Chinese dissident artist and free speech advocate Ai Weiwei said that authorities in Beijing returned his passport on Wednesday, more than four years after it was confiscated following his 81-day secret detention.
Prime Minister David Cameron sealed a surprise election win by persuading Britons to choose the security of modestly rising living standards over an implausible pretender many feared could become the puppet of Scottish nationalists.
Britons went to vote on Thursday in the tightest election for decades; one that could cause government gridlock, push the world's fifth-largest economy closer to leaving the European Union and stoke a second attempt by Scotland to break away.
Lawmakers in the lower house of parliament are expected to vote to ban branding on cigarette packs by a large margin later on Wednesday, a move that would force manufacturers to adopt plain packets in England by 2016.
