BBC News with Maria Marshall.

The Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has called on his country's Security Council and Parliament to annul a law that grants special status to two breakaway regions in the east. The announcement came after the rebels held elections on Sunday in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk Republics. Polls at the Ukraine and the West have denounced it as illegal but the Russia has backed. Mr. Poroshenko said he'd also mobilized a number of army units to prevent any possible attack by Russian-backed rebels.

Several new military units have been formed today. They will help to stop a possible offensive in the direction of Mariapol, Bryansk, Kakkiv, and the territory to the north of Luhansk.

The International Monetary Fund's own watchdog has criticized the agency saying it called off austerity too soon after the financial crisis. A new report from the IMF's independent valuation office says the advice was less effective in promoting recovery and was detrimental to emerging markets. Our economics correspondent Andrew Walker report, explains.

The report suggested that at the height of the crisis the IMF essentially got it right by advising governments to use their budget to stimulate a recovery; where the IMF went wrong, the report argues, was encoring for that to be reversed too soon. The report says that much of the research including the IMF's own suggested that government tax and spending policies are particularly effective following a financial crisis. Instead the IMF advised using interest rates and the policy on its quantitative easing which, the report argues, were less likely to work.

The Mexican authorities have captured the fugitive mayor and his wife who were suspected of involvement in the disappearance of 43 students in the southwestern city of Iguala in late September. Police arrested them in Mexican City. From there our correspondent Will Grant reports.

Jose Luis Abarca and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda disappeared in the days immediately after the 43 students went missing. Now some five weeks after they fled, they have been detained by Federal Police in an early morning operation in Mexican City. The government will hope the arrest shed some light on the whereabouts of missing students and teachers who were last seen in the hands of local police officers. The young people were abducted after a protest in Iguala in September. One theory as to the motive was that they were disrupting plans the mayor's wife had for an event in the town the following day.

The Afghan government is taking steps to pursue a gang of alleged rapists after the victim's husband made an emotional appearance on the television to beg for justice. His wife said she was raped by eight men in Badakhshan Province five years ago while she was at home with her children. Two men had been arrested. After meeting her husband on Tuesday, Afghanistan officials issued an order for other six to be detained.

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The Saudi Interior Ministry says 15 suspects have been arrested in nationwide raids in connection with a shooting in the eastern part of the country that left five people dead and nine injured. Masked gunmen had opened fire on Muslims celebrating the Shiite festival of Ashura in the eastern district of al-Aqsa.

Libya has closed a border at Benghazi after heavy clashes between the army and Islamist fighters. A spokesman for the Libyan Army's General Command told the BBC that the port area was a battle field where the army was fighting Islamist militants and runaway prisoners.

The authorities in the Spanish region of Catalonia have vowed to go ahead with the symbolic vote of independence at the end of this week despite a ruling by the country's Constitutional Court to suspend the move. A. Sculfield reports.

The Catalan government has set up another clash with Madrid after Spain's Constitutional Court blocked a vote on independence set for this weekend. A spokesman for the Catalonia Administration was defiant saying the poll would go ahead. The regional government has recruited thousands of volunteers and plans to hold the votes in schools and other administration buildings. This is the latest in an ongoing row over an independence referendum. The vote had already been watered down after the Constitutional Court intervened at the end of September. And the Catalan authorities admit any results on Sunday would have only symbolic meaning.

Americans are voting in midterm Congressional elections which may see a switch in the balance of power in Washington. With just over a third of Senate Seats at stake, the Republican Party is hoping to win the six extra seats it needs to regain control of that body and therefore both Houses of Congress. But the BBC's North America editor says many Americans are feeling disaffected with their politicians including President Obama and that could affect turnout. All the seats in the House of Representatives are being contested.

BBC News.