Hawaii has enacted a law allowing officials to ignore repetitive requests for US President Barack Obama's birth certificate.
The measure is aimed at "birthers", who claim Mr Obama was not born in the US and is thus ineligible to be president.
The island's officials say birthers make dozens of requests every month for copies of Mr Obama's birth certificate.
The new law was requested by Republican Governor Linda Lingle. Mr Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1961.
The law applies to any public records that are typically available to anyone who requests to inspect them.
It also permits state officials to deny access to the records or to ignore the request if it duplicates an earlier request.
State law already bars release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest.
Since the start of his run for the White House, Mr Obama has been hounded by rumours he was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya, his father's homeland; Indonesia, where he lived as a child; or elsewhere.
The state of Hawaii has released a computer print-out of the birth certificate information and officials have vouched for its authenticity, but that has failed to satisfy the birthers.
State officials have said they receive roughly 50 requests per month for the president's birth certificate, often from the same small group of people, and that processing the requests takes considerable time.
[link to news.bbc.co.uk] 
Canada
United States
