Vance | Pakistan

WASHINGTON: US Vice President JD Vance has defended saying that he hopes his wife Usha — who was raised as a Hindu — converts to Christianity. A fervent Catholic who himself converted in 2019, Vance said on Friday that pushback against his remarks reeks of “anti-Christian bigotry“. The 41-year-old was asked about raising their three children in an interfaith marriage at a Turning Point USA event honouring assassinated right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at the University of Mississippi on Wednesday. “Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that,” he said. “But if she doesn’t, then God says everybody has free will, and so that doesn’t cause a problem for me.” Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2025

United States Vice President JD Vance said a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine was unlikely to satisfy either side, and that any peace deal would likely leave both Moscow and Kyiv “unhappy”, adding that the US is aiming for a settlement both countries can accept. “It’s not going to make anybody super happy. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably, at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it,” he said on Fox News programme ‘Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo’. US President Donald Trump said on Friday he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 in Alaska to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. Trump said Russia and Ukraine were close to a ceasefire deal that could end the three-and-a-half-year-old conflict, possibly requiring Ukraine to surrender significant territory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, said on Saturday that Ukraine cannot violate its constitution on territorial issues, adding, “Ukrainians will not gift their land to...