Americans are coming off the labor market’s sidelines at a pace that intensified in September, according to employment figures released Friday by the Labor Department. The number of people going from out-of-the-labor-market into jobs jumped to an all-time high last month. Payrolls fell for the first time since 2010, reflecting Hurricane Harvey’s impact on Texas and Irma’s fallout in Florida. At the same time, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.2%, a new 16-year low.
 

U.S. issues religious freedom memo. Elaborating on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions advised federal agencies on Friday to follow 20 principles of religious freedom, including a recognition that religious employers can discriminate in hiring. Employers will also be able to opt out of providing health plans that cover birth control, rolling back an Obamacare requirement.

Tropical Storm Nate is on track to strike near New Orleans. The storm is forecast to make landfall overnight Saturday as a Category 1 hurricane with winds topping 74 miles an hour. Nate may cause close to $1 billion in damage across Central America and the U.S., regions already battered by the most powerful month of hurricanes on record.

Supersonic airlines are coming back while Elon Musk dreams of space. Long before Wall Street bigwigs get vaulted from New York to Asia in less than an hour on the Tesla founder’s proposed hypersonic airline, the significantly slower supersonic jet travel first popularized by the Concorde may return. Several companies are working to develop new supersonic aircraft technologies, as is NASA.

There’s a climate bomb under your feet. The accelerating catastrophe of global warming may have been fueled in part by warm dirt. That’s according to a new study, which found as the Earth heats up, microbes in the soil speed up the breakdown of organic materials, each time releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Hudson Yards wants to be New York’s new money hub. The largest private real estate development in U.S. history isn’t just about new skyscrapers. A new financial hub is taking shape on the west side of Manhattan with big names like BlackRock, Third Point, and Point72 Asset Management relocating their offices there. It’s largely thanks to KKR’s Henry Kravis, who tipped Hudson Yards into the zeitgeist.

In the 1982 film Blade Runner, set in the distant future of 2019, various brands of the time are spotted around the streets of a seedy, gloomy Los Angeles. There’s video game maker Atari and airline behemoth Pan Am. RCA makes a cameo, as does the Bell telephone company. As we approach 2019 in real life, many of those brands are gone or extremely diminished. Now, with the long-awaited sequel arriving in theaters Friday, Blade Runner is rewriting history and bringing dead brands into a future without Apple products.