The City Council of Barcelona and 300 other councils in Catalonia jointly approved a motion supporting a self-determination consultation vote to be scheduled for the November, reports the Catalan News Agency.

A further 400 councils have confirmed that they will pass the same motion in the upcoming week.

Nato noted a “significant” withdrawal of Russian troops form eastern Ukraine, reports the BBC.

“There has been a significant pullback of Russian conventional forces inside Ukraine, but many thousands are still deployed in the vicinity of the boarder,” said the Nato spokesperson on Wednesday.

Japan, on Wednesday, announced that it had stepped up sanctions on Russia to be in line with other G-7 nations ahead of a meeting in New York, reports the Associated Press.

The US and its Arab allies have launched air strikes against Islamic States targets in Syria. Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined the US in the strikes targeting IS militants, training compounds, headquarters and command and control facilities, storage facilities, a finance centre, supply trucks and armed vehicles, according to the US Department of Defense.

Fourteen strikes were conducted on the de facto IS capital Raqqa and other towns across northern Syria by “a mix of fighter, bomber, remotely piloted aircraft and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles”, a statement said.

The DoD said they also conducted eight air strikes on Al Qaeda targets near the Syrian town of Aleppo.

China has sentenced Uighur academic Ilham Tohti to life in prison after finding him guilty of separatism.

Tohti, who is not an independence activist but an outspoken critic of China’s sometimes brutal crackdown on Uighurs, denies the charges.

Until his arrest early this year, the academic was a professor in Beijing and a member of the Communist Party. He has expressed revulsion against violence used by some Uighur and called for Xinjiang province to remain part of China.

However he warned Chinese authorities that the crackdown by security forces was radicalising young Uighur.

An Amnesty International report stated that an increasing number of Chinese companies are supplying tools made for torture and fuelling human rights abuses across Africa and Asia.

More than 130 companies were involved in the manufacture and sale of devices such as restraints, electric shock batons and spiked metal batons, with such products being openly marketed.

China is the only country known to manufacture spiked batons, which Amnesty International said were "specifically designed as implements of torture".

Russian lawmakers have approved a preliminary bill to limit the number of media outlets owned by foreigners to 20 percent.

The move could potentially affect dozens of news outlets across Russia, including the country’s leading business daily Vedomosti, which is part owned by the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. Under the bill, the publications would have to change ownership or close by 2017.

Leonid Bershidsky, the founding editor of Vedomosti, condemned the move, saying,

“Foreign ownership was the only thing that protected some Russian media outlets’ editorial integrity… If it’s not allowed, that last bit of protection is gone.”

The Yemeni government and separatist Shia Houthi militants signed an agreement aimed at ending unrest that has gripped the region for weeks.

The UN brokered deal, allows for a new government to be formed with the southern separatists nominating a new prime minister within three days, reports the BBC.

The deal came after the current prime minister quit in response to clashes between separatist militants and pro-government forces in the capital.

The separatist militants claimed to have taken over government headquarters, ministries and state broadcasters on Sunday.

Turkish authorities have begun to close the border between Syria and Turkey, after almost 100,000 Kurdish refugees entered the country as Islamic State (IS) militants surrounded a Kurdish enclave in Syria.

Turkey closed the Kucuk Kendirciler border crossing, in an attempt to stop Kurdish fighters from crossing over into Syria, following reports that hundreds of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) crossed to fight against IS.

The Afghan Taliban have rejected the unity deal reached by the government as a “sham”, planned by the US and said they would continue with their war, reported Reuters.

"Installing Ashraf Ghani and forming a bogus administration will never be acceptable to the Afghans," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.

Thousands of students in Hong Kong are boycotting classes for a week-long protest against China’s rejection of electoral reforms. Students from over two dozen institutions have gathered at the Chinese University of Hong Kong campus.

Beijing ruled in August that voters in Hong Kong would be able to choose their leader from a list of two or three candidates selected by a nominating committee, although it previously promised direct elections by 2017.