Ukraine Orthodox leaders approve break with Russian church

DRAMA!

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian Orthodox leaders on Saturday approved the creation of a unified church independent of the Moscow Patriarchate and elected a leader to head that new church — a move that could exponentially raise tensions with neighboring Russia.

The vote, held at a closed-door synod in Kiev's St. Sophia Cathedral, is the latest in a series of confrontations between Ukraine and authorities in Russia, including President Vladimir Putin's government. Ahead of the vote, the Russian Orthodox Church called on the United Nations, the leaders of Germany and France, the pope and other spiritual leaders to protect Orthodox believers in Ukraine.

The leader of the new autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church will be Metropolitan Epiphanius, a 39-year-old bishop from the Kiev Patriarchate.

"G-d heard our appeals and gave us this anticipated unity," Epiphanius told a crowd of thousands who had gathered outside the cathedral on Saturday to hear the news. He stressed that the new church's doors would be open to all, and encouraged Ukrainians to rally behind it.

Still spiritual leaders attending Saturday's synod couched their efforts to create an independent church in patriotic rhetoric. Father Sergei Dmitriev said — given Ukraine's ongoing conflicts with Russia — "we should have our own church, not an agent of the Kremlin in Ukraine."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has made the creation of a new church a key campaign issue, attended the synod Saturday as a non-voting observer.

"Ukraine was not, is not, and will not be the canonical territory of the Russian church," Poroshenko told the gathering, adding that creating an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church was now a matter of national security.

"This is a question of Ukrainian statehood," Poroshenko said. "We are seizing spiritual independence, which can be likened to political independence. We are breaking the chains that tie us to the (Russian) empire."

Representatives of Ukraine's three Orthodox Churches attended the synod in Kiev, but only two from the branch loyal to Moscow showed up. One Russian bishop — Metropolitan Hilarion in Volokolamsk — on Saturday compared those two representatives of the Moscow-backed church to Judas, the biblical betrayer of Jesus.

The newly formed community is expected to receive independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Istanbul-based institution considered the so-called "first among equals" of leaders of the world's Orthodox Churches.

Brexit pressure rises, but UK government says no to second vote

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s government is not preparing for a second referendum on Brexit, ministers said on Sunday, sticking to the script that Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal could still pass through parliament with a few changes.

May delayed a vote last week on her agreement to leave the European Union because she was set to lose in parliament and has tried to secure “assurances” from the bloc to try to better sell it to skeptical lawmakers. Brussels said last week it was ready to help but warned her that she could not renegotiate the deal.

With less than four months before Britain is due to leave in March, Brexit, the biggest shift in trade and foreign policy for more than 40 years, is proving anything but smooth, complicated by the deep divisions in parliament and across the country.

With May facing deadlock in parliament over the deal and the EU offering little so far, more politicians are talking about the possibility of Britain leaving without an agreement or a second referendum that could stop Brexit from happening.

Asked if the government was preparing for a vote, education minister Damian Hinds told Sky News: “No, a second referendum would be divisive. We’ve had the people’s vote, we’ve had the referendum and now we’ve got to get on with implementing it.”

Trade minister Liam Fox also said a second referendum would “perpetuate” the deep divisions in Britain, adding that the prime minister was securing the necessary assurances to persuade parliament to back her deal.

He said that would take some time.

“It will happen over Christmas, it’s not going to happen this week, it’s not going to be quick, it will happen some time in the New Year,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show.

But the longer it takes, voices urging a change of tack are getting louder and the pressure on the main opposition Labour Party to move against the government is rising.

Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign minister, said if Britain wanted to put an “entirely new” Brexit proposal forward the government would most likely have to delay its departure.

May survived a no confidence vote among her Conservative lawmakers last week, but opposition parties are calling for Labour to propose a parliamentary motion of no confidence against the government this week.

Merkel's party votes for new leader, and new era in Germany

HAMBURG (Reuters) - Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats vote on Friday to decide who replaces her as party leader and moves into pole position to succeed her as German chancellor.

The frontrunners are Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a Merkel protege seen as the continuity candidate, and Friedrich Merz, a Merkel rival who has questioned the constitutional guarantee of asylum to all “politically persecuted” and believes Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, should contribute more to the European Union.

Merkel said in October she would step down as party chief but remain chancellor, an effort to manage her exit after a series of setbacks since her divisive decision in 2015 to keep German borders open to refugees fleeing war in the Middle East.

The new CDU leader will be chosen by 1,001 delegates who vote at a party congress in Hamburg. The winner will likely lead the CDU in the next federal election due by October 2021.

In World First, Woman Gives Birth After Receiving Uterus Transplant from Dead Donor

- A team of doctors in Brazil have announced a medical first that could someday help countless women unable to have children because of a damaged or absent uterus. In a case report published Tuesday in the Lancet, they claim to have successfully helped a woman give birth using a transplanted uterus from a deceased donor.

According to the report, the team performed the operation on an unnamed 32-year-old woman in a Brazilian hospital in September 2016. The woman had been born with a rare genetic condition that left her without a uterus, known as Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome, but she was otherwise healthy. The donor was a 45-year-old woman who had suddenly died of stroke; she had had three successful pregnancies delivered vaginally in the past.

Four months prior to the transplant, the recipient woman had received in-vitro fertilization, which yielded eight viable embryos that were frozen. Following the 10-hour-long surgery, which connected the uterus and part of the donor’s vagina to the recipient’s vagina and circulatory system, the woman then took a regimen of immunosuppressant drugs that kept her body from rejecting the donor uterus. Seven months later, she had an embryo successfully implanted. And 35-and-a-half weeks after that, she gave birth to a seemingly healthy baby girl, delivered via cesarean section with no complications.

Since 2013, there have been at least 10 reported live pregnancies from women with transplanted uteruses. But according to the authors, they are the first to have accomplished it with a uterus from a deceased donor (there was a documented attempt in 2011, but the pregnancy ended in miscarriage). The feat is something that could make the procedure a much more appealing and realistic way for some women to conceive.