Australia Westpac/Melbourne consumer confidence index fell to 84.4 in September from 88.9 previously.

People familiar with the matter said Anthropic has decided to abandon plans to acquire AI startup Decart after conducting due diligence, though the firms may still pursue other cooperation. Media reports in August said Anthropic had discussed a roughly $6 billion deal, but talks were not final and could collapse. Decart develops software that improves chip efficiency, reducing AI training and operating costs. Anthropic rarely pursues large acquisitions but has been deploying compute for product development and customer services ahead of an anticipated IPO; sources said it has sought to raise as much or more than SpaceX.

According to Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs monitoring, on Sept. 8 the Agricultural Products Wholesale Price 200 Index was 116.83, up 0.25 points from a day earlier; the vegetable-basket wholesale price index was 117.59, up 0.29 points. As of 14:00 on Sept. 8, national wholesale pork averaged 16.33 yuan/kg, down 0.9% day-on-day; beef 70.33 yuan/kg, up 0.4%; mutton 66.26 yuan/kg, up 0.9%; eggs 10.88 yuan/kg, up 0.7%; dressed chicken 17.29 yuan/kg, up 1.5%.