White House officials have abruptly changed their story about whether Obama had ever met his father’s half brother, an African living in Boston who faced deportation to Kenya after a drunk-driving arrest in 2011

A couple of years ago, White House officials said that Barack Obama had never met Onyango Obama, known as Omar, Obama’s uncle. But Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, now says that the 2011 statement was incorrect. In fact, the two men lived together briefly while Barack Obama was a student at Harvard Law, Carney said. A judge in Boston has ruled that Omar Obama could stay in the United States and apply for eventual citizenship after he testified that he had lived in the country for 50 years, paid income tax and been arrested only once.