The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, St Paul

Republican vice presidential pick Sarah Palin revealed Monday her unmarried teenaged daughter is pregnant, in the latest bombshell to rock the party's Hurricane Gustav-curtailed convention. Palin said her daughter Bristol, 17, would have the baby and marry its father, as the convention held a shortened first day, shorn of political rhetoric out of respect for those sheltering from Gustav's wrath. The curtailed convention will cost presumptive nominee John McCain some of his precious opportunity to take his unfiltered case to US voters, a week after his Democratic rival Barack Obama's spectacular jamboree in Denver. A new CBS/New York Times poll on Monday suggested that McCain needed a boost, putting Obama and his vice presidential pick Joseph Biden up 48 percent to 40 percent, ahead of the November 4 election.