LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's economy grew faster than expected in the second quarter, benefiting from a broad-based pick-up in activity that looked to have put the country's burgeoning recovery on a firmer footing.

Gross domestic product expanded 0.7 percent from the previous quarter, data from the Office for National Statistics showed on Friday, beating its initial estimate and economists' forecasts and putting Britain's growth rate on a par with European powerhouse Germany.

"It does look like the recovery is becoming more self-sustaining," said Philip Shaw, economist at Investec.

Stocks gained after the data, which also showed output rose by a surprisingly strong 1.5 percent from a year ago.

The pound and government bond yields rose, highlighting expectations that the revival could force Britain's central bank to raise interest rates earlier than it has indicated.

British exports rose at the fastest pace since late 2011 and business investment grew faster than household spending, suggesting a shift towards more balanced growth in an economy that has been driven mainly by domestic consumption and imports.

RATES CONUNDRUM

In an effort to encourage spending and investment, the Bank of England said earlier this month it would not raise borrowing costs while unemployment remained above 7 percent, a level it did not expect to be breached for at least three years.

But the threshold may be crossed sooner if Britain's recovery maintains momentum, and since the bank gave its forward guidance, the news on the economy has been predominantly upbeat.

Factories' order books looked in their best shape for two years in August, consumer confidence and retail sales soared in July, and surveys found robust growth across manufacturing, construction and services at the start of the third quarter.

"The Bank of England is therefore facing a growing challenge of how to convince the markets and households that interest rates will not need to rise over the next three years," said Chris Williamson, economist at financial data company Markit.

In a speech next week, BoE governor Mark Carney is tipped to try to talk down expectations of an earlier rise in the base rate, which have caused conditions to tighten on money markets.

Friday's data showed that most key output components of GDP expanded more than originally thought.

Britain's service sector - which makes up more than three quarters of GDP - grew 0.6 percent compared with the first quarter, as estimated earlier.

But manufacturing output growth was heavily revised up to 0.7 percent and the volatile construction sector posted a 1.4 percent rise, also much better than found a month ago.

The increase in building activity is running in parallel with an upturn in the property market, fuelled in part by a state-backed mortgage scheme that critics fear could lead to a new price bubble.

Britain's economy is still 3.2 percent smaller than at its peak in the first quarter of 2008.

(Editing by John Stonestreet)

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The Singapore government unveiled a master plan on Sunday to double capacity at Southeast Asia's busiest airport, build a new waterfront city, move its massive port and relocate a military airbase to free up land for development.

The plan announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong follows mounting discontent in one of the world's wealthiest nations over an influx of foreign workers and expatriates blamed for a range of problems - from strained infrastructure to among the highest living costs in Asia.

In an annual National Day address, Lee sought to allay those fears, elaborating on a trove of long-term plans that appear intended to counter a growing voter backlash against the People's Action Party (PAP) that has ruled Singapore for more than half a century.

These include changes to Singapore's health-care and education systems, and the move of its port - the world's second-busiest hub for container shipping - to a new location in Tuas in western Singapore from 2027. That would free up land in Tanjong Pagar, next to the central business district, for a sprawling new waterfront city, Lee said.

He also unveiled plans for a fourth runway at Changi Airport, Southeast Asia's busiest. This will allow the government to move a military airbase in central Singapore to Changi after 2030 and free up 800 hectares (1,980 acres) of land for homes, factories and businesses.

"This is how we can stay the hub in Southeast Asia and create many more opportunities for Singaporeans," he said, citing competition from Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.

PACIFYING A NEW GENERATION

Lee's speech seemed intended to show voters that Singapore under the PAP will evolve well beyond the era of his father, the 89-year-old Lee Kuan Yew, the country's founder prime minister. The elder Lee's stern and technocratic policies are credited with turning Singapore from a colonial outpost in the 1960s into a flourishing financial center with clean streets and the world's highest concentration of millionaires.

A new generation has begun to openly question the ruling party's wisdom, clamoring for more say in the country's direction.

Online forums bristle with criticism of government plans announced in January to lift the population of 5.3 million by as much as 30 percent by 2030, mostly through foreign workers to offset a low birth rate. This has sparked debate over how many people can fit onto an island half the size of London and how much the national identity will be diluted.

The younger Lee's speech might help appease worries that the island is running out of space.

Changi Airport, a base for Singapore Airlines Ltd, operates two runways but can take over a third now being used by the military. A fourth runway will be used by the air force, allowing the military to shut its airbase in the central region of Paya Lebar.

Lee spent the bulk of his three-hour speech addressing concerns about housing, schools and healthcare -- hot-button issues that contributed to the PAP's worst-ever result in 2011 general elections.

Lee said prices would not be cut for new Housing and Development Board (HDB) apartments -- subsidized homes where the bulk of the population live. But more grants would be provided to help lower- and middle-income Singaporeans buy new homes.

"I will make sure that every Singaporean who is working can afford an HDB flat," Lee said.

The prime minister also said a state-administered health insurance plan, offered by local insurers Great Eastern Holdings Ltd and NTUC Income, will be extended to cover people as long as they live, up from the current cap of 90 years.

People will have to pay higher premiums, but the government will assist those who would have difficulty such as the elderly.

(Additional reporting by Eveline Danubrata; Editing by Jason Szep and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

(Reuters) - An elaborate temple-like structure perched on an apartment block in southeastern China is an illegal hazard that should be torn down, residents say. But they may not be as lucky as opponents of a lavish rooftop villa in Beijing.

The temple in Shenzhen is believed to have been on the roof for about seven years but the complaints have hit the spotlight only after a doctor in Beijing was given 15 days to demolish his 800-square-metre (8,600-square-foot) house and garden built illegally atop a 26-storey apartment block.

Although the roof of the building in Shenzhen is supposed to be a public space, a fingerprint-activated lock stops others from accessing it, according to media reports.

Chen Jiatao, chairman of the complex's housing management committee, said the temple's owner must resolve the matter by opening the space to other residents but he seemed to hold out little hope.

"I once spoke with the past chairman, who was here for seven years," Chen told Reuters Television. "He said this to me: 'Oh my, don't you know? This person is an official, he has friends in high places.' So it's useless."

A disregard for laws and regulations by the rich and well-connected is a source of discontent among many Chinese.

The temple and inaccessible rooftop have raised concerns about safety. For residents on higher floors, the roof would be the main escape route in case of fire, while the added weight from the illegal structure could threaten the building's stability, media reports say.

Apartments in the building sell for around 30,000 yuan ($4,900) per square meter and the rooftop itself is worth more than 15 million yuan ($2.45 million), according to the South China Morning Post.

(Additional reporting by Venus Wu and Stefanie McIntyre; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

AHRENSBURG, Germany (Reuters) - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Tuesday for the first time that Greece will need another bailout, triggering a storm of protest from opposition parties five weeks before an election in Europe's biggest economy.

While analysts have long predicted Greece will require more aid, albeit on a smaller scale than previous bailouts totaling about 240 billion euros ($320 billion), Chancellor Angela Merkel has tried to keep Greece out of her campaign for re-election to avoid angering German voters who fear they will foot the bill.

Just hours before Schaeuble spoke, Merkel was quoted in a regional newspaper as saying there was no point in discussing additional aid to Greece before the end of next year, when its second rescue package will expire.

But at a campaign event in northern Germany, her outspoken minister departed from that line, breaking what had been seen as an election campaign taboo.

"There will have to be another program in Greece," Schaeuble said.

A Greek finance ministry official told Reuters a new bailout would involve sums far smaller than previous rescues and would focus on plugging an expected funding shortfall over 2014-2016.

"Greece and its lenders are examining several ways to plug any funding gap that Greece will face over the next few years," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The aid program announced by Schaeuble will be at least partly financed via the EU budget, German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung cited unnamed sources as saying in an advance extract of an article due to be published on Wednesday.

The newspaper said discussions were underway about making extra money from the EU's structural funds available to Athens, which could use it to boost the economy and free up national budgetary resources to pay off debt.

The newspaper cited government sources in Berlin as saying that the third aid program would be much smaller than the first two and the conditions would also be less strict as Greece has already set a lot of the necessary changes in motion.

The International Monetary Fund last month estimated Greece's funding gap for 2014-2015 at 10.9 billion euros.

Athens hopes to cover part of that gap by returning to bond markets, which it could do as early as 2014 with a "small-size" bond issue, finance minister Yannis Stournaras told Reuters last month. But market observers increasingly doubt the situation has improved enough to allow a bond market return next year.

Schaeuble has said in the past that international lenders may have to consider a new aid program for Greece after the existing one runs out at the end of 2014.

But he has never described this as inevitable, as he appeared to do on Tuesday.

His comments came shortly after the European Central Bank said Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen, a German who used to work for Schaeuble, would be heading to Athens on Wednesday to discuss progress on reforms needed to ensure the country receives more bailout money.

Greece received an aid tranche of 5.8 billion euros from its international lenders in July. It stands to receive another 1 billion euros in October, subject to implementation of further reforms.

Inspectors from the "troika" - the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF - will return to Athens in the autumn to find out whether the government needs to find further savings to meet its 2015-2016 budget targets.

As a prelude, Asmussen will meet Central Bank Governor George Provopoulos, Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras and George Zanias, chairman of Greece's biggest lender, National Bank, on his trip this week, Greek sources told Reuters.

"TELL THE TRUTH"

Schaeuble's comments played into the hands of the opposition, who throughout the election campaign have accused Merkel of failing to tell voters the truth about Greece.

"I have made clear that saving Europe and keeping the continent together comes at a cost, also for us Germans," Merkel's Social Democrat (SPD) challenger Peer Steinbrueck said after Schaeuble spoke. "Now it's time that Frau Merkel tells people the truth."

Greens leader Juergen Trittin said Schaeuble had exposed Merkel's "deceit" and criticized the chancellor for advocating austerity policies in Greece that had failed to reduce its debt load.

Progress on reform in recession-stricken Greece has been patchy and there have been several reports that it may need another aid package or more debt relief.

As Europe's biggest economy, Germany takes the biggest share of the bailouts, which are unpopular with taxpayers.

Merkel looks on track to win a third term next month, in part because voters applaud the hard line she has taken with bailed-out countries like Greece.

But any indication she is covering up the risks of another rescue could hurt her at a time when she is battling to win the votes needed to keep her center-right coalition together.

"Greece is a dangerous subject. It is not clever to bring it up again just as there was a general feeling of calm," said Emnid pollster Klaus-Peter Schoeppner.

In the interview with the Ruhr Nachrichten newspaper, Merkel was asked about additional aid for Athens and responded: "In the euro zone, we always said that we would evaluate the Greek situation again at the end of 2014 or in early 2015. It makes sense to stick to this timeline." ($1 = 0.7490 euros)

(Additional reporting by Eva Taylor in Frankfurt, Martin Santa in Brussels, George Georgiopoulos and Lefteris Papadimas in Athens, Nicholas Vinocur in Paris and Michelle Martin in Berlin; Writing by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Noah Barkin and Hugh Lawson)

(Reuters) - DirecTV is considering offering different pricing plans for the NFL Sunday Ticket package and is asking consumers about how much they would pay for new versions of its exclusive football package, including a cheaper Internet-only option.

Investors and analysts are watching to see whether DirecTV will renew its contract with the National Football League, estimated to be worth $1 billion annually. The current agreement is due to expire at the end of the 2014 season. Google was reportedly talking to the NFL about stepping in and buying the rights for itself, according to media reports.

The current DirecTV offer allows subscribers to watch football games outside of their local markets on Sundays. The exclusive package, which costs subscribers about $300 a year, is an important tool for DirecTV to attract new subscribers and the company has said about 2 million people receive the service.

BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield posted the DirecTV survey in a research note on the Internet on Friday. The survey asks DirecTV customers whether they would be interested in a mobile and online NFL Sunday ticket that would be cheaper and more accessible than its current product.

A DirecTV spokesman confirmed the survey's authenticity.

In the questionnaire, DirecTV offers options as low as $26 per month for the Internet-only version. It also proposed a "My Team" package where subscribers would choose their favorite team and just have access to those games every Sunday, paying less than they would for the entire league lineup.

DirecTV is tinkering with its pricing and examining the business model of its NFL deal to gauge whether it is worth securing a new contract with the league, Greenfield said.

"They're trying to figure out whether there's a way to market a digital product and reach a wider audience if they price it cheaper or different," he said.

DirecTV began offering online packages for Sunday Ticket in 2007, but did not promote them heavily.

It has also allowed customers the option to stream Sunday Ticket through Sony's PlayStation video game console.

While a company spokesman declined to comment on current negotiations, DirecTV, a longtime critic of escalating sports programming costs, sounded upbeat on its chances to renew its contract on its quarterly earnings call with analysts.

Chief Executive Mike White said on the August 1 call that DirecTV was having "constructive discussions" with the NFL and "Sunday ticket will stay with us for the long haul."

(Reporting by Liana B. Baker; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

LONDON (Reuters) - Two men with HIV have been off AIDS drugs for several months after receiving stem-cell transplants for cancer that appear to have cleared the virus from their bodies, researchers reported on Wednesday.

Both patients, who were treated in Boston and had been on long-term drug therapy to control their HIV, received stem-cell transplants after developing lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.

Since the transplants, doctors have been unable to find any evidence of HIV infection, Timothy Henrich of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston told an International AIDS Society conference in Kuala Lumpur.

While it is too early to say for sure that the virus has disappeared from their bodies altogether, one patient has now been off antiretroviral drug treatment for 15 weeks and the other for seven weeks.

Last July Henrich first reported that the two men had undetectable levels of HIV in their blood after their stem-cell treatment, but at that time they were still taking medicines to suppress HIV.

Using stem-cell therapy is not seen as a viable option for widespread use, since it is extremely expensive, but the latest cases could open new avenues for fighting the disease, which infects about 34 million people worldwide.

The latest cases resemble that of Timothy Ray Brown, known as "the Berlin patient", who became the first person to be cured of HIV after receiving a bone marrow transplant for leukaemia in 2007. There are, however, important differences.

While Brown's doctor used stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation, known as CCR5 delta 32, which renders people virtually resistant to HIV, the two Boston patients received cells without this mutation.

"Dr. Henrich is charting new territory in HIV eradication research," Kevin Robert Frost, chief executive officer of the Foundation for AIDS Research, which funded the study, said in a statement.

Scientific advances since HIV was first discovered more than 30 years ago mean the virus is no longer a death sentence and the latest antiretroviral AIDS drugs can control the virus for decades.

But many people still do not get therapy early enough, prompting the World Health Organization to call for faster roll-out of medicines after patients test positive.

Indian generics companies are leading suppliers of HIV drugs to Africa and to many other poor countries. Major Western HIV drugmakers include Gilead Sciences, Johnson & Johnson and ViiV Healthcare, which is majority-owned by GlaxoSmithKline.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

One benefit of reading memoirs, nonfiction narratives, and other nontraditional personal finance books is that they can get you thinking about money and the financial choices you make without even trying. In "Where the Peacocks Sing," a memoir by Alison Singh Gee (the book recommended by Alpha Consumer in the ), the protagonist is forced to learn to live on a budget after she breaks up with her well-to-do boyfriend. She starts eating more at home, taking buses and skipping high-priced shopping sprees.

Along the way, Gee finds out what's really important to her, and it's not 1,000-thread count bed sheets. Without being forced to listen to a lecture, the reader is lead to contemplate her own values, and how they should be impacting her budget.

Here are more books for adults that other money experts recommended on the program:

1. "Debt, the First 5,000 Years," by David Graeber. An anthropologist delves into the origins of debt systems, and reveals our own values system along the way. (Recommended by Carmen Wong Ulrich, co-founder of ALTA Wealth Management.)

2. "The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong with Banking and What To Do About It," by Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig. Thisexplores how the government might be able to better regulate banks without slowing down growth. (Recommended by Jill Schlesinger, CBS News analyst.)

3. "How to Cook Everything" and "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," by Mark Bittman. These dual cookbooks help even novice cooks , and they include plenty of simple, healthy recipes that can be dressed up as needed. (Recommended by Meg Favreau, senior editor at the personal finance website Wisebread.com.)

4. "Detroit: An American Autopsy," by Charlie LeDuff. The author explores what happened to his hometown in this personal and deeply reported account. (Recommended by Nela Richardson, analyst for Bloomberg Government.)

5. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity," by Katherine Boo. This hard-to-put down narrative tells the story of growing up in one of the biggest slums in India. It's eye-opening, depressing and stunning at the same time. (Recommended by Chris Farrell, economics editor for Marketplace.)

6. "Life," by Keith Richards. The autobiography of one of the Rolling Stone's founders sheds light on his(among other impulses). (Also recommended by Chris Farrell, economics editor for Marketplace.)

Do any of your summer reading books explore financial themes?

Twitter:

Haji Wazir Mohammad, a man who lost 11 family members in the attack, and his cousin, Khamal Adin, took the witness stand Wednesday against Staff Sgt. Robert Bales during his sentencing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle.

Bales faces life in prison with or without the possibility of release for killing 16 Afghan civilians in March 2012.

The two villagers answered questions from a prosecutor, describing the horror they found when they arrived at the village and how the attacks have affected them.

When the questions were over, they asked if they could say anything more, but it was prohibited by court rules.

Investors were also on edge ahead of the release later Wednesday of minutes from the Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 30 points, or 0.2 percent, at 14,976 after the first few minutes of trading. The Dow has fallen five days in a row, the longest losing streak this year.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index was down three points, or 0.2 percent, at 1,649. The Nasdaq composite was down a fraction of a point at 3,613.

American Eagle Outfitters plunged 10 percent after the teen retailer said it expects a big drop in profit in the current quarter as it deals with tough competition.

The donor left the money in 1928, but said it should only be handed over once Britain had amassed enough funds to pay off its entire national debt, which now totals 1.2 trillion pounds.

News of the current size of the potential payout came weeks after Britain's government struggled with the terms of another half million pound donation, in the will of retired nurse Joan Edwards.

A Barclays spokesman said the bank had been trying unsuccessfully to get permission through the courts either to use the 1928 bequest to make charitable grants or to hand it all to the Treasury.

"We've been working ever since we became the trustee (in 2009) to change the original objects, which say the funds can be used only to pay off the entire national debt," he added.

The Financial Times newspaper said the donation was probably inspired by Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin who in 1919, as financial secretary to the Treasury, urged the rich to help pay off Britain's debt from World War One.

It noted that donor had stipulated the trustees could use part of the funds to pay down the debt if, in their opinion, national circumstances merited a payment.

Neither World War Two nor any debt crises since have moved the trustees to pay out.

Barclays said it would continue working with the Attorney-General's Office and the Charity Commission to find a solution.

"It's a unique set of circumstances and heightened awareness of the national debt has occasionally generated interest in the Fund," said the spokesman.

This year, Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives and their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, initially divided Joan Edwards' money between them, saying it had been left to "whichever party" was in power when she died.

But they decided to hand the money to the Treasury after protests from newspapers and MPs who said Edwards had intended to help the nation, not political parties.

In a copy of the will seen by the Daily Mail newspaper, Edwards, 90, left her wealth to "whichever government is in office at the date of my death for the government in their absolute discretion to use as they think fit".

(Reporting by Stephen Addison; Editing by Andrew Heavens)