A record $3.5 billion funding round has made Mistral one of Europe’s most valuable private tech firms. But as René Rabeder writes, the French AI startup risks becoming a European home for other countries’ models rather than a direct competitor to OpenAI. wpr.pub/3W6nCsu

As columnist @ProfPaulPoast writes, the most fundamental obstacle to counting the war dead is the fog of war itself. Battlefield chaos obscures losses, and it is often unclear whether a death came from combat or from famine and disease made worse by conflict. wpr.pub/4snsOV0

With Washington restricting foreign access to some American AI models and Beijing weighing similar limits, French startup Mistral is giving European businesses more room to maneuver by running foreign models on infrastructure that stays in Europe. wpr.pub/3W6nCsu

Governments are not forthright about the deaths their forces incur, nor the deaths they cause, because they want to maintain the appearance that a war is going well. That is one reason an accurate count of the war dead is so hard to pin down. wpr.pub/4snsOV0

Rivalry over the cocaine trade and ethnic tensions may help explain why Guinea-Bissau’s junta turned on ousted President Umaro Sissoco Embaló, @TangiBihan writes. wpr.pub/4z2Carz

More than 80 percent of Americans view Russian President Vladimir Putin unfavorably, and only 4 percent favor Russia in the war in Ukraine. As columnist @FridaGhitis writes, that makes President Donald Trump’s turn toward Moscow a political liability at home. wpr.pub/486DqhB

Mistral, the French startup founded to build Europe’s answer to OpenAI, now offers its customers a Chinese AI model. The move shows it has chosen practical control over the impossible pursuit of a purely European tech stack, René Rabeder writes. wpr.pub/3W6nCsu

From the Pentagon’s disputed count of U.S. deaths in the Iran war to the wars in Ukraine and Sudan and even World War II, a precise tally of the war dead often eludes us—but counting them will always matter, columnist @ProfPaulPoast writes. wpr.pub/4snsOV0

As @TangiBihan writes, the army that seized power in Guinea-Bissau last year did so precisely to keep the PAIGC, the country’s most popular party, out of office. Now that elections have been postponed indefinitely, the junta may simply cling to power. wpr.pub/4z2Carz

President Donald Trump is betting that buying Russian diesel will ease fuel prices before the U.S. midterms. But in a deeply divided country, disdain for Vladimir Putin is one thing most Americans agree on—and that makes the bet likely to backfire. wpr.pub/486DqhB