left by Attorney General William Barr's four-page summary of the two-year probe.

After an investigation that incorporated more than 2,800 subpoenas, almost 500 executed search warrants, 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, approximately 500 interviewed witnesses, four short partisan pages delivered by an attorney general who auditioned for the job by penning 19 pages attacking the investigation simply is not going to cut it. 

Within those four pages, Barr didn't quote a single full sentence from Mueller's report—he only quoted fragments. And yet Barr took it upon himself to unilaterally exonerate Trump on the question of obstruction of justice. The four pages were a wholly insufficient airing of the facts from the start, but by only quoting fragments of the sentences Mueller wrote, Barr allowed himself to massage Mueller's prose and impose his own innuendo on them. Barr also reportedly did not even consult Mueller on the letter he sent to Congress.

The American people deserve a full airing of the facts. Though Barr alludes to "actions investigated" and says Mueller's report "sets out evidence on both sides of the question" regarding obstruction, he deprives the American people of any insights into what actions Trump took, and of even a single shred of the evidence Mueller detailed in his report. In fact, on the issue of Trump's obstruction, Barr admits that the American people continue to be in the dark about the full range of behavior Trump engaged in. 

"The report's second part addresses a number of actions by the President," Barr writes, "most of which have been the subject of public reporting." 

Most is the operative word there—public reporting has covered most of Trump's actions, but not all. Frankly, what's in the public record is already pretty damning. But what about what's not in the public record? Americans deserve to know what Trump has done, especially given the fact that Mueller clearly left it up to Congress to determine whether Trump's actions amount to obstruction of justice. Barr has concluded that they don't, but he hasn't provided Congress or the public with a single piece of the evidence he weighed in making that determination. Not. One. Piece.

An anonymous reader shares a report: iPhone users are already using Apple's Wallet app, Apple Pay, and Apple Pay Cash -- wouldn't they like an Apple credit card, too? The Cupertino company and bank partner Goldman Sachs believe the answer is "yes," so they've teamed up for Apple Card. In addition to offering major rewards for users, the new payment solution promises to improve the credit card experience by offering a healthier approach to spending. The Wallet app will include a more transparent list of transactions, organized in an easy to read format, plus a more flexible way of making payments on outstanding balances. Apple Card is designed to complement existing Apple-branded payment options, as well as displacing other credit cards that might be in a user's wallet. Though the end goal is to increase Apple's share of the dollars spent by its users, the pinch this time will be felt by rival payment providers, and come with incentives for new card users. Every time you spend with Apple Card, you get 2 percent cash back -- a feature the company calls Daily Cash. Purchases directly from Apple come with 3 percent cash back.

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At its Services focused “It’s show time” event at Steve Jobs Theater today, Apple shared that it is expanding its TV app bringing it to the Mac and even further with deals with Roku, and Amazon.

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After months of speculation and TV show deals, Apple today has officially announced its foray into original content. The service will be called Apple TV +.

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The new Apple-branded credit card is built on simplicity, transparency and privacy, designed to help cash-strapped customers lead a healthier financial life.