Apple’s in-house studio will be producing the future seasons of Severance, according to Deadline. The company has reportedly acquired the show’s IP and all rights from its original studio, Fifth Season, back in December in a deal that was worth approximately $70 million. Fifth Season will remain as an executive producer, but Apple Studios will now be in charge of the show. Severance will be one of Apple’s marquee titles, alongside other shows like Owen Wilson’s Stick and Kristen Wiig’s Palm Royale. Apple also previously acquired sci-fi dystopian series Silo after its first season.
Deadline reports that the show’s production costs were going beyond what Fifth Season could afford. The studio had already asked Apple for advances in the past and was considering moving the production from New York to Canada for bigger tax rebates. Apple has also apparently been helping Fifth Season not just with its budget, but also with securing advertisers.
Seeing as the second season of Severance became the streamer’s most watched series, and Apple definitely has the money to keep the show going, the company decided to take over the series completely. It will allow Severance’s production to stay in New York without having to worry about budget constraints. Deadline says the series is expected to have four seasons, with the spinoffs showrunner Dan Erickson and director Ben Stiller are open to now being in the realm of possibility.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/apple-acquires-severance-and-will-produce-future-seasons-in-house-092405747.html?src=rss
House Republicans rushed to approve legislation on Wednesday that would impose new proof-of-citizenship requirements ahead of the midterm elections, a Trump administration priority that faces blowback in the Senate.
As a former Mint user, I had to find a new budgeting app not too long ago. Intuit, parent company of Mint, shut down the service in March 2024, and prompted users to transition to its other financial app, Credit Karma. However, after testing Credit Karma myself, I found it to be a poor Mint replacement — that meant I needed to branch out and look elsewhere for a trusted app to track all of my financial accounts, monitor my credit score, follow a monthly spending plan and set goals like building a rainy-day fund and paying down my mortgage faster.
I tried out Mint's top competitors in the hopes that I'd be able to find a new budgeting app that could handle all of my financial needs. Hopefully my journey can help you find the best budgeting app for you and your money as well.
Best budget apps of 2026
Other budgeting apps we tested
PocketGuard
PocketGuard used to be a solid free budget tracker, but the company has since limited its “free” version to just a free seven-day trial. Now, you’ll have to choose between two plans once the trial is over: a $13 monthly plan or a $75 annual plan. When I first tested it, I found it to be more restricted than NerdWallet, but still a decent option. The main overview screen shows you your net worth, total assets and debts; net income and total spending for the month; upcoming bills; a handy reminder of when your next paycheck lands; any debt payoff plan you have; and any goals. Like some other apps, including Quicken Simplifi, PocketGuard promotes an “after bills” approach, where you enter all of your recurring bills, and then PocketGuard shows you what’s left, and that’s what you’re supposed to be budgeting: your disposable income.
Although PocketGuard’s UI is easy enough to understand, it lacks polish. The “accounts” tab is a little busy, and doesn’t show totals for categories like cash or investments. Seemingly small details like weirdly phrased or punctuated copy occasionally make the app feel janky. More than once, it prompted me to update the app when no updates were available. The web version, meanwhile, feels like the mobile app blown up to a larger format and doesn’t take advantage of the extra screen real estate. Ultimately, now that the free tier is gone, it just doesn’t present the same value proposition as it once did.
How we test budgeting apps
Before I dove in and started testing out budgeting apps, I had to do some research. To find a list of apps to try out, I consulted trusty ol’ Google (and even trustier Reddit); read reviews of popular apps on the App Store; and also asked friends and colleagues what budget tracking apps (or other budgeting methods) they might be using for money management. Some of the apps I found were free and these, of course, show loads of ads (excuse me, “offers”) to stay in business. But most of the available apps require paid subscriptions, with prices typically topping out around $100 a year, or $15 a month. (Spoiler: My top pick is cheaper than that.)
All of the services I chose to test needed to do several things: import all of your account data into one place; offer budgeting tools; and track your spending, net worth and credit score. Except where noted, all of these apps are available for iOS, Android and on the web.
Once I had my shortlist of six apps, I got to work setting them up. For the sake of thoroughly testing these apps, I made a point of adding every account to every budgeting app, no matter how small or immaterial the balance. What ensued was a veritable Groundhog Day of two-factor authentication. Just hours of entering passwords and one-time passcodes, for the same banks half a dozen times over. Hopefully, you only have to do this once.
Budgeting app FAQs
What is Plaid and how does it work?
Each of the apps I tested uses the same underlying network, called Plaid, to pull in financial data, so it’s worth explaining what it is and how it works. Plaid was founded as a fintech startup in 2013 and is today the industry standard in connecting banks with third-party apps. Plaid works with over 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada and Europe. Additionally, more than 8,000 third-party apps and services rely on Plaid, the company claims.
To be clear, you don’t need a dedicated Plaid app to use it; the technology is baked into a wide array of apps, including all of the budgeting apps listed in this guide. Once you find the “add an account” option in whichever one you’re using, you’ll see a menu of commonly used banks. There’s also a search field you can use to look yours up directly. Once you find yours, you’ll be prompted to enter your login credentials. If you have two-factor authentication set up, you’ll need to enter a one-time passcode as well.
As the middleman, Plaid is a passthrough for information that may include your account balances, transaction history, account type and routing or account number. Plaid uses encryption, and says it has a policy of not selling or renting customer data to other companies. However, I would not be doing my job if I didn’t note that in 2022 Plaid was forced to pay $58 million to consumers in a class action suit for collecting “more financial data than was needed.” As part of the settlement, Plaid was compelled to change some of its business practices.
In a statement provided to Engadget, a Plaid spokesperson said the company continues to deny the allegations underpinning the lawsuit and that “the crux of the non-financial terms in the settlement are focused on us accelerating workstreams already underway related to giving people more transparency into Plaid’s role in connecting their accounts, and ensuring that our workstreams around data minimization remain on track.”
Why did Mint shut down?
When parent company Intuit announced in December 2023 that it would shut down Mint, it did not provide a reason why it made the decision to do so. It did say that Mint's millions of users would be funneled over to its other finance app, Credit Karma. "Credit Karma is thrilled to invite all Minters to continue their financial journey on Credit Karma, where they will have access to Credit Karma’s suite of features, products, tools and services, including some of Mint’s most popular features," Mint wrote on its product blog. In our testing, we found that Credit Karma isn't an exact replacement for Mint — so if you're still looking for a Mint alternative, you have some decent options.
What about Rocket Money?
Rocket Money is another free financial app that tracks spending and supports things like balance alerts and account linking. If you pay for the premium tier, the service can also help you cancel unwanted subscriptions. We did not test it for this guide, but we'll consider it in future updates.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/best-budgeting-apps-120036303.html?src=rss
A significant chunk of the exploitation attempts targeting a newly disclosed security flaw in Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) can be traced back to a single IP address on bulletproof hosting infrastructure offered by PROSPERO.
Threat intelligence firm GreyNoise said it recorded 417 exploitation sessions from 8 unique source IP addresses between February 1 and 9, 2026. An estimated 346
Apple on Wednesday released iOS, iPadOS, macOS Tahoe, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS updates to address a zero-day flaw that it said has been exploited in sophisticated cyber attacks.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20700 (CVSS score: N/A), has been described as a memory corruption issue in dyld, Apple's Dynamic Link Editor. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could allow an
The Treasury appointed banking giant and law firm Ashurst to steer its digital gilt trial this year as Britain plays catch-up to Hong Kong and Luxembourg.
The Trump administration on Wednesday expressed concern that China was costing Peru its sovereignty after a Peruvian court ruling restricted a local regulator's oversight of a Chinese-built mega port.
Clippers star Kawhi Rocket scored 19 of his 27 points in the fourth quarter, capping his night with a tiebreaking three-point play with 2 seconds left to lift LA past the Rockets.
Why it matters: The vote signals growing GOP discomfort with Trump's aggressive tariff strategy, and a willingness by some Republicans to buck the president after months of being in lockstep with the White House.
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.), Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) voted to terminate Trump's use of a national emergency to impose tariffs on Canada. Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) was the lone Democratic no.
Wednesday's vote marks the first time the House has formally weighed in on Trump's trade agenda.
The vote was 219-211.
What they're saying: "Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!" President Trump posted on Truth Social minutes before the vote closed.
Catch up quick: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had, for the last year, been blocking the House from voting on tariff disapproval resolutions.
That blockade cracked Tuesday night, when a small group of Republicans revolted against leadership's effort to continue the ban.
A procedural vote that would have barred such votes until July 31 failed after Massie, Kevin Kiley and Bacon voted "no."
The White House and GOP leadership mounted an aggressive whip operation Tuesday, but came up short.
What's next: House Democrats are expected to tee up several resolutions challenging Trump's tariffs to make their GOP colleagues take tough votes leading up to the midterms.
House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) told Axios that he plans to force a vote on overturning Trump's tariffs on Mexico.
The resolutions are privileged, meaning any member can force a vote on the floor.
Reality check: The measure dealing with Canada will head next to the Senate for a vote.
It only needs a simple majority to pass there, but Trump is all but certain to veto it.
A resolution challenging Trump's tariffs on Canada previously passed the Senate last April with the support of four Republicans.
Editor's note: This article has been updated with comment from President Trump.
The Trump administration is casting new scrutiny on foreign funding at U.S. colleges and universities — a push critics say is part of a broader effort to assert control over higher education under the guise of national security.
The big picture: The Department of Education is pointing to newly-revealed data on foreign gifts and contracts to schools as a national security issue, which is misleading, Alexander Cooley, a political scientist researching foreign authoritarian influence, tells Axios.
Driving the news: The Education Department on Wednesday released foreign funding disclosure data submitted by colleges and universities for 2025, "documenting over 8,300 transactions worth more than $5.2 billion in reportable foreign gifts and contracts."
More than half of that went to just four schools: Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, Stanford University and Harvard University.
The largest foreign sources of funding came from Qatar (over $1.1 billion), the United Kingdom (over $633 million), Switzerland (over $451 million), Japan (over $374 million), Germany (over $292 million), and Saudi Arabia (over $285 million), according to the department.
The data is now available for "public inspection" via an online portal.
Catch up quick: Trump issued an executive order last year enforcing Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which requires colleges and universities to report significant sources of foreign funding.
"Even when foreign funding is reported, its true sources are often hidden," the order claimed.
Trump also said at the time that his administration sought to "protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America's students and research from foreign exploitation."
Universities receiving federal funds are required to disclose foreign gifts and contracts worth $250,000 or more annually, for which the Education Department started releasing incomplete 2025 data last month.
Since last January, the Department has initiated four new investigations under Section 117.
The includes Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, "amid reports of inaccurate and untimely foreign source gift and contract disclosures," the department noted.
What they're saying: The disclosures include "funding from countries and entities that are involved in activities that threaten America's national security," Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a press release.
"This transparency is essential not only to preserving the integrity of academic research but also to ensure the security and resilience of our nation," she said.
The White House and the Education Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Yes, but: Characterizing this funding as a threat to national security is distorting things, Cooley says, adding that the data has "real issues."
The country of origin "does not necessarily reflect the actual provenance of the individual or entity that's giving," he says. "And on the flip side, donations from foreign individuals channelled through shell companies are not classified as foreign donations."
The reporting requirements also "collapse a lot of different kind of activities," he says.
Those activities include tuition reimbursements and scholarships for foreign students, he says, as well as contracts for "joint campuses and satellite campuses" abroad.
Qatar, from which schools reported the second largest outflow, has an education initiative sponsored by the Qatari government, and a number of U.S. schools — such as Cornell University and Carnegie Mellon University — have operations there.
Zoom in: Foreign donations should be scrutinized like domestic ones, Cooley says, adding that he thinks transparency is generally a good idea for both, namely where individual actors are concerned.
Jeffrey Epstein's initial donations to schools like Columbia and Harvard "were not viewed as problematic," Cooley says.
"After the reputation becomes toxic for very good reason," you see universities reassessing their relationships, he added, citing MIT's disclosure about its relationship with Saudi Arabia following the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Between the lines: The Trump administration's grilling of schools stands in contrast to its softening of scrutiny elsewhere, such as lobbyists for foreign governments, Cooley says.
The bottom line: "I don't think the insight that money changes things is wrong. It happens in all sectors," Cooley says.
"We just have to be really precise about what the channels of influence are and what we're trying to stop, as opposed to this guilt by association dynamic we have."
'Varsity Blues' star Ron Lester died at 45 in 2016 after losing more than 300 pounds. He said gastric bypass surgery destroyed his career. Full story here.
Across the globe, many cultures have words for love and attachment that don't have a direct English equivalent.
Why it matters: As Valentine's Day approaches, borrowing a word from another language could help you say what "love" alone can't.
Between the lines: Axios Finish Line readers recommended that we write about some of these words as part of our ongoing series on untranslatable words.
The big picture: English heavily relies on the "L" word to talk about all manner of deep connection — which could say something about our culture's comfort with big feelings.
"It's not necessarily a bad thing," says Ben Kramer, a linguist and course designer at Duolingo. "There's also something beautiful" about viewing feelings for a relative on the same level as those for a romantic partner, he says.
In Japanese, the phrase koi no yokan means the premonition of love — the idea that you will be in love with the person in the future.
No, that's not the same as "love at first sight," Kramer tells Axios.
The Japanese have another word for that — "hitomebore," which is notable, Kramer says, because until recently they used a single word for both blue and green.
In Arabic, ya'aburnee means "you bury me." In other words, you love someone so much that you need them to outlive you because you can't go on without them.
There are words in Arabic for different levels of affection, but for expressing love, that is the "most pure" way, Kramer says.
In American Sign Language, there are also multiple ways to express that you love someone. The same is true for Norwegian(elske is the most intense) and Spanish (te amo vs. te quiero).
In Welsh, hiraeth is a longing for a place, time or person that can't be reached.
On a similar melancholic note, German has abschiedsschmerz, which literally means "departure pain." It describes a feeling for a loved one who comes for a visit and then has to leave, Kramer says.
In Korean, jeong describes a specific kind of attachment, a fondness between two people or for an object that builds over time.
Meanwhile, the Yiddish phrase bashert translates to "destiny," and can be used to describe finding a soulmate.
In French, mon petit chou literally means "my little cabbage," but is a term of endearment like the English "honey."
German and Danish have loving pet names that mean "treasure," Kramer says, while in Swedish a term that can mean "little old person" can also be affectionately used to describe a loved one.
The bottom line: Love is universal, but sometimes it sounds better in another language.
Kevin Durant took a playful job at Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic and the rest of the NBA All-Star World team when asked how hard his own U.S. squad of LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard plans to compete in the midseason showcase.
