Russia’s space agency is complaining that the invitation for its head to visit the U.S. has been cancelled without informing the organization.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told The Washington Post in a story Saturday that he has rescinded the invitation to Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin after several senators raised complaints.

Rogozin is under U.S. sanctions for his role in the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, when he was a deputy prime minister.

Roscosmos spokesman Vladimir Ustimenko told state news agency Tass on Sunday that “it seems strange to us that our NASA colleagues dealt with us through the media and not directly.”

Russian lawmaker Frants Klintsevich said the decision shows that “the U.S. political establishment doesn’t intend to change its Russophobic vector.”
…

British Prime Minister Theresa May said Sunday that a delayed vote in Parliament on her Brexit deal will “definitely” go ahead later this month, as she promised to set out measures to win over skeptical lawmakers.

May told the BBC that in the coming days she will give more details about measures addressing Northern Ireland and concern over the Irish border. She also promised a greater role for Parliament in negotiations over future trade relations with the European Union as a sweetener, and added that “we are still working on” getting extra assurances from Brussels to secure domestic support for her deal.

May struck a withdrawal agreement with the EU in November, but that deal needs Parliament’s approval. In December, May decided to postpone a parliamentary vote intended to ratify the agreement at the last minute after it became clear that it would be overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Commons.

Lawmakers are resuming debate on the deal Wednesday, before a vote expected to be held around Jan. 15.

If the deal is voted down, Britain risks crashing out of the EU on March 29 with no agreement in place, a messy outcome that could plunge the country into its worst recession for decades.

May’s Brexit deal is unpopular with British lawmakers across the spectrum, and the main sticking point is the insurance policy known as the “backstop” – a measure that would keep the U.K. tied to EU customs rules in order to guarantee there is no hard border between the Republic of Ireland, an EU member, and the U.K.’s Northern Ireland, which won’t belong to the bloc after Brexit.

EU officials have insisted that the withdrawal agreement can’t be renegotiated, although they also stressed that the backstop was meant only as a temporary measure of last resort.

As part of her efforts to win support for her deal, May on Sunday reiterated that the agreement she negotiated was the only one that respects the 2016 referendum result, protects jobs and provides certainty to people and businesses.

She warned in the Mail on Sunday newspaper that critics of her Brexit deal risk damaging Britain’s democracy and its economy by opposing her plan.
…

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople on Sunday presented a decree of independence to the head of the nascent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, formally severing it from the Russian Orthodox Church.

In Istanbul, Patriarch Bartholomew I presented the Tomos, a scroll containing the decree, in a symbolic ceremony sanctifying the Ukrainian church’s independence. He signed the decree a day earlier.

Until the decree, the Orthodox church in Ukraine that was a branch of the Russian church was considered legitimate and two others in Ukraine were regarded as schismatic. The new church unites the two formerly schismatic bodies.

Many Ukrainians had resented the status of the Moscow-affiliated church. The push for a full-fledged Ukrainian church was bolstered by fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed rebels.

“The Tomos is one more act declaring the independence of Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Sunday. Poroshenko, who had pushed for the new church, attended the presentation ceremony in Istanbul.

Bartholomew I, considered first among equals in Orthodox patriarchy, announced the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has become the 15th independent Orthodox church. He argued Ukrainians “desired ecclesiastical independence” for centuries and never accepted that they were part of the Russian church.

The patriarch also entreated that the new church “strive for unity and peace” with clergy who remain under Moscow’s orbit and help reconciliation to “help them understand that Ukraine deserves a united church body.”

Still, the move forces clergy and believers in Ukraine to choose between belonging to Moscow-backed churches or the new Ukrainian Orthodox one.

Following Bartholomew I’s October decision for independence, the Russian church severed ties with Istanbul, the center of the Orthodox world.

“Instead of healing the schism, instead of uniting Orthodoxy, we got an even greater schism that exists solely for political reasons,” Archbishop Kliment, a spokesman for the Russia-affiliated church in Ukraine, said Sunday.

Metropolitan Epiphanius I, who was elected last month by Ukrainian Orthodox leaders to head the new church, will take the decree to Kyiv, where it will be displayed Monday at the Sophia cathedral complex in the heart of Ukraine’s capital.

Epiphanius I thanked the patriarch in Istanbul, saying: “the old injustice is eliminated with the thanks to His Holiness and Holy Synod of the Mother Church.”

The Orthodox clergy, wearing gold and jeweled vestments in the Patriarchal Church of St. George, led hundreds in prayer and hymns for Holy Mass.

 
…

A former North Korean diplomat who staged a high-profile defection to the South on Saturday urged an old colleague who has gone missing in Italy to defect to Seoul, following a report that he was seeking asylum in the United States.

Jo Song Gil, the 44-year-old who was until recently North Korea’s acting ambassador to Italy, disappeared with his wife after leaving the embassy without notice in early November, South Korean lawmakers said Thursday.

Jo has applied for asylum in the United States and is under the protection of Italian intelligence, Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper said Friday, citing an unidentified diplomatic source.

The State Department and the U.S. embassy in Seoul did not immediately respond to a query from Reuters regarding the report.

In an open letter, Thae Yong Ho, Pyongyang’s former deputy ambassador to Britain, who said he went to the same university and worked with Jo before defecting to South Korea in 2016, urged Jo to follow in his footsteps.

To defect to the South is an “obligation, not a choice” for North Korean diplomats committed to unification, Thae said, calling Seoul “the outpost” for that task.

“If you come to South Korea, the day when our suffering colleagues and North Korean citizens are liberated from the fetters would be moved forward,” Thae said in the letter released on his website. “If you come to Seoul, even more of our colleagues would follow suit, and the unification would be accomplished by itself.”

Thae said his family visited Jo in Rome in 2008, where the latter was studying from 2006 to 2009. He guided them to sites such as St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.

South Korea could not be “heaven on earth” but a place where Jo can realize his wishes, Thae said, highlighting the ardent desire for unification among many of the roughly 32,000 defectors there.

“The defectors may not be as wealthy as South Koreans,” Thae added. “But isn’t it the only thing you and I, as North Korean diplomats, should do the rest of our lives — to bring about unification and hand over a unified nation to our children?”
…

For any world-class athlete, losing most of his or her vision would be a devastating setback. For former Portuguese boxer Jorge Pina however, it was an opportunity to give back to young people in his country. VOA’s Elizabeth Cherneff has more.
…