US small-business confidence edged down in September, the National Federation of Independent Business said, with its small-business optimism index falling 0.8 point to 97.9, slightly below its 52-year average. The NFIB said Federal Reserve rate hikes have raised borrowing costs and restrained business borrowing. NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg said owners are taking a cautious stance amid rising costs, higher rates and difficulty finding qualified workers. Seasonally adjusted, the net perce

Qatar's Emir said maintaining the security and sovereignty of Gulf states is non-negotiable.

China today (Oct 13) released Qiusuo 4.0, the country’s first full‑chain AI evaluation benchmark covering compute, model algorithms, intelligent systems and products, industry applications and security governance. Qiusuo has run multiple pilot assessments across the AI supply chain and completed product validations in finance, power and oil & petrochemical scenarios, generating several industry implementation cases. The framework is organized into four modules — basic software and hardware, models and intelligent systems, security governance, and industry deployment — with 16 evaluation tools that cover bottom‑layer compute, hardware‑software co‑design, intelligent computing cloud, intelligent software engineering, large models, agents, embodied intelligence, intelligent terminals, AI security and industry scenario testing.