TUCSON
● Tucson Electric Power Co. has opened a new gas-fired power plant near Deming, N.M., that TEP and two partners acquired from Duke Energy in 2004. TEP will receive 190 megawatts from the 570-megawatt year-round capacity of the Luna Energy Facility. TEP owns the plant with Phelps Dodge Energy Services, a subsidiary of Phoenix-based Phelps Dodge Corp., and PNM, a New Mexico utility.
● Tucson-based DMetrix Inc. said it has teamed up with BioImagene Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., to integrate DMetrix's DX-40 automated microscope slide scanner with BioImagene's Scientific Image Management System. DMetrix and BioImagene designed the system with IBM for the Arizona Cancer Center. The system is designed to hold up to 33 terabytes — about 33,000 gigabytes — of image data and manage more than 100,000 high-resolution images, DMetrix said.
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NATION
● Copper prices rose to a record Wednesday, leading a rally in base metals, as declining supplies led investment funds to increase purchases. Copper futures for May delivery rose 6.05 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $2.596 a pound on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Strikers at Grupo Mexico SA have shut the firm's second-largest copper mine at a time when stockpiles have plunged to their lowest level in more than a month. Grupo Mexico said it expects the government to declare the strike illegal and plans to restart its copper concentrator at La Caridad by the weekend.
● Phelps Dodge pays special dividend, Page D2.
● The services sector of the nation's economy expanded in March at a faster rate than in the previous month, a private research group said Wednesday. The Institute for Supply Management said that its index for non-manufacturing business activity stood at 60.5 in March, up from 60.1 in February. The reading was higher than the 59.0 that analysts had been expecting.
● A Federal Communications Commission study that found selling cable-TV channels separately could lower consumer costs lacks supporting data and can't be proved, a nonpartisan congressional report said.
The findings by the Congressional Research Service may set back efforts by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to get the cable industry to sell channels separately, or a la carte, rather than in packages.
● Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has decided against buying more ads in local newspapers after a test in two states showed the expense is not justified, the world's largest retailer said Wednesday. Wal-Mart's test run had been closely watched by publishers who complained publicly last year that Wal-Mart sought free publicity from their newspapers but refused to buy ads — all while driving out local businesses that had been mainstays.
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