PHOENIX - Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. on Wednesday said first-quarter earnings rose 89 percent as revenue surged amid sharply higher metals prices and the miner completed its purchase of rival Phelps Dodge.

DENVER — Global mining company Freeport-McMoRan on Tuesday reported a 14 percent drop in second-quarter profit on lower copper and gold sales and one-time costs.

Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. said Wednesday it would suspend operations and lay off the bulk of its workers at a New Mexico mine, cut production estimates through 2010 and curb other costs as it struggles to cope with plummeting copper prices.

A company spokesman says two employees of Phoenix-based Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc. were injured in suicide bombings at American luxury hotels in Indonesia's capital on Friday.

Science Foundation Arizona (SFAz), a nonprofit public-private partnership, joined with partners Tuesday to announce the launch of the Arizona STEM Network. The STEM Network is a “strategic effort” to help transform Arizona’s educational system for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

PHOENIX - Phelps Dodge Corp., which has agreed to a buyout by copper mining rival Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold Inc., said Monday its fourth-quarter earnings surged due to sharply higher copper prices, even as production slipped.

Looking to ring in the new year with a new job?

In other places, you learned the three R’s and your ABC’s. In Arizona, school kids in the 1960s were drilled on the five C’s — copper, cotton, cattle, citrus and climate — of our economy.

Six public Arizona-based companies made this year’s Fortune 500, with a bevy of other national firms with large East Valley presences also on the list.

The state's budget crisis is putting pressure on Science Foundation Arizona to find other sources of funding for its research programs.

Phelps Dodge Corp., which has agreed to a buyout by copper mining rival Freeport Mc-Moran Copper & Gold, said Monday its fourth-quarter earnings surged because of sharply higher copper prices, even as production slipped.

It paid to be in the education business in 2008. That's the conclusion that can be drawn for the stock results last year of Arizona-related companies.

Washington • A strong Mexican economy is helping Arizona keep pace with other states in export sales this year, according to recent data from the International Trade Administration.

Arizona’s market for new public companies showed signs of life earlier this year with two companies poised to offer stock for the first time.

John Leptich, a former reporter and copy editor at the East Valley Tribune and Scottsdale Tribune, lost his long and hard-fought battle against bone marrow cancer early Monday.

For Bob Simpson, president and co-owner of Silverado Cable in Mesa, the decline of the U.S. dollar in foreign currency markets has been of more than just theoretical interest. It has increased his business.

Think you can show up at work with your clothes reeking of marijuana and get away with it just by saying the doctor told you to inhale?

Demonstrating his knowledge of electrical circuits, Jacob Gerken, a Queen Creek High School senior, deftly connects wires to make a light bulb glow.