35: Billionaire populist Andrej Babiš, often called “the Czech Trump” won the Czech Republic’s election, taking 35% of the vote. Babiš, who was PM from 2017-2021, is expected to form a government with two smaller ultra-euroskeptic parties, raising concern about whether Prague’s staunch support for Ukraine will continue. See our recent piece on Babiš here.
5: Direct flights between China and India will resume for the first time in five years, as the two billion-strong Asian powers continue to thaw their relationship. Flights were suspended in 2020 after a long-simmering border clash in the Himalayas erupted into open conflict. The move comes as India, long a partner of the US, looks for new allies in the wake of Donald Trump’s massive new tariffs and visa restrictions.
150 million: US media giant Paramount, which owns CBS, has officially purchased the upstart opinion and investigative journalism website The Free Press for $150 million. As part of the deal, Free Press founder Bari Weiss will be installed as editor-in-chief of CBS News.
Spiritual counsel from Czech writer Ivan Klíma, who died at 94 on Saturday. Klíma, who survived a Nazi concentration camp as a child and later insisted on remaining in communist Czechoslovakia to publish clandestinely rather than flee into exile, was one of the 20th century’s greatest critics of totalitarianism. Čest jeho památce 🕊️
Somewhere in the Donbas region, Ukrainian soldier Artem Bondarenko says he hasn’t slept through the night in months as he defends Eastern Ukraine.
In this Quick Take, Ian Bremmer warns that US military strikes on Iran are “looking increasingly imminent” as diplomacy appears to stall.