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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.

The Ano party of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has won the municipal elections in all regional capitals except Prague – where the opposition Civic Democrats and Pirates took first and second, respectively – and Liberec. The big losers of the day, in both the municipal and Senate races, were the Social Democrats and Communists.

On Friday afternoon ballot boxes across the Czech Republic opened up for people to elect their municipal representatives. Furthermore, a third of the country’s regions are in the process of electing 27 new senators into the upper chamber of Parliament.

October 5 is the 80th anniversary of the abdication of Edvard Beneš as president of Czechoslovakia. The move came just days after the Munich Agreement, under which the country was abandoned by its nominal allies and lost a third of its territory. However, it was not Beneš’s final abdication.

The Czech Republic’s communal elections, which will take place this Friday and Saturday, differ from their presidential and parliamentary equivalents in that citizens of other EU member states are also allowed to vote. This includes those living in the country on a temporary basis. However, interest in political engagement seems low among foreigners living in the country, with only a few thousand deciding to register.

A search is on for one of the world‘s most venomous snakes, the green mamba, which escaped from its owner in Prague’s Hlubočepy district on Tuesday night. Prior to its disappearance the snake bit its presumed owner, a thirty-year-old-woman who remains in hospital in an induced coma.