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LONDON British lawmakers on Friday finally voted to back a plan to withdraw from the European Union.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's bill, backed by a huge parliamentary majority, will take the country out of the 28-member bloc on Jan. 31, and lays the groundwork for sweeping foreign and trade policy shifts.

The 358-234 vote marks a significant breakthrough for Johnson, who stormed to electoral victory last week on a pledge to get Brexit done. The former mayor of London won the largest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher in 1987, confirming his position as prime minister after he took over from Theresa May in July.

Johnson's majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons meant he was able to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill legislation that will implement the divorce deal hammered out with the European Union (EU).

The announcement of the result was met with cheers, as well as some jeers, in the packed chamber where many lawmakers were forced to stand due to limited space.

Britain joined the European Economic Community, a precursor to the European Union, in 1973. After the U.K. voted to leave the bloc in June 2016, May failed on three occasions to win support for a deal she had agreed to with the EU, leading her to step down in June.

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In October, Johnson was forced to break his own "do-or-die" deadline to lead Britain out of the EU after lawmakers rejected his proposed timetable to get the Withdrawal Agreement Bill through parliament, meaning he had to request a Brexit extension from European leaders.

The bill dubbed WAB by Brexit-watchers commits Britain to leave the EU on Jan. 31 and to conclude trade talks with the bloc by the end of 2020. The final stages of ratification will take place after Christmas.

Ahead of the vote, Johnson told Members of Parliament that his bill "ensures Brexit will be done" and "it will be over."

He added that passing it would end the acrimony and anguish that has consumed the country since it voted to leave and struggled to negotiate terms of its departure.

The sorry story of the last 3 1/2 years will be at an end and we will be able to move forward together, he said.

Now is the time to act together as one reinvigorated nation," Johnson added.

After winning the vote he tweeted: "We are one step closer to getting Brexit done."

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn told Parliament that his Labour Party still believed Johnson's Brexit deal was "terrible."

"There is a better and fairer way for this country to leave the EU," he said.

However, this should not be confused with the end of Brexit as the U.K. is only nearing the end of stage one.

Much of the angst over Brexit since Britain voted to leave has centered on the divorce itself. With that endorsed by Parliament on Friday, the U.K. must now pivot to negotiating what Brexit will actually look like for citizens and businesses alike.

Britain will first enter a transition period that lasts until December 2020 in which it will continue to act like a member of the European Union. In the meantime, top of the agenda is defining the nature of Britains future relationship with the European Union post-divorce.

By most accounts, 11 months to strike a trade deal is ambitious but Johnson has insisted that he wont agree to any more delays. The pledge has set off alarm bells among businesses, who fear Britain could crash out of the European Union with no future trade arrangement in place at the beginning of 2021.

A no deal Brexit is widely considered a nightmare scenario raising the possibility of shortages of food and medicine, civil unrest, and conflict in Northern Ireland.

Saphora Smith is a London-based reporter for NBC News Digital.

Associated Press contributed.

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Parliament backs Brexit deal in decisive step toward leaving the E.U. on Jan. 31 - NBCNews.com

The EU is facing embarrassment over claims that its new Europa headquarters, also known as the Space Egg building, was built with the help of undocumented migrant workers who at times went without pay.

The European council building in Brussels, which contains an ovoid glass structure, was opened in 2016 at a cost of 300m.

At its unveiling it was said to symbolise all that is best about the union. But EU officials are now facing claims from the Belgian newspaper De Standaard about the business practice of subcontractors who worked on the project.

One subcontractor, known as Group Diamond Services, which was subsequently declared bankrupt in 2015, was investigated by prosecutors after claims by Bulgarian workers, the paper reports. The men claimed to have gone without pay.

The investigation was closed in October because of insufficient evidence, but De Standaard found that in reality the file had been lost by prosecutors at some point in the four years since the inquiry started.

The paper carries interviews with some of the workers, including Beyhan Dzhelilov, 43, who was the head of a team of eight iron casters on the Europa building project.

He told the paper: Several team members did not have Belgian residence papers. None of us got a contract, we were not insured.

The main companies, Interbuild and Jan De Nul, who won the tender for construction of the Europa building, told De Standaard they were unaware of any exploitation of workers by subcontractors.

A spokesman for Jan De Nul told the paper that GDS was taken off the project early as the company did not comply with contractual planning and technically did not perform the work correctly.

The spokesman added: Every employee from all subcontractors was checked for possession of the necessary documents. This also applied to the employees of subcontractors who acted on behalf of a subcontractor or a sub-subcontractor.

Only after this preliminary inspection did the approved employees of subcontractors gain access to the site. For that they received a personal badge with passport photo. The yard was completely closed off from the area and only had two access gates with a badge system. Unauthorised persons could not enter the yard.

The Council of the European Union has been contacted for comment.

An EU official working at the council said the Belgian state was the prime contractor for the Europa building.

He added: The Council itself has not been informed by the Rgie des btiments [the building regulations office] of any issues related to the working conditions of their contractors or sub-contractors

All building and maintenance contracts undertaken directly by the Council are in line with the Belgian labor legislation.

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EU headquarters built by undocumented migrants, workers claim - The Guardian

I renewed my British passport this week. As I ripped open the yellow envelope holding the new and old passports, I had a very brief moment of warm nostalgia. Id been expecting to receive the new, non-European, dark blue, old-style British passport, that Brexiteers seem so fond of. Instead, rejoice! My new travel document was exactly the same shape and color of my old burgundy one.

Pedophiles and politics: Why is an alleged child rapist still in Israel?Ep. 53

But looking more closely, it wasn't an exact copy at all. A closer examination revealed that the words European Union, which had once been embossed above United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, have now been removed.

I was surprised how much those two missing words saddened me.

Im Jewish and British, Israeli and European, and Ive never felt any part of my identity needs clash with another. These are my roots, my family, my history, and now the hidden hand of a government has tried to erase a section of my identity.

The fear among British Jews that a government would be elected, lead by a politician whose party once the political home for many of them had, under his leadership, transformed into an institutionally anti-Semitic environment, has overshadowed what is now Britains imminent departure from the European Union.

But the relief at Jeremy Corbyns downfall last week in the General Election, with the Labour partys worst result since 1935, and the vindication of those who warned that a man who had throughout his career had rubbed shoulders with terrorists, blood libelers and Holocaust deniers should never be allowed close to the levers of power, has quickly been replaced with the dreary certainty that the reelected Conservative government is indeed going to get Brexit done, by the end of next month.

There are many ways to view the advantages and drawbacks of belonging to the EU, and the British Isles uneasy relationship with the adjacent continent goes back millennia. Brexit will not change that. But since we hear a lot of bad things about the EU, especially in Israel, some of them even justified, its important to remind ourselves that the EU has achieved something that Jewish communities, above all, have dreamt of for so many centuries. In the continent which saw more persecution and bloodshed of Jews, including the industrial genocide of our grandparents within living memory, the EU has achieved an unparalleled period of peace and prosperity.

No matter how much many of us may resent the intrusiveness and self-importance of the grandiose Eurocrats, the founders of the EU (backed by the military alliance of NATO) ushered in the most peaceful seven decades in Europes history and that meant also an end to the persecution and murder of Jews. It meant also a supranational commitment to upholding the fight against anti-Semitism, not just of the physical and violent kind, but also in any rhetorical or legal form.

A Europe in which no country discriminates against Jews, how unthinkable that would have been only 75 years ago, and in Communist Eastern Europe, only thirty years ago. And yet today it is a basic requirement of any nation wishing to belong to the EU.

Formal discrimination against Jews by government in todays Europe is unthinkable.

No, of course I dont think that the rolling back of Europes borders from Britain means that Jews will be discriminated there. Britain, after all, was the one European country where Jews were free and equal citizens throughout the entire 20th century, but it is an ominous development for Jews nonetheless.

While many British voters chose to leave Europe from perfectly understandable, if misjudged, reasons of repatriating control of internal affairs from Brussels, it is impossible to overlook that there was a distinctly xenophobic tone to the reasoning behind Brexit. At the moment this may not directly impact on Jews, but any turn toward nativism and hostility toward immigrants will ultimately also result in an increase in attacks on Jews. Whether or not this is comparable in the long-run to a government led by Corbynists, who have normalized anti-Semitism in entire sections of the British public, is impossible to say, and theoretical anyway. But it is a reason for concern.

But beyond Britain, Jews have an obligation of solidarity elsewhere, and weakening the EU, which is what Brexit is doing, will also weaken the protection of Jewish communities in other countries.

Just look at who is in favor of Brexit. Its main non-British cheerleaders are Donald Trump, a man who cant address a Jewish audience without resorting to crude anti-Semitic stereotypes, and Vladimir Putin, whose Kremlin bankrolls propaganda channels where various conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers are regular guests - and even hosts. And within Britain itself, Brexits supporters are not just on the right. Notorious left-wing Jew-baiter George Galloway (another host on the Kremlins Russia Today) hates the EU, and was a loud backer of Brexit.

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And then of course Corbyn himself, before becoming Labour leader, was an outspoken opponent of the EU as well. During the 2016 referendum, it was his unwillingness to campaign for remain that greatly contributed to the narrow win for leave. Its a wonderful irony that as leader, he was forced to support a second referendum in this election, greatly contributing to Labours defeat.

In the referendum, Jews instinctively understood where their interests lay; about two-thirds voted to remain, a much higher proportion than the national vote of 48 percent, and a fact that gives the lie to the claim that British Jews are overwhelmingly right-wing.

Maybe it shouldnt matter as much anymore. After all, the past 130 years have seen the European Jewish communities go from being nearly 90 percent of the entire global Jewish population to barely ten percent today, perhaps less. Diminished first by mass emigration to American and then decimated by the Holocaust.

But even in their shrunken size today, there are still proud Jewish communities across Europe and those of us who live elsewhere are still connected to the continent by centuries of glorious Jewish tradition and heritage. We mustnt ignore the fact that the enemies of the EU, on the far-right and far-left, see Jews as their enemies as well. Whatever it says on our passports, we cant escape our European roots.

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Where theres hatred of the European Union, theres hatred of the Jews - Haaretz

Introduction

Evaluation subject, purpose and scope

This is the Final Report of the Evaluation of the European Unions humanitarian response to the refugee crisis in Turkey, covering the period 2016-2017. This ambitious mandate was undertaken by Landell Mills in partnership with Universalia Management Group and International Alert. The consortium was contracted by the European Commissions Directorate-General for Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) to carry out the evaluation between April 2018 and February 2019.

This Final Report provides a synthesis of the evidence collected during the first three phases of the evaluation (inception, desk and field phases). The findings and conclusions were developed by the evaluation team, and then validated by DG ECHO. The recommendations were subsequently developed through a participatory process with DG ECHO (Brussels and Turkey).

Purpose and objectives

The overall purpose of this independent evaluation is to assess all Humanitarian Aid actions under the European Union (EU) Facility for Refugees in Turkey, including those that are ongoing, in order to inform future programming and funding under a second phase of the Facility. More specifically, the evaluation objectives were threefold:

The evaluation approach was designed to provide evidence-based judgment on the extent to whichthe humanitarian actions under the Facility have been effective and efficient; relevant to the needsof the refugee population; coherent both internally and with other EU instruments, donors andregional interventions (i.e. Regional Refugee & Resilience Plan (3RP)); and have achieved EUadded value. In addition, the evaluation also examines the sustainability of humanitarian actionswithin the Facility.

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Evaluation of the European Union's Humanitarian Response to the refugee crisis in Turkey - Final Report, July 2019 - Turkey - ReliefWeb

The European Union announced 3 million (almost 170 million Philippine Pesos) in further humanitarian funding to provide assistance to those most vulnerable populations in the country, both those affected by the most recent natural disasters and by conflict.

We commend the actions of the Philippine government, whose preparedness measures before typhoon Tisoy saved the lives of those residing near the coast and landslide-prone areas, said Janez Lenari, the EU Commissioner for Crisis Management. However, the number of people displaced from their homes due to natural disasters and conflict is still high and the EU is ready to help answer their more urgent needs.

The EU funding will support global humanitarian aid organisations in their actions to deliver immediate assistance to those most affected by typhoon Tisoy, which caused widespread damage in the southeastern part of Luzon, and by the earthquakes in Mindanao.

In the aftermath of Tisoy, also known as typhoon Kammuri, assistance will be provided through healthcare services, access to clean water and the distribution of emergency shelter materials, hygiene kits and essential household items that were lost in the disasters. Hygiene promotion activities are also being carried out to mitigate the spread of waterborne diseases. In addition, cash grants will be distributed to enable victims to sustain themselves during their displacement and to help victims restart their livelihoods.

In Mindanao, the funding will target both displaced people and returnees. It will focus on improving food security through humanitarian food assistance and the replacement or strengthening of lost and damaged livelihoods. Aid will also aim to provide better access to sources of potable water, sanitation and proper hygiene practices, as well as healthcare assistance.

Part of this funding will support Plan International and the International Organization for Migration and is coming from the EUs Acute Large Emergency Response Tool (ALERT), which allocated 800,000, and the EUs overall contribution to the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which contributed 200,000.

Background

Typhoon Tisoy, the 20th tropical cyclone hitting the Philippines in 2019, has affected more than two million people and over 55,000 are still displaced. Some 484,000 houses have been damaged, out of which more than 63,000 have been completely destroyed.

During the months of October and December 2019, five major earthquakes hit Mindanao causing loss of life and significant damage to homes, schools and public buildings, and leaving more than 340,000 people in need of humanitarian assistance. The earthquakes have added stress to an already fragile population facing and armed conflict.

Since 1996, the EU has provided more than 124 million in humanitarian aid to the Philippines.

The acute large emergency response tool (ALERT) is used to respond to large natural disasters where over 100,000 people or over 50% of the population are affected. Depending on the type of disaster, the aim is to allocate funds within 24 to 48 hours of the onset of the emergency.

The Disaster Relief Emergency Fund, established in 1985, is supported by contributions from donors. Each time a National Red Cross or Red Crescent Society needs immediate financial support to respond to a disaster, it can request funds from the DREF. For small-scale disasters, the IFRC allocates grants from the Fund, which can then be replenished by the donors. The delegation agreement between the IFRC and the EU enables the latter to replenish the DREF for agreed operations (that fit in with its humanitarian mandate) up to a total of 3 million.

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The European Union provides additional 3 million in humanitarian aid to the Philippines - Philippines - ReliefWeb