A customer looks at products on sale at a supermarket in central Beijing June 12, 2012.

BEIJING | Sun Oct 7, 2012 9:00am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's retail sales growth slowed during the Golden Week holiday, local media said on Sunday, providing a snapshot of increasingly important sources of demand in the world's second-largest economy.

Overall retail sales revenue grew 15 percent to hit 800.6 billion yuan ($127.4 billion) during the National Day holiday, which coincided with the Mid-Autumn Festival to provide a rare eight-day break, China's state television China Central Television said.

That marked a cooldown from the 17.5 percent growth last year during a seven-day holiday. No further details were given,

The Golden Week holiday, when millions of people take time out to travel and spend more than usual, brings huge discounts and promotions as retailers battle for market share.

Economists are watching China's 1.3 billion consumers closely during the National Day Golden week holiday, running from Sept 30 to Oct 7, amid escalating worries about China's hard landing. ($1 = 6.2849 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Judy Hua and Koh Gui Qing; editing by Ron Askew)

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LONDON | Thu Oct 6, 2011 1:57pm EDT

LONDON Oct 6 (Reuters) - Fleet Street's finest jostled furiously at the start on Thursday of a government inquiry, trying to grab public attention with tales of shock and horror.

But this time about their own industry.

Prime Minister David Cameron has asked a judge, Lord Brian Leveson, to hold an inquiry into the oft-feared British press and make recommendations for a new regulatory regime.

This followed allegations that the News of the World, a best-selling newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, had hacked the mobile phones of a string of personalities in the news including a murdered schoolgirl and paid money to the police for stories.

One of Cameron's predecessors, Tony Blair, famously attacked Britain's media as a "feral beast tearing people and reputations to bits," and some contrition was offered at the inquiry's opening debate.

"We've been up to pretty bad behaviour throughout history. It was fun" said Roy Greenslade, a former Daily Mirror editor who now lectures on journalism at London's City University.

But less than an hour into the proceedings, it was Richard Peppiatt, a tously-haired former reporter with one of Britain's most downmarket papers, the Daily Star, who stole the show with a withering denunciation of tabloid journalism.

In more than 900 stories for British popular papers, he told the debate on the competitive pressures facing journalists: "I can probably count on fingers and toes the number of times I was genuinely telling the truth".

Peppiatt's dramatic accusations, which were quickly tweeted over the Internet, shattered the carefully crafted picture of improved press standards painted by previous speaker Phil Hall, who edited the News of the World from 1995 to 2000.

"The publish-and-be-damned attitude has long since been confined to the history books of Fleet Street," Hall said reassuringly, as some participants quietly muttered disbelief.

Peppiatt was having none of it.

Tabloid stories, he said, were ordered up from cowering reporters by bullying editors to fit the newspaper's preconceived prejudices, regardless of the facts, under an unwritten pact best described as "you tell us what we want to hear and we won't question too much your sources".

Editors of Britain's best-selling newspapers, who fear the Leveson inquiry heralds new press regulation which will cramp their free-wheeling ways, struck back.

Peppiatt's "florid diatribe" was a "grotesque caricature of the newspaper world", fumed the former political editor of the top-selling Sun newspaper, Trevor Kavanagh. A lawyer for the Daily Express said the atmosphere described by Peppiatt was "not a newsroom culture I recognise".

Earlier, Kavanagh admitted the popular press occasionally erred but added: "You should see the stories we don't print."

"MEA CULPA"

In a dramatic clash between editors that appeared to reinforce concerns about tabloid standards, Greenslade challenged former News of the World editor Hall to tell the inquiry why Rupert Murdoch had sacked him from the paper.

"Maybe Roy can tell us first how he fixed the spot-the-ball competition when he edited the Daily Mirror," retorted Hall, to gasps from the audience.

"It is an episode of journalism I feel absolutely terribly sorry about....mea culpa, mea culpa," bemoaned Greenslade, admitting the lapse which critics said made it impossible for anyone to win the 1 million pound prize on offer.

The debate touched repeatedly on Fleet Street's growing obsession with the private lives of celebrities, ranging from the late Princess Diana to adulterous footballers. The trend is blamed by some press observers for a decline in standards but seen by some editors as a good way to boost sales.

"When Michael Jackson died, the Sun's circulation went up by 326,000 copies in one day," said Sun editor Dominic Mohan, who is the paper's former showbusiness reporter. "There is a public appetite for celebrity journalism."

The noisy debate over tabloid ethics almost drowned out some of the more sober voices calling for serious debate on the risks to press freedom posed by over-intrusive regulation or the hard financial numbers showing newspapers are a fast-dying industry.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of Britain's leading liberal daily newspaper The Guardian, made an eloquent plea in a speech laden with references to great political thinkers of the past like Locke and Wilkes for Britain's rulers not to forget free speech.

"A free press is part of a larger right of free expression," said Rusbridger, whose newspaper exposed the phone-hacking scandal, "- something to be jealously preserved and guarded, regardless of the abuses of those freedoms by, or on behalf of, a small number of people calling themselves journalists."

Veteran tabloid types, who grew up on Fleet Street mantras such as "It's never wrong for long" or "This story is too good to check" muttered that all the fuss over tabloids was not new.

Try the website gentlemenranters.com, one speaker suggested, and you will see that not much has changed since the 1950s.

The site features tales from the hard-drinking past of the British newspaper trade, including a tale of one photographer who died - shock horror - from a fall while going INTO a pub.

(Editing by Jon Boyle)

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* Genachowski offers plan for modernizing USF

* Cable group says gives phone companies unfair advantage

* Proposal set for agency vote on Oct. 27 (Adds comments from industry and analyst)

WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. communications regulator unveiled on Thursday a proposal for achieving universal broadband coverage by the end of the decade.

Some 18 million Americans do not have access to broadband where they live and work despite some $4.5 billion in public money spent each year to subsidize telephone service for rural families.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed a strategy for revamping that government subsidy program to help deploy high-speed Internet service to millions of Americans living in rural and costly-to-serve areas.

"The costs of this broadband gap are measured in jobs not created, existing job openings not filled and our nation's competitiveness not advanced," Genachowski said in a speech on Thursday, acknowledging that the current program is broken.

The FCC earlier in the year proposed modernizing the $8 billion universal service fund -- paid for through fees added to consumers' telephone bills -- to spur infrastructure investment while removing inefficiencies in the program.

Genachowski's proposal would gradually move the largest program within the universal service fund, the program that subsidizes telephone service, to directly support fixed and mobile broadband.

His plan would also phase out funding for duplicating services offered by several phone companies serving the same area.

Broadband buildout to unserved areas could begin in early 2012 under the plan, bringing high-speed Internet to hundreds of thousands of homes in the near-term.

"It will help cut the number of Americans bypassed by broadband by up to one half over the following five years, and it will put us on the path to universal broadband by the end of the decade," Genachowski added.

The comprehensive set of reforms will be circulated to the other commissioners on Thursday, and are set for a vote at the FCC's Oct. 27 meeting.

CABLE INDUSTRY NOT HAPPY

Genachowski outlined a new competitive bidding process for securing funds from the program, but the American Cable Association said it bent heavily to incumbent phone companies.

The proposal would quickly move to this bidding process in some areas, but others would not shift until later years.

ACA said this would give incumbent phone carriers first dibs at monies from the fund while other broadband providers, like cable, wait years for the option to competitively bid to receive support in those areas.

"The chairman's plan locks in a sole-source contract worth billions of dollars for over ten years to a handful of incumbent large telecom companies," ACA Chief Executive Matthew Polka said in a statement.

ACA represents independent companies providing broadband service to 7.6 million subscribers.

But Genachowski argued in his speech that "a flash-cut to competitive bidding in some parts of the decades-old program risks consumer disruption, build-out delays, and other unintended consequences."

In order to push reform through, certain policy and political trade-offs must be made, and that may limit cable companies' prospects for receiving federal broadband support, said Medley Global Advisors analyst Jeffrey Silva.

"The political sensitivities almost demand that in order to get any sort of consensus that's politically viable, you have to get buy-in by rural telephone companies," Silva said.

"That may be the best this chairman or any chairman is going to be able to do because it's not just about policy, it's about politics," he added. (Reporting by Jasmin Melvin, editing by Bernard Orr)

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* Sony talking to Ericsson about 50:50 joint venture-WSJ

* Sony and Ericsson decline to comment on reported talks

* Deal would be positive for both companies - analysts (Adds details in paragraphs 2, 8-11, byline)

Oct 6 (Reuters) - Sony Corp (6758.T) is nearing a deal to buy Telefon AB LM Ericsson's (ERICb.ST) stake in their 50:50 smartphone joint venture, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Sony and Ericsson have been talking for weeks about the future of the venture because the companies' 10-year-old pact is up for renewal this month, two industry sources told Reuters.

The Wall Street Journal said the talks were ongoing and could break apart at any time.

Ericsson and Sony declined to comment on the reported talks. "We have a long-term commitment to our joint ventures," said an Ericsson spokesman.

Many analysts say Japan's Sony needs to assert control over Sony Ericsson if the venture is to recoup market share in the cut-throat world of smartphones. [ID:nLDE74N0FB]

The joint venture, formed in 2001, thrived after its breakthrough with Walkman music phones and Cybershot cameraphones, both of which leveraged Sony's brands.

But it lost out to bigger rivals Nokia (NOK1V.HE) and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) at the cheaper end of the market, and was late to react to Apple's (AAPL.O) entrance into the high-end of the market.

It has refocused its business to make smartphones using Google's (GOOG.O) Android platform, but it has dropped to No. 9 in global cellphone rankings from No. 4 just a few years ago.

It is making some progress and turned a net profit of 90 million euros last year after booking a loss of 836 million in 2009. But it reported another loss for the April-June quarter.

The venture is due to report its September quarter results on Oct 14.

DIVORCE GOOD FOR BOTH PARTNERS?

"A buyout would make a lot of sense for Ericsson as I believe their share in the joint venture is worth to them between zero and minus 1 billion euros," said Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu.

"Whatever price they agree on, it would be a positive for Ericsson," he said.

Shares in Sweden's Ericsson gained on the report and closed 6 percent higher at 69.20 crowns on Thursday.

A full takeover of the venture would boost Sony's overall offering, which includes content, gaming devices, consumer electronics and even tablet computers. But the company still lacks its own smartphones.

"The buyout allows Sony to move development in-house and better integrate other products like gaming into newer phones," said Steven Nathasingh from U.S. technology research firm Vaxa Inc.

Last month at the IFA trade fair in Berlin, Sony Ericsson's phones were presented inside the Sony hall, mixed with Sony's TV sets and new tablets. [ID:nN1E77U0KO] (Additional reporting by Yinka Adegoke, Anna Ringstrom, Sven Nordenstam and Liana Balinsky-Baker; Editing by Erica Billingham and John Wallace)

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* Rambus says relevant documents were all produced

* Appeals judge says Rambus doesn't know what was shredded

* Other judge: ITC may use wrong standard to take cases

WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Chip technology company Rambus Inc (RMBS.O) was quizzed in court about destroyed documents and its own use of its patents as graphics chip maker Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) sought relief from expensive licensing fees.

The two sides squared off on Thursday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over whether Nvidia infringed Rambus patents for controlling and managing the flow of computer data to and from a chip's memory.

The U.S. International Trade Commission, which hears patent cases involving imports, had previously found Nvidia infringed Rambus chip patents and issued an order barring the importation of any chip made with the infringing technology.

Nvidia licensed the Rambus technology at royalty rates of between 1 percent and 2 percent depending on the type of memory controller involved, to allow its chips to enter the country, but the legal battle has continued.

The ITC had found that Nvidia infringed three patents but did not infringe two others. Both sides appealed to the circuit court and the arguments were consolidated.

Part of the battle has centered on whether Rambus destroyed documents to avoid having them used against it in litigation.

Rambus has acknowledged document destruction but said it was part of ordinary business practices.

Judge Kathleen O'Malley, part of a three-judge panel that heard the case, took issue with an attorney for Rambus who said the company produced the documents that were requested and that all relevant documents were preserved.

"You admit you have no idea what was destroyed! You have no record of what was destroyed!" she said.

"Remember, you saved the ones that helped you and destroyed the ones that hurt you," O'Malley said at another point.

The appeals court previously ruled in cases between Rambus and Micron Technology (MU.O) and Hynix Semiconductor (000660.KS) that Rambus destroyed documents inappropriately. The cases have been remanded back to lower courts for further consideration.

The battle is a key one for Nvidia, whose core business relies on the sale of specialized graphics cards.

Judge Raymond Clevenger on Thursday repeatedly asked whether Rambus had proved that it used the patents that it was seeking to defend.

Companies may not sue at the International Trade Commission unless they show that they are using the patent domestically. Rambus licensed the patents, and used that to proceed with the lawsuit.

Clevenger said district courts cannot order production or importation of infringing products to cease since the Supreme Court said in a 2006 decision that an injunction should not necessarily follow a finding of infringement. "It's a factor we should think about," he said.

Rambus and others go to the ITC to file patent complaints because the trade commission, unlike U.S. district courts, can bar the importation of devices made with infringing technology.

The case against Nvidia and others that was before the International Trade Commission is number 337-661. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case numbers are 2010-1483 and 2010-1556. (Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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