Obama aunt allowed to stay in US

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A US judge has ruled that a Kenyan aunt of President Barack Obama can legally stay in the US until next year.

The half-sister of Mr Obama's father, Zeituni Onyango - who had lost a bid for asylum in 2004 - will then have to make a new application for asylum.

That hearing will decide whether Ms Onyango can stay in the US permanently.

Her immigration status became an issue during last year's election campaign. Mr Obama said he never knew his aunt was living illegally in the US.

Mr Obama has said he believes the case should be allowed to run its course in the usual way.

African travels

Ms Onyango, 56, wore a curly red wig to Wednesday's Boston's immigration court hearing, and declined to answer questions from journalists.

The judge set her case to be heard on 4 February, 2010.

She had first applied for asylum in 2002, but her request was rejected and she was ordered deported in 2004.

But the woman referred to as "Auntie Zeituni" in Mr Obama's memoir did not leave the country and continued to live in public housing in Boston.

Mr Obama's father grew up in Kenya herding goats but gained a scholarship to study in Hawaii where he met and married Mr Obama's mother, who was living in Honolulu with her parents.

Barack Obama Sr left his son when he was two years old and lived most of his life in Kenya, where he fathered six other sons and a daughter with three other wives. He died in a car crash in 1982.

The US president first met his father's side of the family when he travelled to Africa 20 years ago.

Describing the visit in his memoir, he talks of "Auntie Zeituni" being "a proud woman".

Ms Onyango visited the family in Chicago on a tourist visa at Mr Obama's invitation about nine years ago, stopping to visit friends on the east coast before returning to Kenya.

She attended Mr Obama's swearing-in to the US Senate in 2004 but campaign officials say the politician provided no assistance in getting her a tourist visa.

In December, a judge agreed to suspend her deportation order and reopen her asylum case.