JA KOGELO WA (THE MAN FROM KOGELO)

Kenya’s electric company is frantically laying cables, and the highways department is busily grading the dirt tracks, in preparation for a flood of tourists to the home village of Barack Obama’s father. Mama Sarah Anyango, Obama’s paternal grandmother, still lives in the dusty hamlet of Kogelo, in the country’s western Nyanza province, and the spruce-up comes not a moment too soon - the UK tour operator Somak (020 8423 3000, www.somak.co.uk ) is already offering a seven-night Obama Roots itinerary, which includes a visit to the soon-to-be-switched-on Kogelo.

MADONNA RESTORED

No, not her - the Raphael masterpiece in Florence. It has been resurrected to its original luminous splendour after a decade of painstaking work. Painted in 1505, the oil-on-wood masterpiece was smashed into 17 pieces when its owner’s house collapsed in 1548. It was clumsily repaired and repainted over the centuries, and the original brushwork was completely obscured by the time it came to Patrizia Riitano, whose restoration has been hailed as a triumph. The painting, which shows the Madonna watching a young John the Baptist hand the Christ child a goldfinch as an omen of his future crucifixion, goes on display at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi from November 23 until March 1.

CROC KILLED BY TOURIST TRAP

Bad news from Queensland, where authorities have revealed that the 12ft crocodile released by blundering researchers in the tourist hot spot of Magnetic Island - as reported here last week - has died, apparently a victim of tourism. Queensland’s Environmental Protection Agency said that 25 plastic shopping and garbage bags had been found inside the beast, along with a plastic wine cooler and a rubber float. “Because the material had compacted solidly in its stomach, it was unable to digest food,” the agency said.

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