LONDON (Reuters) – Saxophonist Sir John Dankworth, one of the leading figures in British jazz for more than half a century, has died, his agent said Sunday. He was 82.

The saxophonist worked closely with jazz legends like Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson and composed the music for a string of films and television programs.

His wife, the singer Cleo Laine, announced the death from the stage during a concert to mark the 40th anniversary of a music venue they founded next to their home in Buckinghamshire, north of London.

The musician, described by Jazzwise magazine as “one of the totemic figures of British jazz,” died in a London hospital on Saturday after a short but undisclosed illness.

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will attempt to reassert his authority over his ruling Labour Party on Monday, after surviving a plot to depose him less than five months before an election that he is expected to lose.

Despite trailing the opposition Conservatives by 10 points in the latest opinion poll, Brown will tell members of his center-left party that an historic fourth consecutive election victory is still within their grasp.

“We can beat them, we must beat them and we will beat them,” Brown will say in a speech to the party in which he plans to lay out his election strategy. His office released extracts of the speech in advance.

With Britain saddled with a record budget deficit after the worst recession in more than 50 years, the main parties have effectively already begun the election campaign with clashes over the economy and public spending.

LONDON, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Britain became the latest country to tackle a surplus of swine flu vaccines on Friday, as health authorities across Europe grapple with oversupply due to low demand, leaving drug company sales uncertain.

The Department of Health said it was in talks with major provider GlaxoSmithKline <GSK.L> about reducing further supplies of its H1N1 vaccine and might exercise a break clause in its contract with Baxter International <BAX.N>.

It might also sell or donate stocks to other countries.

Governments across Europe are scaling back orders because of limited vaccine uptake and the fact one dose is enough to protect against the virus, rather than two as originally anticipated.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s security services had no advance warning of an alleged al Qaeda plot to bomb a U.S.-bound plane and officials did not withhold intelligence from their American counterparts, the UK government said on Tuesday.

Home Secretary (interior minister) Alan Johnson said Britain had shared details about the Nigerian suspect with Washington, although there was no information about any specific attack.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government has come under pressure to explain how much the UK security services knew about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and whether they shared all their intelligence with Washington.

Brown’s spokesman said on Monday that Britain had passed “security information about this individual’s activities” to the United States, raising questions about whether U.S. officials failed to act on that intelligence.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain accused China and a handful of others on Monday of holding the world to ransom by blocking a legal treaty to fight global warming as countries traded blame for the deadlock in Copenhagen.

Describing the climate change summit as “at best flawed and at worst chaotic,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown demanded urgent reform of the process to try to reach a legal treaty when the talks resume in Germany next June.

The summit ended with a underwhelming agreement on Saturday when delegates “noted” an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that fell far short of original goals.

“Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down these talks,” said Brown, who tried to take a lead role in the talks.

LONDON (Reuters) – A handful of countries blocked a legally binding deal on climate change in Copenhagen and the talks process needs urgent reform to prevent something similar happening again, Britain’s prime minister said on Monday.

Gordon Brown said the non-binding agreement achieved after rounds of talks in the Danish capital were “at best flawed, at worst chaotic.”

“We will not allow a few countries to hold us back,” he told an environmental meeting in London via a videolink from Scotland. He did not name those countries. “What happened at Copenhagen was a flawed decision-making process.

“We have just got to find a way of moving this process forward.”

It’s hard enough choosing a menu and seating plan for even the humblest dinner party.

So spare a thought for the Danish royal family, who are throwing a formal dinner for scores of world leaders attending the climate talks in Copenhagen.

With a mammoth guest list that begins with Prince Mustapha Zahir of Afghanistan and ends with President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Denmark’s Queen Margrethe had her work cut out.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain is past the worst of the recession and should return to growth in the fourth quarter, two Bank of England policymakers said, in remarks which support government forecasts the economic downturn is nearly over.

Treasury sources told Reuters late on Thursday they expect the economy to grow 0.2-0.4 percent in the last three months of the year, bring to a close six quarters of contraction and Britain’s longest recession in over 50 years.

Finance minister Alistair Darling is likely to stick with April’s forecast of 1.0-1.5 percent growth for 2010 when the figures are reviewed in next month’s pre-Budget report, the sources added.

This view chimes with the latest remarks from two members of the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee — responsible for the central bank’s 200 billion pound quantitative easing policy — who see steady, if unspectacular growth next year.

LONDON (Reuters) – The Conservatives said on Tuesday they will pay households to recycle rubbish, set up a “green” investment bank and cut government emissions by 10 percent in a year if they win next year’s election.

The party said it would publish departments’ energy consumption online to force politicians and public workers to cut their carbon footprint.

With countries meeting for U.N. climate talks in Denmark next month, both Labour and the Conservatives have been keen to promote their environmental credentials.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said the Treasury had traditionally been “at best indifferent, at worst obstructive” toward environmental policy.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain has built the world’s biggest DNA database without proper political debate and police routinely arrest people just to get their DNA profiles onto the system, the genetics watchdog said in a report on Tuesday.

The Human Genetics Commission, which advises the government on the social, legal and ethical aspects of genetics, called for a review of the database and said new laws must be passed to govern its use.

In a damning report, the commission said “function creep” had transformed the system from a DNA store for offenders into a database of suspects.

More than three-quarters of young black men aged between 18 and 35 are on the system, the report said.