The European Union is expected today to ban European travel for 12 people close to Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad, including the travel of Assad's British-born wife, Asma. The European Union's measures are intended to target members of the Syrian government personally. Chris Morris is a Europe correspondent for our partner the BBC.

Europe's deepening financial crisis has the White House apprehensive over the potential economic and political ramifications in the United States. "The crisis in Europe remains the central challenge to global growth," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Thursday. Under pressure from the Frankfurt Group — eight European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, and IMF head Christine Legarde — Greece and Italy are looking to unelected technocrats to guide their nations away from fiscal catastrophe.

From the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations across the U.S. to Wednesday's 24 hour general strike over austerity measures in Greece, there's a growing sense around the globe that the traditional mechanisms for combating economic downturn are no longer working. The lack of coordination between nations and regions on economic policy is beginning to take a human toll, especially in Europe. On the streets all around the continent, there is a broad feeling that most governments are willing to commit to saving the banks at the expense of workers, particularly those in the public sector.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited the Afghan capital on Monday. Gen. McChrystal said the U.S. has all but routed the Taliban from their former stronghold of Marjah and that the military will now turn its attention to Kandahar — a key city that dwarfs Marjah in size.

U.S. and NATO forces are approaching the campaign in Southern Afghanistan in a novel way — from the allies' struggle to win the hearts and minds of Afghan civilians in the region, to the dropping of leaflets urging the Taliban to leave the area. New York Times Pentagon correspondent Thom Shanker looks at how the strategy of this military campaign differs from others.

A NATO aircraft has attacked two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. The local governor said at least ninety people were killed, most of them Taliban militants, but other local officials and eyewitnesses say many of the dead were civilians. The attack comes at a sensitive time for the U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, as discussion turns to how deeply international forces should commit themselves and what their priorities should be in-country.

Chris Morris, correspondent for the BBC, is watching the fallout from this airstrike very closely from Kabul, and joins us from there.

We've been following news coming in from post-election Afghanistan all morning. From Kabul we talk to Chris Morris, BBC's South Asia reporter, about the casualty count among coalition troops, assertions of voting fraud, and the release of the youngest prisoner from Guantánamo Bay: Mohammad Jawad, who was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002.

Yesterday a suicide bombing at a luxury hotel in northwestern Pakistan killed 11 people in what the U.N. condemned as a "heinous terrorist attack." In response to such acts, Pakistani villagers are taking up arms against the Taliban in what's being described as a grassroots rebellion. Yesterday the Pakistani army launched a major offensive to support the grassroots rebellion. Joining us now from Pakistan is Chris Morris, the BBC's South Asia correspondent Islamabad who has been covering this ongoing fight.