IBT Staff Reporter

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc said Wednesday it has decided to move forward on three deferred copper mining projects, citing a positive outlook for its metal markets and its ability to manage costs during the global economic downturn.

The first image visitors confront at the National Gallery's new Sacred Made Real show is an impressively realistic severed head, complete with detailed rendition of the anatomy of a neck.

ABC is developing I'm With Stupid, a multicamera comedy series starring Judy Greer.

Microsoft Corp has sealed agreements to access real-time content on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, a boost for its fledgling Bing search engine.

Microsoft's search engine Bing has sealed a deal with Facebook and the popular micro-blogging service Twitter, which will add real-time web updates to its search results, in a bid to raise the level against arch rival Google.

In summer 2008, four college friends pooled $6,000 to shoot a 15-minute presentation for a Web series.

Traditional television viewing patterns are collapsing and the industry needs to quickly figure out how to profit in a world where people can watch TV shows anytime, anywhere, NBC Universal's TV chief said.

For those who don't recall, Jeff Dunham is a comic whose Christmas 2008 special earned Comedy Central record ratings -- a full 6.6 million viewers. Those are numbers Jay Leno would drool over these days, but for most of the country, Dunham is a complete unknown.

EBay Inc on Wednesday forecast fourth-quarter profit and revenue at the low end of analysts' estimates, disappointing investors' hopes of a substantial turnaround at its main marketplaces division during the crucial holiday season.

Steve Buscemi, Stanley Tucci and Wren Arthur, the trio behind Olive Prods., have set up their first TV projects: a drama at HBO starring Tucci and an animated comedy at TBS to be voiced by Tucci and Buscemi.

Pretty Little Liars, a drama based on Alloy Entertainment's series of young-adult novels by Sara Shepard, is nearing a deal with ABC Family.

A New York law firm is the subject of a new reality series, Legal Ease.

A 50 year-old Russian coal miner suffering from lung disease is seeking a buyer for his prized possession, a signed photograph of sultry Brigitte Bardot, to pay for an operation, a popular tabloid reported on Wednesday.

The music game genre experienced a much-needed lift in September on the backs of new releases The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5.

British rock band Def Leppard has canceled the third leg of its North American tour due to unspecified personal matters, the group said on its website.

Cecilia Bartoli could have followed the path of least resistance. When the Italian mezzo-soprano burst onto the opera scene in the early '90s with a standard repertoire of Rossini and Mozart, she looked like she could establish a career as a traditional classical artist.

U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday, hurt by a late sell-off in financial shares after an influential bank analyst recommended selling Wells Fargo shares and a wider-than-expected loss from Boeing disappointed investors.

Residents of Japanese town defended their annual dolphin hunt on Wednesday as a U.S. documentary showing the event premiered at a Tokyo film festival to a sell-out audience.

Employers and employees have dramatically different opinions of why workers remain in their jobs, says research released on Tuesday showing U.S. companies may struggle to retain employees in an improved job market.

Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier is in negotiations to direct the English-language romantic comedy Which Brings Me to You.

Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt with Nazis purports to be an evenhanded investigation into the case of a Holocaust survivor who, by negotiating with Adolf Eichmann, saved many fellow Jews but apparently let many more perish. This compelling but lopsided documentary is best viewed by reading between the lines.

Michigan again had the highest unemployment rate of all U.S. states in September at 15.3 percent, followed by Nevada and Rhode Island, which set records, the Labor Department said on Wednesday.

Pretty people suit up in skimpy swimsuits under the crystal blue waters of the Bahamas in India's most expensive ($21 million) film to date. Although Blue has been promoted aggressively for months, this year's big Diwali holiday release is up against an urban love story and an eagerly awaited big-name comedy that will likely leave Blue's revenues high and dry.

The current recession has been called a mancession because men have lost more jobs than women have, yet some experts contend women are suffering more: The tight money environment is causing them to give up everything from sleep to children as they worry about finances and scale back their lifestyles and family plans.

A lawyer for Roman Polanski denied on Wednesday that the film director, now in Swiss custody, may opt to face justice in the United States, where he is wanted on a 1977 sex charge, to avoid lengthy extradition procedures.

Bahraini real estate developers are eying investments in the country's low-income housing market to ride out a dearth of demand for high-end residences, executives said.

MTV, which made its name as the home of the music video three decades ago, will launch a drive into scripted original programs on Friday that executives hope will mark a new era for the youth-oriented cable channel.

Enterprise, a U.S. nonprofit group, said on Wednesday it hopes to raise $4 billion over the next five years to make housing for low-income people more energy efficient.

The Obama administration is open to the idea of a short-term extension of the housing tax credit but wants to see it remain focused on first-time home buyers, senior White House aide Lawrence Summers said on Wednesday.