Another warning sign for China’s economy. Factory activity fell for the second straight month, with analysts attributing the drop to weaker domestic demand, rising commodity prices and slowing construction activity.

Is the Delta variant surge over? New case counts and hospitalizations are dropping in most states, though experts worry that family gatherings over the winter holidays could lead to a resurgence. Meanwhile, children aged 5 to 11 could begin receiving the Pfizer vaccine in the U.S. as soon as Wednesday.

American Airlines cancels over 1,200 flights. The cancellations, equivalent to about 12 percent of the airline’s weekend flights, came weeks after Southwest canceled nearly 2,000 flights. Both companies cited bad weather and staff shortages, the latter of which is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

Saudi Aramco’s blowout profit underscores oil’s resurgence. The oil giant said that its third-quarter earnings nearly tripled from a year ago, as the price of petroleum has soared. Aramco said it plans to increase output through 2037, but also plans to hit net zero emissions by 2050.

The Roblox apocalypse

Last night, Roblox, a gaming platform that attracts more than 40 million players daily, came back online after a multiday outage. The outage left Roblox’s legions of preteen fans scrambling for things to do (some actually went outside to play). DealBook turned to The Times’s Kellen Browning, a technology reporter who has covered the rise of Roblox, for his thoughts on what the extended outage means for the popular gaming (and advertising) platform:

When Facebook suffered an outage last month, we saw how impactful it could be on communications, productivity and more. For kids, the “Roblox apocalypse,” as one put it, carries the same degree of gravity. Three-quarters of 9-to-12-year-olds in the U.S. play or have played Roblox.

When Facebook went down, some content creators (like gamers) who use the platform to make money worried that they might struggle to make ends meet. Roblox is no different. An entire ecosystem is built around the platform, from the independent developers who code for games hosted on the platform, to influencers who make Roblox-related content on YouTube and elsewhere.