Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes and four other defendants gave evidence in Madrid earlier this year, after a police operation which came to light in 2006 when anabolic steroids, transfusion equipment and blood bags were seized in raids.

The proceedings have attracted international attention because some of Fuentes's clients were successful professional riders, including American Tyler Hamilton who gave evidence in February.

Anti-doping authorities, who were represented in court, hope the trial will lead to evidence being made available of wrongdoing by athletes in sports other than cycling.

Fuentes, who denies doping, said in his opening testimony he also had clients in sports including soccer, tennis, athletics and boxing.

The judge is also expected to announce whether she will grant a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) request for access to the blood bags.

Spain is hopeful the trial will help to dispel the impression that the nation is soft on doping and boost Madrid's bid to win the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games.

The country is pushing through parliament anti-doping legislation which the government says will bring Spain into line with international norms.

(Reporting by Mark Elkington, editing by Ken Ferris)

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan was unchanged at 3.55 percent. In July, the rate fell to 3.49 percent, the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.

The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular refinancing option, slipped to 2.85 percent, down from 2.86 percent last week. That's above the record low of 2.80 percent.

Cheap mortgages have helped lift the housing market. Sales of new and previously occupied homes are well above last year's levels. Low rates have also allowed people to refinance, which lowers monthly mortgage payments and helps boosts consumer spending.

Home prices are increasing more consistently this year, largely because the supply of homes has shrunk while sales have risen. And the number of Americans who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth declined in the second quarter.

Still, the housing market has a long way back. Home sales are below healthy levels. And many people are still having difficulty qualifying for home loans or can't afford larger down payments required by banks.

Mortgage rates are low because they tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. A weaker U.S. economy and uncertainty about how Europe will resolve its debt crisis have led investors to buy more Treasury securities, which are considered safe investments. As demand for Treasurys increase, the yield falls.

To calculate average rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on Monday through Wednesday of each week.

The average does not include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.

The average fee for 30-year loans was 0.6 point, down from 0.7 point last week. The fee for 15-year loans was changed at 0.6.

The average rate on one-year adjustable rate mortgages was steady at 2.61 percent. The fee for one-year adjustable rate loans also was unchanged, at 0.4 point.

The average rate on five-year adjustable rate mortgages fell to 2.72 percent from 2.75 percent. The fee declined to 0.6 point from 0.7.

Battaglin beat fellow Italians Fabio Felline and Giovanni Visconti for his first stage victory in one of cycling's main tours.

Overall favorite Bradley Wiggins lost 17 seconds after he was caught behind a crash near the finish on the slippery road. He dropped to sixth in the general standings, 34 seconds behind Paolini. Main rival Vincenzo Nibali moved up to fourth, 31 seconds off the pace.

Battaglin, who rides for Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox, completed the hilly 153-mile route from Policastro Bussentino to Serra San Brunowon in 6 hours, 14 minutes, 19 seconds.

The Italian stayed in the main pack throughout the race while a number of other riders tried unsuccessful breakaways.

The first featured seven riders who built a lead of nearly eight minutes after 34 miles. But the pack, led by Paolini's Katusha team, gradually reeled them in.

Several other riders tried to attack but were unsuccessful, with Sylvain Georges having the best attempt as he stormed up the final climb to Croce Ferrata. But Danilo Di Luca chased him down with less than six miles to go, bringing Robinson Chalapud with him.

Georges ran out of steam and dropped back to the main pack while Di Luca and Chalapud stayed 10 seconds in front heading over the summit. They were caught with less than a half mile remaining to set up the mass sprint to the line.

Wednesday's fifth stage is a mainly flat, 124-mile leg from Cosenza to Matera.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Slower growth in the pace of healthcare spending reflects a fundamental change in the use of medical services that could save the country nearly $800 billion in the next decade, according to two new studies released on Monday.

The research, published in the journal Health Affairs, disputes the claim that a slowdown in the rise of spending in the last few years was mostly due to a weak economy and high jobless rate that forced many Americans to cut back on trips to the doctor, use of medications and elective surgeries.

Instead, the studies conclude, everything from consumer price shopping to patent expirations on brand name drugs is transforming the world's most expensive healthcare system in ways that will constrain costs for years to come.

If their argument proves correct, the Medicare health plan for the elderly could pay out $401 billion less in 2021 than government actuaries have projected, one of the studies calculates, while total spending over the period from 2013 to 2022 would be $770 billion less.

That would reduce the pressure to make draconian changes such as raising the Medicare-eligibility age and could provide a boost to President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul.

"It's not an overstatement to say that if we solve the healthcare spending problem we solve the federal deficit," said health economist Martin Gaynor of Carnegie Mellon University, who was not involved in the new research.

Early in the last decade, healthcare spending increased 5.7 percent annually. But from 2010 to 2012, it rose only 0.9 percent a year.

The recession and continued unemployment, causing job-related insurance loss and strained finances, did keep people from going to doctors, filling prescriptions and undergoing elective surgery, according to economists David Cutler and Nikhil Sanhi of Harvard University.

But those one-off changes accounted for only 37 percent of the slowdown between 2003 and 2012, they report in Health Affairs. A decline in private insurance coverage and cuts to some Medicare payment rates accounted for a bit more.

What the economists call "a host of fundamental changes" drove the majority of the spending slowdown. Among them: fewer expensive new imaging technologies, fewer pricey new drugs and the expiration of patents on many expensive ones, patients shouldering more of the cost of care through high-deductible insurance plans, and greater efficiency by doctors and hospitals.

There are hopeful signs that might continue. Medications accounting for one-sixth of spending on prescription drugs will lose patent protection in the next five years, opening the door to cheaper generics. And more surgeries are being done on an outpatient basis, which is cheaper than a hospital stay, a trend also likely to persist.

David Cordani, president and chief executive of health insurance giant Cigna Corp, told the Reuters Health Summit on Monday that another force is at work: patients can find out where to get a $500 MRI for a battered knee rather than an identical $3,000 one, and higher-deductible insurance policies give them an incentive to seek out the $500 one.

"I believe consumer-directed plans and this information transparency are the largest drivers" of moderating healthcare spending, Cordani said. "Whether or not it's a new normal, I don't know.

HIGHER DEDUCTIBLES AND CO-PAYS

More patients have a financial incentive to find the $500 MRI: since 2006, 24 percent more workers have insurance policies with a deductible greater than $1,000 for an individual, Cutler and Sanhi report. Co-payments for doctor visits have also risen: 47 percent of plans have a co-pay greater than $25 for primary care, up from 20 percent in 2006.

Partly as a result of cost shifting to patients, physician visits fell 17 percent from spring of 2009 through the spring of 2011. There is a limit to how few doctor visits people can have, but experts suspect we are nowhere near that yet.

"When people are first exposed to the cost of medical services" through higher co-pays and the like, "they're a little bit like deer in the headlights," said Mike Thompson of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. "But over time they get better at choosing services," which suggests the slowdown in healthcare spending increases will continue.

The brakes are also being applied by providers cutting waste and reducing hospital errors, infections and re-admissions, he said. Hospital-acquired illness and avoidable readmissions account for 5 percent of U.S. healthcare spending.

"It's an uphill fight to change the supply side in a fee-for-service healthcare system," Thompson said, "but I think we're only in the infancy of these efforts," which means there is more room for reining in spending.

The conclusion that the recession explains 37 percent of the slowdown in healthcare spending is at odds with a study released last month, which attributes 77 percent of the reduced growth in healthcare spending to the economy.

"But we're in agreement that the economy is not the only factor in the historic slowdown in spending," said Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation, who led that study. "It's difficult to pinpoint the precise reasons" for the brake on spending growth, "but we clearly have made changes in the health system that are keeping costs down."

In a second study in Health Affairs, researchers conclude that both the recession and higher deductibles explain only some of the moderation in medical spending.

"What I personally believe is that there has been something of a change in the culture of providers, with doctors becoming more cost-conscious," said Michael Chernew, professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School, who led the study.

That might be reflected in the campaign by medical specialty groups to urge their members to cut back on tests and procedures that do not benefit patients. It is too soon, however, to know if this "Choosing Wisely" campaign, which began last year, is affecting how doctors practice.

(Editing by Michele Gershberg and Matthew Lewis)

RELATED:

Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya

RELATED:

Eric Nordstrom, former lead security official for the State Department in Libya

RELATED:

Mark Thompson, deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department's counterterrorism bureau

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No offense to Mr. Nordstrom, but the two testimones being hyped and drawing massive attention from Fox News to Washington and well beyond are those of Hicks and Thompson, which are supposedly going to prove what Republicans Senators John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, and Lindsey Graham : that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama did not do all they could do to stop the attack and then purposely deceive the public about the attacks.

RELATED:

"I think her [Hillary Clinton] dereliction of duty and her lack of leadership should preclude her from holding any office,"during a speech to Missouri Republicans Tuesday morning, referring to Benghazi and very much setting the table for today's session. 

Hicks, , was the highest ranking official in Libya during the attacks on September 11, 2012 (he was some 600 miles away in the capitol of Tripoli, not Benghazi, at the time). Hicks is also the first ground-level witness to speak about the attacks in the multiple rounds of Congressional hearings. And the two biggest parts of his time under oath today, according toand expected questioning, will center around calling the attack a "terror attack" in the first few minutes — and, tactically, that the Obama administration did not grant his request to scramble at least one F-16 jet from Tripoli to the sieged compound, a move Hicks believes would have scared off attackers and possibly saved some lives. Hicks had testified last month regarding the matter of a fighter plane strategy, and excerpts of his opening statement were released on Monday night in advance of the hearings. :

"I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them," Hicks testified. Two Americans died in the morning mortar attack.

In his April testimony before investigators associated with the same House oversight committee, Hicks said that a Africa Command special-ops chief and a team were ready to board a C-130 to Benghazi, but were told to sound down, CBS reports.

There have been two arguments against the move to send a jet into the air over the compound. The first: a fighter jet would have caused more confusion. "Gen. Carter Ham, the head of the military's Africa Command, has said American F-16 fighters in Europe were not on alert the night of the Benghazi assault, and would not have been useful anyway in a confused situation in a major Arab city,"

And  that the Obama administration had argued that no aircraft would have gotten there in time to do any good: 

Obama administration officials have insisted that no military resources could have made it in time. A White House official told CBS News that, at the start of the attack, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta "looked at available options, and the ones we exercised had our military forces arrive in less than 24 hours, well ahead of timelines laid out in established policies."

The other part big piece of Hicks's testimony will center on calling Benghazi a terror attack. According to interviews with investigators that were shared with Face the Nation, :

I thought it was a terrorist attack from the get-go. I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning.

As we've heard in the last several months, there have been myriad allegations that the Obama administration purposely misled the public about the nature of the attacks because ambassador Susan Rice said on a couple of Sunday morning talk shows that the administration initially believed that, to the best of its knowledge, the attack was part of a protest. Rice had told Face the Nation :

But based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy ... But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that– in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. 

[...]

I mean I think it’s clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself I think is one of the things we’ll have to determine.

Well, first off, Thompson still has his job, so he's something of a true whistleblower. He's the acting deputy assistant for operations for the Counterterrorism Security Group at State, and , his testimony is expected to insist that Clinton willfully blocked out his department's involvement and that he has received threats State Department regarding his potentially damaging testimony.

, we know that the Obama administration "did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource, the Counterterrorism Security Group." The gist of that under oath, , will play out something like this: "Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut the department's own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making." And that's supposedly damaging in light of the administration scrubbing al Qaeda references :

Documents from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, first published in the May 13 edition of "The Weekly Standard," showed that senior officials from those agencies decided within days of the attacks to delete all references to Al Qaeda's known involvement in them from "talking points" being prepared for those administration officers being sent out to discuss the attacks publicly.

The administration later acknowledged that there had been no such protest, as evidence mounted that Al Qaeda-linked terrorists had participated in the attacks. The latter conclusion had figured prominently in the earliest CIA drafts of the talking points, but was stricken by an ad hoc group of senior officials controlling the drafting process. Among those involved in prodding the deletions, the documents published by "The Weekly Standard" show, was State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, who wrote at one point that the revisions were not sufficient to satisfy "my building's leadership."

The administration's alleged purposeful striking of those al-Qaeda references could be — indeed, has already been — interpreted as a cover-up over an issue that  it's taken care of. It's the kind of conspiracy that has sent conservative pundits like , others like , and fringe Republican congressman like .

Thompson is also alleging that the State Department has tried to intimidate him from giving his testimony: 

Thompson's lawyer, Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney, has further alleged that his client has been subjected to threats and intimidation by as-yet-unnamed superiors at State, in advance of his cooperation with Congress.

With the Republican party pulling out all the stops to move beyond the crushing 2012 election, it looks like the Republican-controlled House — and potential candidates in the Senate — are aligning against Clinton's all-but-certain 2016 run in the form of the endless Benghazi scandal. As if the statements from Paul and Lindsey "" Graham weren't enough, Chris Stirewalt, the politics editor at Fox News — which has featured blanket coverage of Benghazi — has a piece headlined  and Paul's "dereliction of duty" statement. Stirewalt writes: 

The big story is Benghazi, because it involves the frontrunner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And the implications are serious ... In the best telling of events for Clinton, she sidestepped the incident, allowing Obama intimates to take the fall. In the worst telling, Clinton was part of decisions that left Americans vulnerable, denied them assistance under fire and then elided when the time came to go public about the attack. 

And that makes it hard to tell whether Republicans are more interested in really achieving clarity and information about how to prevent another deadly attack on an American diplomatic outlet, or if they're more interested in how to stop momentum from a political opponent. You canto find out.

After a skittish start, Williams dominated Errani and broke her final service game in both sets.

The defending champion improved to 5-0 against the seventh-ranked Errani and to 30-2 overall this year.

Williams will play the winner of the other semifinal between second-seeded Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic. If Sharapova makes the final, the No. 1 ranking will also be at stake.

Later Saturday, Rafael Nadal played fellow Spaniard Pablo Andujar and Tomas Berdych faced Stanislas Wawrinka in the semifinals of the men's event.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 15,000 for the first time on Tuesday, then held above that milestone for the next three days. But an index of small-company stocks has been putting the blue-chip gauge to shame. On Friday, the Russell 2000 closed the week up 2.2 percent, more than double the Dow's gain.

Investors are in love with small stocks because they stand a greater chance of surging ahead than large, global companies do if the U.S. economy continues to fare better than Europe.

"GDP growth was 2.5 percent in the first quarter not spectacular, but better than Europe," said Joseph Tanious, global market strategist of J.P. Morgan Funds. "Europe is sucking wind."

On Friday, the Dow, an index of 30 large-company stocks including global giants like IBM and Caterpillar, rose 35.87 points to close at 15,118.49 after flitting between gains and losses most of the day.

The Dow's meager gain of 0.2 percent was trumped by the 0.9 percent advance in the Russell 2000. The small-company index rose 8.90 points to 975.16. Both indexes, as well as the Standard & Poor's 500, closed at record highs. All three rose for a third straight week.

The sharp increase in small-company stocks is also a sign that investors are more willing to take on risk. Small stocks can offer investors greater returns, but they are also more volatile than large stocks.

Dow stocks were held back by falling commodity prices. Exxon Mobil, Caterpillar and Alcoa Dow members whose fortunes are tied to the prices of crude oil and other basic materials closed down 1 percent or more.

The price of commodities including crude oil and gold fell sharply as the dollar strengthened against other currencies, especially the Japanese yen. When the dollar rises against other currencies, it tends to weaken demand for commodities. Since commodities are priced in dollars, buyers using other currencies get less for their money when the dollar appreciates, and they respond by buying less.

Stocks have benefited from record-high corporate profits. Nearly all companies in the S&P 500 have reported first quarter earnings. The average net income for companies in the index is expected to rise 5 percent, according to S&P Capital IQ, a research firm.

"The talk at the end of April was company earnings are slowing" and investors might sell, said Gary Flam, who manages stock portfolios at Bel Air Investment Advisors. "But clearly that's not been the case in the first ten days."

The S&P rose every day since the beginning of the month until Thursday, when it fell six points. On Friday it closed up 7.03 points at 1,633.70, an increase of 0.4 percent.

Flam speculates that stocks are rising partly because investors have shifted from fear to greed.

"The last few years, risk was defined as losing money," he said. "The last few months, it's been defined as not making money."

In another sign that investors were embracing risk, prices for ultra-safe U.S. government bonds fell, sending their yields higher. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose sharply, to 1.90 percent from 1.81 percent late Thursday.

The gains in the stock market were broad. Nine of the ten industry groups in the S&P 500 index were higher. Health care stocks rose the most, 1.1 percent.

The Nasdaq composite index was up 27.41 points, or 0.8 percent, to close at 3,436.58.

One dollar was worth 101.58 yen, more than the 100.54 yen it bought late Thursday. The yen has been weakening since last fall as the Bank of Japan floods the Japanese economy with cash in an effort to shake the country out of a two-decade slump.

Japanese stocks surged. A weaker yen is a boon to Japanese exporters of cars, electronics and other goods because they can charge cheaper prices in overseas markets. Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 index jumped 2.9 percent to close at 14,607, its highest level since January 2008.

Prices for crude oil and gold fell. Crude fell 35 cents to $96.04 a barrel in New York, a loss of 0.4 percent. Gold fell $32 to $1,436 an ounce, or 2.2 percent.

Among stocks in the news:

Priceline.com and chip maker Nvidia both rose about 4 percent after reporting higher earnings. Priceline jumped $27.91 to $765 and Nvidia was up 63 cents to $14.54.

Clothing store chain Gap rose after reporting higher sales in April and predicting first-quarter earnings that were higher than financial analysts expected. Gap rose $2.18 to $40.99, or 5.6 percent.

True Religion Apparel, known for high-priced jeans, rose $2.38, or 8 percent, to $31.82 after announcing it had agreed to a buyout offer of about $826 million from the investment management firm TowerBrook Capital Partners LP.

Dell climbed after activist investor Carl Icahn and another big investor fighting founder Michael Dell's offer to take the company private launched another broadside against the plan. In a letter to Dell's board, they proposed a deal that would keep the company public and pay shareholders cash or stock worth $12 a share. Dell rose 13 cents, or 1 percent, to $13.45 per share.

The move by Rene Gonzalez is part of a deal by Federal Judge Joan Lenard to allow him to stay in Cuba rather than complete the probation he was serving in the U.S.

Gonzalez arrived Monday afternoon at the U.S. Interests Section, which Washington maintains instead of an embassy.

The 56-year-old is one of the so-called "Cuban Five," intelligence agents convicted in 2001 of spying on U.S. military installations in South Florida, as well as exile groups and politicians.

The men are celebrated as heroes in Cuba, which says they were trying to prevent a wave of bombings by Miami-based militant groups.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Stephen Hawking toured a stem cell laboratory Tuesday where scientists are studying ways to slow the progression of Lou Gehrig's disease, a neurological disorder that has left the British cosmologist almost completely paralyzed.

After the visit, the 71-year-old Hawking urged doctors, nurses and staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to support the research.

Hawking recalled how he became depressed when he was diagnosed with the disease 50 years ago and initially didn't see a point in finishing his doctorate. But his attitude changed when his condition didn't progress quickly and he was able to concentrate on his studies.

"Every new day became a bonus," he told a packed room.

Cedars-Sinai received nearly $18 million last year from California's taxpayer-funded stem cell institute to study the debilitating disease also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control the muscles. People gradually have more and more trouble breathing and moving as muscles weaken and waste away.

There's no cure and no way to reverse the disease's progression. Few people with ALS live longer than a decade.

Diagnosed at age 21 while a student at Cambridge University, Hawking has survived longer than most. He receives around-the-clock care, can only communicate by twitching his cheek, and relies on a computer mounted to his wheelchair to convey his thoughts in a distinctive robotic monotone.

A Cedars-Sinai patient who was Hawking's former student spurred doctors to invite the physicist to glimpse their stem cell work.

"We decided it was a great opportunity for him to see the labs and for us to speak to one of the preeminent scientists in the world," said Dr. Robert Baloh, who heads the hospital's ALS program.

During the tour, Hawking viewed microscopic stem cells through a projector screen and asked questions about the research, Baloh said.

Cedar-Sinai scientists have focused on engineering stem cells to make a protein in hopes of preventing nerve cells from dying. The experiment so far has been done in rats. Baloh said he hopes to get governmental approval to test it in humans, which would be needed before any therapy can be approved.

Renowned for his work on black holes and the origins of the universe, Hawking is famous for bringing esoteric physics concepts to the masses through his best-selling books including "A Brief History of Time," which sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Hawking titled his speech to Cedars-Sinai employees "A Brief History of Mine."

Despite his diagnosis, Hawking has remained active. In 2007, he floated like an astronaut on an aircraft that creates weightlessness by making parabolic dives.

Space exploration is important "for the future of humanity," he told the audience.

Hawking said he did not think Earthlings would survive "without escaping beyond your fragile planet."

And he gave some advice: Look up at the stars. Stay curious.

"However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at," he said.

Doctors don't know why some people with Lou Gehrig's disease fare better than others. Baloh said he has treated patients who lived for 10 years or more.

"But 50 years is unusual, to say the least," he said.

___

Follow Alicia Chang at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Vera Wang, the queen of bridal couture, is abolishing the nearly $500 fee she charged Chinese brides-to-be to try on a garment at her new Shanghai bridal boutique after the move, meant to deter counterfeiters, set off a global outcry.

Local and global media had criticized the surcharge as being discriminatory because it was applied only in China, at the company's Shanghai store, which staged a "soft opening" in January as the company's first bridal salon in the country, a vast potential market as the numbers of wealthy grow.

A Vera Wang spokeswoman told Reuters that the 3,000 yuan ($480) charge was being scrapped as of Wednesday.

"Please kindly be informed that Vera Wang has abolished appointment fees at her bridal salons worldwide starting from March 27, 2013," the spokeswoman said in an email, without elaborating.

A company spokeswoman told local media earlier this year that the charge was imposed to fend off copying of the elaborate dresses, which fetch thousands of dollars in the original.

Despite the move, though, Vera Wang's ivory tulle trains and pinched bodice gowns had already found fans in the world of pirates, with knockoffs widely available on Chinese e-commerce sites for a fraction of the price.

Li, one seller of "Vera Wang style" dresses on Taobao Marketplace, China's largest e-commerce site, says he can achieve up to 90 percent similarity to the namesake garments without even seeing the originals.

A Vera Wang original can range anywhere from $2,000 to over $10,000, but on Taobao some imitations go for as little as $100.

"For the experts you don't need to try on the dress to figure out how to copy it, you just need to see it or feel it at the shop," said Li, who declined to give his full name.

Li's factory, based in Suzhou, a city near Shanghai, makes Vera Wang knockoffs from photos of her creations, then sells them online for between 600 yuan ($97) to 1,700 yuan ($270).

The Taobao sellers who hawk the look-alikes use organza, satin and lace to recreate the ethereal bridal trains and three-dimensional floral whorls on Wang's dresses.

Most of the sellers online said they could achieve near 100 percent similarity to Vera Wang dresses but the complicated hand stitching and high quality materials that go into an original dress is something they can't replicate.

"There will be slight changes... If you want 100 percent you should buy the original," said one seller of mid-range copies.

In 2012, China was the top source country for counterfeit goods entering the United States and the European Union (EU) with more than 70 percent originating from China, according to the latest customs seizure reports from the U.S. and the EU.

Alibaba Group, which owns Taobao Marketplace, said in a statement to Reuters the company works with intellectual property rights holders to take down counterfeit listings and will penalize stores caught.

($1 = 6.2107 Chinese yuan)

(Editing by Kazunori Takada, Elaine Lies and Michael Perry)