PRESS DIGEST - New York Times business news - May 15

May 15 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories in the New York Times business pages on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* General Electric Co (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is planning to sell its appliance division, one of the oldest businesses in the conglomerate's 120-year history, people briefed on the proposal said Wednesday.

* Directors and officers of Countrywide Financial Corp (CFC.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the beleaguered mortgage lender, must answer shareholder accusations of insider trading and an overall failure to monitor lending practices that led to the company's collapse, a federal judge in California has ruled.

* Freddie Mac (FRE.N: Quote, Profile, Research), one of the nation's largest buyers of home loans, announced a fresh wave of bad news Wednesday, disclosing losses that were smaller than expected only because of accounting tactics that minimized the effects of bad loans.

* Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor and activist shareholder, has decided to move ahead with plans for a proxy fight at Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and will propose a dissident slate of directors, people with knowledge of the plans said Wednesday.

* European antitrust investigators are expanding their inquiry into the pharmaceutical market to determine whether companies are blocking generic drug makers from getting less-expensive medicines to market quickly.

* Consumer prices edged up slightly in April, but far more slowly than many economists had expected, the government reported Wednesday, lending credence to the view that a slowing economy is applying the brakes to inflation.