U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday the “time is now” for Turkey to drop its objections to Sweden joining NATO but said the Biden administration also believed that Turkey should be provided with upgraded F-16 fighters “as soon as possible.” Blinken maintained that the administration had not linked the two issues but acknowledged that some U.S. lawmakers had. President Joe Biden implicitly linked the two issues in a phone call to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday. “I spoke to Erdogan and he still wants to work on something on the F-16s. I told him we wanted a deal with Sweden. So let’s get that done," Biden said. Still, Blinken insisted the two issues were distinct. However, he stressed that the completion of both would dramatically strengthen European security. “Both of these are vital, in our judgement, to European security,” Blinken told reporters at a joint news conference in the northern Swedish city of Lulea with Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. “We believe that both should go forward as quickly as possible; that is to say Sweden’s accession and moving forward on the F-16 package more broadly.” “We believe the time is now,” Blinken said. He declined to predict when Turkey and Hungary, the only other NATO member not yet to have ratified Sweden’s membership, would grant their approval. But, he said, “we have no doubt that it can be, it should be, and we expect it to be” completed by the time alliance leaders meet in Vilnius, Lithuania in July at an annual summit. Fresh from a strong re-election victory over the weekend, Erdogan may be willing to ease his objections to Sweden’s membership. Erdogan accuses Sweden of being too soft on groups Ankara considers to be terrorists, and a series of Quran-burning protests in Stockholm angered his religious support base — making his tough stance even more popular. Kristersson said the two sides had been in contact since Sunday’s vote and voiced no hesitancy in speaking about the benefits Sweden would bring to NATO “when we join the alliance.” Blinken is in Sweden attending a meeting of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council and will travel to Oslo, Norway on Wednesday for a gathering of NATO foreign ministers, before going on to newly admitted alliance member Finland on Friday. Speaking in Oslo ahead of the foreign ministers' meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the goal was to have Sweden inside the grouping before the leaders' summit in July. "There are no guarantees, but it’s absolutely possible to reach a solution and enable the decision on full membership for Sweden by the Vilnius summit,” Stoltenberg said. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide

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NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 8, 2023--

Comedian Daniel Sloss is being praised by viewers after he spoke out against Russell Brand in a joint investigation from Channel 4 and The Times. Brand, 48, has been accused of rape, sexual assault, and abuse by four women. In a video uploaded to the comedian's social media platforms on Friday night (September 15) before the allegations were made public, Brand said he "absolutely refute[s]" the claims made towards him. He told viewers that all relationships he had were "absolutely always consensual". During the Channel 4 Dispatches, it was revealed that comedians who worked in the industry at the same time as Brand were contacted, but only one was willing to speak on camera. That comedian was Daniel Sloss. As Sloss, 33, sits down to talk to an off-screen interviewer, he says, "this is scary, this is intimidating, and if I'm scared of this, and there's almost no consequences to me, what do people who have suffered, and been subject to, his alleged behaviours, how must they feel?" "I couldn't not say something," the Scottish comedian goes on to say. "There were many stories, it wasn't just coming from one person or one group of people, it was different incidents [...] and of varying degrees of severity. "I'm stood in artist bars, with agents, promoters, channel commissioners, and I'm hearing these allegations, and these rumours, about Russell in the same room as these people are in. And then later on, he would be in a movie, he would be on a television show, he would be hosting something. He was still being employed." Sloss went on to say that he knew of female comedians setting up WhatsApp groups to warn one another of comedians and others in the industry to avoid. "I know for many, many years, women have been warning each other about Russell," he shares. Sloss' appearance on the documentary brought in a lot of praise from viewers, many also took the opportunity to repost a clip from his Netflix special 'X' which tackles sexual assault. In the clip, Sloss says, "There are monsters amongst us, and they look like us. If you are sick of the narrative that's currently going on about men, feel free to change it, but you have to get involved. "Don't make the same mistake I did for years, which was just sitting back and being like, 'well, I'm not a part of the problem, therefore I must be part of the solution,'" Sloss tells his audience. Going on to say that he knows "most men are good", but if men don't do anything about the minority that are dangerous "they might as well not f***ing be there." Sloss tells men to "prevent" rape, rather than having a "hero complex of being like, 'I'm going to beat up a rapist.'" After the documentary aired, many took the time to share the clip on social media and commend Sloss for continuing to speak up against predatory behaviour. As the Dispatches program aired Saturday night, Brand was performing a sold out show, telling audience members they would "appreciate" that there were certain things he could not talk about. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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