Row over Obama's 'Kenyan birth certificate'

 The controversy linked to Obama’s birth has come alive as the president’s reaction to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr, a black Harvard professor, threatens to spark a racial row. Conspiracy theorists in the US and far right wingers, who have begun to call themselves “birthers”, claim that Obama is not entitled to be in the White House simply because he is “foreign born”, the Daily Telegraph reported.

According to the conspiracists, there is something suspicious in the absence of a photocopy of Obama’s original birth record, known as the “long form”, even as the White House has published copies of his official birth certificate —a printed summary of his birth details, including the name of the medical centre in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he was born.

The “birthers” claim the photocopy of Obama’s original birth record would have been prepared by doctors or hospital officials involved in his birth and would contain fuller details — including the address of his parents, the reportsaid. They have dismissed as a distraction a birth announcement for Obama that appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser on August 13, 1961.