Africa 54 - July 8, 2021VOA Africa Top News: Hundreds of women and girls in Ethiopia’s Tigray region have reported brutal rapes at the hands of soldiers in a war that is still ongoing -- despite last week’s government troop withdrawal. As VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Mekelle, the rape victims who have come forward say they are only a small percentage of the women and girls who have been brutalized. Former South African president Jacob Zuma is behind bars on Thursday after turning himself over to police, to begin serving a 15-month prison term. Shortly before the midnight deadline for police to arrest him, Zuma left his Nkandla home in a convoy of vehicles. Due to poor security in Nigeria’s northwest, hundreds of thousands of children in are missing out on an education as the threat of kidnapping gangs closes schools. A young boy is one of them. David Doyle has more. Zambia's founding president, Kenneth Kaunda, was laid to rest at the country's presidential burial site on Wednesday after the High Court dismissed a challenge by one of his sons that this would be against his wishes. Kaunda's son Kaweche on Tuesday challenged in court the government's plan to bury his father's remains at Embassy Park, where other former heads of state are buried and which is visited by the public as a national monument. Kaweche Kaunda says his father's last wish was to be buried at his residence next to his wife, Betty, who died more than ten years ago. A Cameroon minister-counsellor said Wednesday, World Athletics is discriminating against women with intersex variations by requiring them to reduce high natural testosterone levels to participate in the female category -- and he says the discrimination is like apartheid. Come Damien Georges Awoumou, minister-counsellor at the Cameroon mission to the United Nations, made the comments on behalf of the African group of countries at a special debate on sports and human rights held at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. There is a women-only village in northern Syria's Rojava region, where widowed families live. Due to an increase in domestic violence in the area, village leaders are now also welcoming victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Haitians are expressing shock and anger over President Jovenal Moise’s assassination on Thursday. A state of siege has been declared by the interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who says he is now in charge of the country. National Police Force chief Léon Charles said late Wednesday four “mercenaries” suspected of carrying out Moise’s assassination were killed in a shootout with police, with two other suspects captured. Charles says three police officers held hostage by the suspected assassins were freed. Britain is about to try something that no other nation has yet dared: lifting coronavirus restrictions in the middle of a wave of new infections. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the government says that with more than half of Britons now fully vaccinated, the time is right to reopen – but some scientists warn it is a big gamble. Russian authorities say the country is facing a surge in new coronavirus infections. And, as Charles Maynes reports from Moscow, that has prompted a renewed effort to convince a skeptical public that the time to vaccinate is now. People on Spain’s Mediterranean coast are grappling with what researchers are calling a silent invasion of sea algae that is threatening its biodiversity, tourism and fishing industry. Scientists say the invasive species arrived in the Mediterranean from Asia in the ballast of cargo ships, creating an “environmental nightmare