This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and

around the world. I'm Farid Zakaria, coming to you from New York.

We'll start today's program with two of the world's critical hotspots.

First Ukraine, where President Zelensky admitted this week that the counteroffensive is difficult

as Western officials told CNN that further decisive progress by Kiev is highly unlikely.

So where does the war go from here?

Then to Niger, where a military junta launched a coup 18 days ago.

That makes for a six-country belt of coups spanning 3500 miles right across the African continent.

We'll tell you what you need to know about this startling trend.

Also, are you amazed by the power of artificial intelligence?

We'll wait until you hear about quantum computing. It will make today's AI look like child

display. I talk to the famous physicist Michio Kaku about what he sees as the real game-changer.

But first, here's my take. In early May 2023, it seemed obvious that the United States was going

to face an unmanageable border crisis. In the previous fiscal year, there were about 2.4

million apprehensions of people trying to enter the U.S. at the southern border.

And the authorities were about to lose Title 42. The policy implemented in March 2020

that allowed them to swiftly expel migrants at the border as a pandemic prevention measure.

But the end of the pandemic meant that temporary power also had to come to a close.

In fact, as it turned out, there was no crisis. The number of encounters with migrants at the

southern border actually dropped by a third from about 7,100 per day in April to about 4,800

per day in June. The latest available data. Why did this happen? It seems that the Biden

administration's plan worked. It put in place a series of measures designed to deal with the

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