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Welcome to the latest global news recorded at 0300 BST on Tuesday, the 2nd of September. I’m Mark Whitaker with the selection of highlights from across BBC World Service News today.

And today St. Paul revelations Chapter One: John McCain’s running mate’s unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant. The Republicans won’t be casting the first stone.

The only thing that reflects on Governor Palin and her husband is how did they handle this as parents. They love their daughter unconditionally, and that’s what I expect.

Also coming up. After the clashes in the streets of Bangkok, the prime minister of Thailand declares a state of emergency in the capital. From Afghanistan, the case of a student condemned to death for using the Internet. And Egypt’s best-selling novelist on the limitations of free speech.

The formula in Egypt now is you say whatever you want, and the government is doing whatever it wants. And I don’t think this is a freedom for(of) expression.

It’s been a difficult 24 hours for the Republican Party in the United States. This is meant to be the week of John McCain’s triumphant coronation as the party’s presidential candidate. But then Hurricane Gustav came along. Okay, Gustav turned out not to be as gusty as many had predicted. New Orleans has been spared. But Republican determination to put on a dignified show while a hurricane was threatening has definitely upset some carefully planned schedules. President Bush, for instance, was a no-show in Minnesota. And then another storm threatened. It turned out that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin --- the woman chosen by John McCain to be his running mate, her unmarried teenage daughter is five-month pregnant. So no George Bush, no razzmatazz, no hurricane, just maybe the whiff of a pretty small scandal. Well, Clare Bodson is at the convention in St. Paul for the BBC where maybe the delegates have found themselves a little bit of loose end.

Well, I think they are really rather remarkably resilient, really these Republicans. They have turned up, they’ve sat in their seats, they’ve done all sorts of boring procedural stuff, and they've left smiling at the end of the day, and defending to the hilt Sarah Palin and her family after those revelations about her daughter that you just mentioned. Well, I’ve been looking at all of this with Jimmy Coomarasamy, our Washington correspondent, who’s been mingling with the delegates on the convention floor. And Jimmy, this is so unlike the Democratic Party convention last week, isn’t it?

It is, Clare. For a start, it's a lot smaller, then as for the delegate theater, the actual hall is physically smaller. We’ve got the, the balloons waiting to drop down when John McCain comes across. No balloons dropped down when Barack Obama spoke, cuz he spoke in a big outdoor stadium where there were rockets firing into the sky. But apart from that, yes, the mood here has been very different, as you say, the stress has been on Hurricane Gustav, we saw at the beginning of the events, an appeal for money at the end of the events, an appeal for money with, with two of the, the two rock stars of the day, if you'd like to call them that, Laura Bush, the First Lady, and Cindy McCain, the wife of John McCain, the woman who wants to become the first lady, again talking about the need to spend money, to, to donate money to those affected by Hurricane Gustav, but, but a very odd day in many respects.

Jimmy, that Sarah Palin’s story we were just talking about that her, her, her seventeen-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant. I have not found anyone here particularly upset or worried about that.

No, I think there was a contrast though. I think earlier on the day when the story [was] first broken, we put it to people, have you heard about this? They hadn’t. There was a great deal of shocks, you know. There was a lot of excitement about Sarah Palin here amongst delegates. She’s someone as women, say, in the last few days she has excited the base. But as you say, once it sunk[sank] in and people digested that, their main reaction was a little. This is a family matter, this is something for them. Look how they handle it. She, they also are saying, look she’s keeping the child as someone who’s a pro-life person. That was an important thing as well. So I think, as you say, they have turned it around to something positive, and also they’ve been helped by Barack Obama. He also of course has said “Families are off-limits. My own mother had me when she was eighteen.”

It’s interesting you mentioned that that has been sort of picked-up that people have coalesced around this one kind of opinion. It’s been very much put out in talking points. This is how we’re going to address it. I’ve been talking to Congresswoman Heather Wilson from New Mexico.

There are a lot of folks who can identify with problems in people’s families, whether it’s, it's, a, a seventeen-year-old who’s pregnant, or, or other kinds of problems in families. I think one of the things about Governor Palin that is refreshing about her, is that people can relate to her a little bit more. You know she’s raising five kids, trying to run the family fishing business. Her husband is working on the North Slope, a member of the Steel Workers Union. I think she kinda gets it. And now I think she probably gets even more.

That might mean that the American people have a lot of sympathy for her and for her family, and they, they relate to it, doesn’t necessarily mean they want her to be the vice president.