A British lawmaker has been suspended by the governing Labour Party after footage appeared to show him punching a man repeatedly on the street.

Police are investigating the alleged attack by Mike Amesbury on Friday night, which first came to light after social media footage showed a brawl in the street following the alleged attack.

Subsequent surveillance footage, obtained by the Daily Mail newspaper and published Sunday, appears to show Amesbury talking to a man before punching him in the face and then attempting to strike him again repeatedly on the ground.

Labour said Amesbury is assisting police with their inquiries, and that they have suspended the backbencher “pending an investigation.”

Amesbury has been an member of parliament (MP) since 2017 in Cheshire, northwest England, where the alleged incident took place. He remains an independent member of the House of Commons after losing the party whip.

The lawmaker said in a statement, released before the additional footage was published by the Mail, that he was “involved in an incident that took place after I felt threatened on the street following an evening out with friends.”

He said he had “contacted Cheshire Police myself to report what happened during the incident.”

Cheshire police said in a statement: “A 55-year-old man has been voluntarily interviewed under caution by police in relation to this incident. He has since been released pending further enquiries.”

Labour swept to power in a July general election after 14 years in opposition, winning 411 seats for a commanding majority. Nine of those MPs have since had the whip removed or resigned from the party.

The populist Reform UK party have called for Amesbury to resign and allow a by-election in his seat to take place, which would be the first electoral test of the new government if it were to take place.

MPs are entitled to remain in the Commons after losing the whip. A recall petition in their constituency, which could trigger a by-election, could take place if they were to receive a prison sentence.

A major manhunt is underway in northern Austria after a hunter allegedly fatally shot two people and fled the scene, local police said Monday.

Franz Hofer, mayor of Kirchberg ob der Donau, was killed in the village of Altenfelden in Austria’s rural Muhlviertel region, near the border with Germany and the Czech Republic.

A large-scale police operation with helicopters and special forces is underway, she said. The suspect is believed to be armed and local residents have been told to stay indoors.

“Unfortunately, we assume that the perpetrator we are looking for could be carrying the weapon,” Handelbauer said, according to local media. A dispute over hunting rights appeared to have sparked the incident, police added.

According to Kronen Zeitung, a local outlet, the suspect was known to hunters in the area. “He was a difficult person,” said a hunter from the area who wished not to be named.

The shooting shocked officials at the People’s Party (OVP) regional headquarters in Linz. “It’s madness,” said state party leader Florian Hiegelsperger.

Herbert Sieghartsleitner, the state hunting master, said the incident was “unbelievable.”

“I am deeply shocked by what has happened. I knew Franz Hofer very well personally,” he said, according to Kronen Zeitung.

British far-right political activist Tommy Robinson has been jailed for 18 months after he admitted to being in contempt of court by repeating false accusations about a Syrian refugee, according to court documents.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, admitted on Monday to breaching UK court rules 10 times.

Robinson, the founder of the now-defunct anti-immigration English Defence League (EDL), was accused of repeating false allegations that caused him to lose a libel suit in 2021.

The initial libel case related to Robinson making false accusations against a Syrian schoolboy who was attacked in an incident shared widely on social media. In 2018, footage emerged showing the 15-year-old – a refugee from Syria – being taunted, grabbed by the throat and pushed to the ground, as other students at his school in Huddersfield, northern England, looked on.

At the time, Robinson made allegations against the teenager in a number of social media videos, which he then deleted, falsely claiming the teen attacked English girls. The far-right figurehead later admitted to posting a fake photograph purporting to show violence by a Muslim gang.

At Monday’s sentencing hearing, a judge at London’s Woolwich Crown Court said Robinson breached court rules by publishing a film, called “Silenced,” on social media in which he repeated the libelous allegations. He also played the film publicly in London’s Trafalgar Square at a rally of his supporters.

“The breaches were not accidental or negligent or merely reckless,” Justice Johnson said during the sentencing hearing. “There was a degree of sophistication in the breaches in that they involved the planned release of material in a manner that was designed to seek to achieve maximum coverage.

“Nobody is above the law,” the judge added.

A sense of urgency has been growing after the role of women emerged as a dominant theme when Catholics from across the globe were canvassed for their views ahead of a meeting of bishops and lay people – a synod – which formally concluded Sunday.

The final Synod assembly document, approved by Pope Francis, said women must be given all the opportunities that church law provides to act as leaders, but left the possibility of ordaining women as deacons as an “open” question which needs further reflection.

Frustrations about the slow pace of reform bubbled into the open during the assembly when the pope’s doctrine adviser ruled out ordaining women as deacons and then failed to turn up to a meeting on the topic. He later apologized and held a 90-minute meeting with members of the assembly.

Some are unimpressed by what they see as the Vatican kicking the topic of deacons into the long grass.

Phyllis Zagano, a research professor at Hofstra University in New York and expert on female deacons, said that “there is abundant evidence of the sacramental ordinations of women as deacons in the Church, East and West, to the 12th century” and that “eventually a decision must be made.”

Francis has also faced criticism recently for expressing what one Belgian Catholic university denounced as “reductive” views on the role of women in the church. In an interview earlier this year, he ruled out the possibility of ordaining women deacons, who can carry out functions like a priest apart from saying Mass and hearing confessions.

The problem in the church is exacerbated given women make up a majority of churchgoers while an all-male hierarchy controls decision making. Furthermore, Catholic teaching bars women from ordination to the priesthood, a decision that Francis has maintained, although he has allowed studies of female deacons.

During previous papacies the question of ordaining women was not even up for discussion. The big difference now is that the 87-year-old Argentinian pontiff has shown he is willing to listen carefully to the voices of Catholics.

During his pontificate, Francis has also been trying to make cracks in the Vatican’s glass ceiling. He has chosen women to senior positions in the church’s central administration, including a religious sister to help run the synod and the first women members to sit on the board of a powerful Vatican department that decides on bishop appointments.

For the first time, women were also included as voting members, with 54 female voters among more around 360 delegates. One of those was Julia Oseka, 23, who is studying theology and physics at St Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is the youngest woman ever to be a voting member of a Vatican synod.

Oseka added that while she sometimes felt “frustrated” about the “slow pace” of decisions, some parts of the church “struggle” when it comes to the inclusion of women, and it was important to maintain unity.

Francis’ approach is also informed by the resistance to any reform to women’s roles: The declaration from the Vatican assembly on women received 97 “no” votes, the most of any section in the final document.

She said the pope had recognized that the question of female deacons cannot be “closed” and that it was important for the Catholic Church to send a message to the world where there is rising discrimination and violence against women.  “If we don’t take a strong stand, it’s contradicting our own message,” she said.

Nevertheless, for a church which thinks in centuries what may seem like small steps to those on the outside are major leaps forward for many inside.

Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili has called on citizens to protest the results of a disputed election in an attempt to save the country’s “European future.”

Tens of thousands of Georgians massed outside the parliament on Monday night, calling for the annulment of Saturday’s parliamentary election that the opposition has said was rigged with Russia’s blessing.

Speaking soon after addressing crowds in the capital, Tbilisi, Zourabichvili said the protesters “are coming very peacefully to say, ‘We have voted, we want our votes to be defended, and we want our European future … to be defended.’”

The Russia-friendly Georgian Dream party, founded by the reclusive billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, claimed victory after a day of voting marred by violence and disorder at polling stations across the country. The Central Election Commission (CEC) said it had secured nearly 54% of the vote.

Asked why she is refusing to recognize the results of the election, Zourabichvili said Georgian Dream had used “all the instruments” at its disposal to rig the election and called for an international investigation.

“We encourage Georgia’s governing officials to consider the relationship they want with the Euro-Atlantic community, rather than strengthening policies that are praised by authoritarians,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.

Zourabichvili said the election results were difficult to believe because actions taken this year by Georgian Dream have stalled the country’s bid to join the European Union, which polls suggest more than 80% of Georgians support.

“Every move the Georgian government has made this year is clearly designed … to make sure that we don’t get the approval of the European leaders,” Zourabichvili said.

In May, the government passed a “foreign agent” bill, referred to by Georgians as the “Russian law” because of its similarities to legislation passed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Critics say the bill, which requires organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as a “foreign agent,” is designed to shut down watchdogs who call the government to account.

European leaders criticized the bill and have since frozen Georgia’s accession process, just months after it was offered EU candidate status.

Zourabichvili disagreed. “The Europeans have clearly said to the Georgian authorities … that you cannot pretend that you will join the EU (while) doing what you are doing,” she said.

During the election campaign, Ivanishvili – who made his fortune in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union – threatened to imprison his political rivals and ban the main opposition party, the United National Movement (UNM), if Georgian Dream won another term.

The UNM was founded by former President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been jailed since 2021 for abuse of power while in office.

Asked if she feared similar political retribution, Zourabichvili said she is more worried about the fate of Georgia and what will happen “if things are in the hands of the Georgian Dream.”

“My personal future in that is not as important as the future of Georgia,” she said.