U.S. President Barack Obama’s step-grandmother will use her newfound celebrity status to help eradicate the tsetse fly, an insect that causes sleeping sickness, the African Union (AU) said on Monday.

Sarah Obama, 87, was given a spray pump and enough insecticide to treat 3,000 animals — which like humans can be infected by the insect — by an AU team that visited her village of Kogelo in western Kenyan last month.

Read more. . . (Reuters)