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The Civic Democrats and the Mayors and Independents gained 10 and seven seats, respectively, in elections to one-third of seats in the Senate that concluded at the weekend. In stark contrast, governing parties ANO and the Social Democrats won only one mandate apiece. Though ANO’s poor showing has vexed leader Andrej Babiš, the outcome was not unexpected, says political scientist Petr Just.

For several weeks now, a brown bear has been roaming the mountain region of Valašsko located in the easternmost part of Moravia, near the Slovak border, approaching villages and attacking sheep at remote farms. Environmentalists are now trying to trace the animal and chase it away from people’s dwellings.

Whereas in 1990 there were eight Roma MPs in the Czechoslovak Parliment, today there are none and candidates who belong to the minority have not had much success in the recent communal elections either. Although individual cases of success exist, they are extremely rare. Reasons behind the lack of Roma representation in politics include negative cononations with the minority among majority voters, a lack of popular candidates and low election participation among members of the Roma minority themselves.

The Signal Festival, now in its 6th year, kicks off in Prague on Thursday night. The three day light festival offers visitors over two dozen artistic light installations and video-mappings on three routes in Prague, at indoor and outdoor locations. I asked Jose Pinto, head of Signal’s operations and marketing, to tell me about this year’s highlights.

EU lawmakers have hammered out a deal to cut vehicle emissions 35 percent by 2030 in a bid to fight climate change and pollution. The Czech Republic, whose auto industry is the main economic driver, was among those pushing for a far smaller cut, arguing stringent CO2 targets will lead to structural problems across the EU.

A “Friends of Tibet” group has just been established by fifty deputies and senators in the Czech Parliament. The news was announced on Tuesday at the Forum 2000 conference in Prague. The group, established by the Pirate Party along with the Civic and Christian Democrats and TOP09 aims to focus on human rights issues as well as environmental and cyber protection.

The suspected perpetrators of the Novichok attack on Russian double agent Sergei Skripal reportedly visited the Czech Republic in 2014, at the time when Skripal himself was in the country, allegedly helping the Czech counter-intelligence service uncover Russian spies. Radiožurnal, Czech Radio’s flagship news channel, broke the story on Wednesday, citing Czech intelligence sources.

The annual international music festival Strings of Autumn kicks off on Tuesday with a concert at Prague’s Vítkov National Memorial. The event, which was established in 1996 by the late Czech president Václav Havel, opens with the legendary minimalist piece ‘In C’ by Terry Riley.

The Czech Security Information Service (BIS) issued a press release on Monday in which it says it cooperated with foreign partners in identifying, analysing and disabling servers in the Czech Republic and the wider world, which Hezbollah was using for cybernetic espionage.

The communal and senatorial elections were seen as a test of strength of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’ ANO party, which has dominated Czech national politics since winning last year’s parliamentary elections by a large margin. Although ANO scored in 11 big cities, its loss in the Czech capital, which Babiš considered all-important, has soured the party’s victory.