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In 1997, “Star Wars” was the 5th highest grossing movie of the year. Before you start um actually-ing me that “Star Wars” came out in 1977 and was the highest grossing movie of its year, I’m talking about the re-release.

George Lucas remastered and put his world-changing classic back on the big screen in January of ‘97 and audiences rushed to it like they didn’t already have a well-loved copy of it on VHS at home. It, along with the rereleases of “Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” the same year, grossed over $250 million at the box office. Even with the few millions put into the revamps, rereleasing the sci-fi trilogy on its 20th anniversary was pure profit for Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox.

With rereleases being pure profit, why aren’t studios always doing them? Well, they used to. Home video is a relatively new invention, only becoming popularized about 40 years ago. Before then, studios constantly put their older films back in theaters and left their new hits in cinemas for years.

Disney was the best at keeping their films in cinema rotation, making sure one of their animated classics was playing in theaters each summer. Their rereleases were actually so successful they were initially hesitant about putting their movies on VHS.

As home video became a major money maker, the practice of putting classics back in theaters went out of fashion. But with streaming now reigning supreme, home video doesn’t bring in the big bucks it used to. Which brings us to today where studios are making the smart move of rereleasing their classics once again.

For its 50th anniversary “Jaws” swam back onto the big screen this summer making $14 million. That’s no “Star Wars” in ‘97, but since Jaws had no marketing or production costs, that’s a nice tidy profit. Watching a movie at home doesn’t compare to seeing it in a theater, so I’m excited for “Back to the Future” returning to the big screen this weekend and I’m glad this pure profit enterprise is making its grand return.

NEW YORK (AP) — Microsoft has deployed a fix to address an outage of their Azure cloud portal that left users unable to access Office 365, Minecraft and other services.

The tech company wrote on its to its Azure status page that a configuration change to its Azure infrastructure caused the outage, and that its fix is being rolled out.

Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but the company acknowledged issues with its Azure Front Door, a global content and application delivery network, service on its status page and social media accounts.

Because so many sites and services use Microsoft’s cloud service, an outage like this one can have widespread impact.

On Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages, users reported issues throughout the day with Office 365, Minecraft, XBox Live, Copilot, Costco, Starbucks, and many other services.

Alaska Airline wrote on its X account that the outage is at the heart of problems affecting their systems, including check-in services.

Microsoft’s Azure troubles came just hours before the company was set to release its quarterly earnings report, and just over a week after a massive outage of Amazon’s cloud computing service took down a broad range of online services, including social media, gaming, food delivery, streaming and financial platforms.

Amazon is the dominant provider of cloud computing services but Microsoft ranks second, ahead of Google, in most markets.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate Wednesday for a second time this year as it seeks to shore up economic growth and hiring even as inflation stays elevated.

“Job gains have slowed this year, and the unemployment rate has edged up but remained low through August,” the Fed said in a statement issued Wednesday. “More recent indicators are consistent with these developments.” The government hasn’t issued unemployment data after August because of the shutdown. The Fed is watching private-sector figures instead.

Wednesday’s decision brings the Fed’s key rate down to about 3.9%, from about 4.1%. The central bank had cranked its rate to roughly 5.3% in 2023 and 2024 to combat the biggest inflation spike in four decades. Lower rates could, over time, reduce borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards, as well as for business loans.

The move comes amid a fraught time for the central bank, with hiring sluggish and yet inflation stuck above the Fed’s 2% target. Compounding its challenges, the central bank is navigating without the economic signposts it typically relies on from the government, including monthly reports on jobs, inflation and consumer spending, which have been suspended because of the government shutdown. The Fed has signaled it may reduce its key rate again in December but the data drought raises the uncertainty around its next moves.

The Fed typically raises its short term rate to combat inflation, while it cuts rates to encourage borrowing and spending and shore up hiring. Right now its two goals are in conflict, so it is reducing borrowing costs to support the job market, while still keeping rates high enough to avoid stimulating the economy so much that it worsens inflation.

Speaking to reporters after the Fed announced its rate decision, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said there were “strongly differing views about how to proceed in December” at the policy meeting and a further reduction in the benchmark rate is not “a foregone conclusion.”

On Wednesday, the Fed also said it would stop reducing the size of its massive securities holdings, which it accumulated during the pandemic and after the 2008-2009 Great Recession. The change, to take effect Dec. 1, could over time slightly reduce longer-term interest rates on things like mortgages but won’t have much impact on consumer borrowing costs.

The Fed purchased nearly $5 trillion of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed bonds from 2020 to 2022 to stabilize financial markets during the pandemic and keep longer-term interest rates low. The bond-buying lifted its securities holdings to $9 trillion.

In the past three years, however, the Fed has reduced its holdings to about $6.6 trillion. To shrink its holdings, the Fed lets securities mature without replacing them, reducing bank reserves. In recent months, however, the reductions appeared to disrupt money markets, threatening to push up shorter-term interest rates.

Two of the 12 officials who vote on the Fed’s rate decisions dissented, but in different directions. Fed governor Stephen Miran dissented for the second straight meeting in favor of a half-point cut. Miran was appointed by President Donald Trump just before the central bank’s last meeting in September.

Jeffrey Schmid, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, voted against the move because he preferred no change to the Fed’s rate. Schmid has previously expressed concern that inflation remains too high.

Trump has repeatedly attacked Powell for not reducing borrowing costs more quickly. In South Korea early Wednesday he repeated his criticisms of the Fed chair.

“He’s out of there in another couple of months,” Trump said. Powell’s term ends in May. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed the administration is considering five people to replace Powell, and will decide by the end of this year.

Powell was asked about the impact of the government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1 and has interrupted the distribution of economic data. Powell said the Fed does have access to some data that give it “a picture of what’s going on.” He added that, “ If there were a significant or material change in the economy, one way or another, I think we’d pick that up through this.”

But the Fed chair did acknowledge that the limited data could cause officials to proceed more cautiously heading into its next meeting in mid-December.

“There’s a possibility that it would make sense to be more cautious about moving (on rates). I’m not committing to that, I’m just saying it’s certainly a possibility that you would say ‘we really can’t see, so lets’ slow down.’”

September’s jobs report, scheduled to be released three weeks ago, is still postponed. This month’s hiring figures, to be released Nov. 7, will likely be delayed and may be less comprehensive when they are finally released. And the White House said last week that October’s inflation report may never be issued at all.

Before the government shutdown cut off the flow of data, monthly hiring gains had weakened to an average of just 29,000 a month for the previous three months, according to the Labor Department’s data. The unemployment rate ticked up to a still-low 4.3% in August from 4.2% in July.

More recently, several large corporations have announced sweeping layoffs, including UPS, Amazon, and Target, which threatens to boost the unemployment rate if it continues. Powell said the Fed is watching the layoff announcements “very carefully.”

Meanwhile, last week’s inflation report — released more than a week late because of the shutdown — showed that inflation remains elevated but isn’t accelerating and may not need higher interest rates to tame it.

The government’s first report on the economy’s growth in the July-September quarter was scheduled to be published on Thursday, but will be delayed, as will Friday’s report on consumer spending that also includes the Fed’s preferred inflation measure.

Nvidia on Wednesday became the first public company to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion.

The ravenous appetite for the Silicon Valley company’s chips is the main reason that the company’s stock price has increased so rapidly since early 2023.

Nvidia’s journey to be one of the world’s most prominent companies has produced some eye-popping numbers. Here’s a look.

Nvidia’s total market capitalization as of the open of trading Wednesday, tops in the S&P 500.

As of the close of trading Tuesday, Microsoft ($4.04 trillion) and Apple ($3.99 trillion) were next among the most valuable companies in the S&P 500.

The number of trading days it took for Nvidia’s market cap to grow from $4 trillion to $5 trillion. The market cap had jumped from $3 trillion on May 13, to $4 trillion on July 9 (41 trading days), although Nvidia had crossed and fallen back below the $3 trillion threshold a number of times between June 2024 and May 2025 before making the run to $4 trillion.

The company’s contribution to the gain in the S&:P 500 this year as of Sept. 30, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. Nvidia shares gained 39% in the first nine months of the year.

The net worth of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, according to Forbes, putting him eighth on its Real-Time Billionaires List. Elon Musk is No. 1 at $499.4 billion.

The gross domestic product of Japan, the world’s fourth largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The amount of money Nvidia said it returned to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks and dividends in the first half of fiscal 2026.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve will almost certainly cut its key interest rate on Wednesday and could signal it expects another cut in December as the central bank seeks to bolster hiring.

A cut Wednesday would be the second this year and could benefit consumers by bringing down borrowing costs for mortgages and auto loans. Since Fed chair Jerome Powell strongly signaled in late August that rate cuts were likely this year, the average 30-year mortgage rate has fallen to about 6.2% from 6.6%, providing a boost to the otherwise-sluggish housing market.

Still, the Fed is navigating an unusual period for the U.S. economy and its future moves are harder to anticipate than is typically the case. Hiring has ground nearly to a halt, yet inflation remains elevated, and the economy’s mostly solid growth is heavily dependent on massive investment by leading tech companies in artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The central bank is assessing these trends without most of the government data it uses to gauge the economy’s health. The release of September’s jobs report has been postponed because of the government shutdown. The White House said last week October’s inflation figure may not even be compiled.

The shutdown itself may also crimp the economy in the coming months, depending on how long it lasts. Roughly 750,000 federal workers are nearing a month without pay, which could soon start weakening consumer spending, a critical driver of the economy.

Federal workers laid off by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency efforts earlier this year may formally show up in jobs data if it is reported next month, which could make the monthly hiring data look even worse.

Powell has said that the risk of weaker hiring is rising, which makes it as much of a concern as still-elevated inflation. As a result, the central bank needs to move its key rate closer to a level that would neither slow nor stimulate the economy.

Most Fed officials view the current level of its key rate — 4.1% — as high enough to slow growth and cool inflation, which has been their main goal since price increases spiked to a four-decade high three years ago. The Fed is widely expected to reduce it to about 3.9% Wednesday. WIth job gains at risk, the goal is to move rates to a less-restrictive level.

Kris Dawsey, head of economic research at D.E. Shaw, an investment bank, said that the lack of data during the shutdown means the Fed will likely stay on the path it sketched out in September, when it forecast cuts this month and in December.

“Imagine you’re driving in a winter storm and suddenly lose visibility in whiteout conditions,” Dawsey said. ”While you slow the car down, you’re going to continue going in the direction you were going versus making an abrupt change once you lose that visibility.”

In recent remarks, the Fed chair has made clear that the sluggish job market has become a signficant concern.

“The labor market has actually softened pretty considerably,” Powell said. “The downside risks to employment appear to have risen.”

Before the government shutdown cut off the flow of data Oct. 1, monthly hiring gains had weakened to an average of just 29,000 a month for the previous three months. The unemployment rate ticked up to a still-low 4.3% in August from 4.2% in July.

Layoffs also remain low, however, leading Powell and other officials to refer to the “low-hire, low-fire” job market.

At the same time, last week’s inflation report — released more than a week late because of the shutdown — showed that inflation remain elevated but isn’t accelerating and may not need higher rates to tame it.

Yet a key question is how long the job market can remain in what Powell has described as a “curious kind of balance.”

“There have been some worrisome data points in the last few months,” said Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander, an investment bank. “Is that a weakening trend or are we just hitting an air pocket?”

The uncertainty has prompted some top Fed officials to suggest that they may not necessarily support a cut at its next meeting in December. At its September meeting, the Fed signaled it would cut three times this year, though its policymaking committee is divided. Nine of 19 officials supported two or fewer reductions.

Christopher Waller, a member of the Fed’s governing board and one of five people being considered by the Trump administration to replace Powell as Fed chair next year, said in a recent speech that while hiring data is weak, other figures suggest the economy is growing at a healthy pace.

“So, something’s gotta give,” Waller said. “Either economic growth softens to match a soft labor market, or the labor market rebounds to match stronger economic growth.”

Since it’s unclear how the contradiction will play out, Waller added, “we need to move with care when adjusting the policy rate.”

Waller said he supported a quarter-point cut this month, “but beyond that point” it will depend on what the economic data says, assuming the shutdown ends.

Financial markets have put the odds of another cut in December at above 90%, according to CME Fedwatch — and Fed officials have so far said little to defuse that expectation.

Jonathan Pingle, chief U.S. economist at UBS, said that he will look to see if Powell, at a news conference Wednesday, repeats his assertion that the risks of a weaker job market remain high.

“If I hear that, I think they’re on track to lowering rates again in December,” he said.