• AFGHANISTAN: Emal Pasarly, editor at the BBC Pashtu service gives us insight into how ordinary Afghans are responding to the joint offensive in their country.
• HOLLYWOOD LAND: The Trust for Public Land covered the Hollywood sign with a sheet saying, "Save the Peak" to raise awareness about a plan to cover the Cahuenga Peak with luxury houses being built. Sam Hodder from the Trust for Public Land joins us to talk about why they are doing this and how much money they need to raise to conserve the land.
• FINANCIAL TAKEOUT: New York Times Wall Street and finance contributor Louise Story details Wall Street's involvement in the current financial woes of European countries like Greece, Portugal and Italy. 

After weeks of international pressure, Afghanistan announced that it will now hold a run-off presidential election. But the November 7 date gives the country less than three weeks to organize the nationwide vote. We look at the challenges the country will face to hold another election in such a short time, and what it will mean for incumbent President Hamid Karzai and his rival Abdullah Abdullah, with Christine Fair, professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University. Fair is also a former election monitor in Afghanistan. We also talk to Emal Pasarly, deputy head of the Pashtu Service at the BBC; and from Afghanistan, Daoud Sultanzoy, an Independent Member of Parliament for Ghazni Province, in Eastern Afghanistan.

U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke went to Paris on Wednesday for a meeting with more than two dozen of his international peers. But it wasn't a celebration – Holbrooke was there pursuing a fair outcome to Afghanistan's presidential primary election. The meeting was filled with reports of rampant fraud and further allegations of corruption during the country's second-ever presidential election since the fall of the Taliban.

The latest results, with more than 60 percent of the ballots counted, show that incumbent president Hamid Karzai has 47.3 percent of the vote. As Afghanistan braces for a potential runoff election, we look at what Afghanistan can do to clean up their voting process with Noah Feldman, professor of law at Harvard, author of The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State and a fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations; and Emal Pasarly, a reporter in the BBC's Pashto section.

In what he described as an urgent bid to stabilize a deteriorating and neglected country, President Obama is sending 17,000 troops to Afghanistan. This deployment will double the number of American combat brigades in Afghanistan at a time when tensions between the U.S. and Afghanistan are weakening. We turn to Emal Pasarly of the BBC for more.

For more of The Takeaway's recent coverage of Afghanistan, click here, here, and here.