Top Stories: Mali's government says a man who attempted to stab Mali's coup-leading interim President Colonel Assimi Goita has died while in the custody of security services. Kidnappers who raided a boarding school in northern Nigeria earlier this month released 28 children on Sunday -- but another 81 remain in captivity, according to a pastor involved in the negotiations for their release. Tunisian troops blocked the head of parliament from entering the building early Monday, hours after President Kais Saied announced he had fired Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and suspended parliament for 30 days. Saied’s decree came after protests over country’s COVID-19 and economic situation turned violent. Saied said he was acting in response to the country’s economic woes and political deadlock and added that the country’s constitution gave him that authority. Sierra Leone is set to become the 23rd country in Africa to abolish the death penalty. Lawmakers in the West African nation voted unanimously Friday to outlaw capital punishment and replace it with life imprisonment or a minimum 30-year sentence for such crimes as murder or treason and grant judges additional discretion when handing down a sentence. Sierra Leone has not executed anyone since 1998, when 24 soldiers were put to death by firing squad for taking part in a coup attempt the previous year. Somalia’s long-delayed electoral process failed again to take place on Sunday as scheduled. Sunday should have been the senate or Upper House election, followed presidential election in October this year. Abdi-razak Omar Mohamed, a Somali member of parliament and former security minister says some issues that needed to be resolved to make Sunday’s election possible were not, including agreeing on Somaliland electoral committees, and financing. Mohamed told VOA’s James Butty the international community and donors have not agreed on the estimated $25 million price tag that the Somali government proposed to finance the election. Mohamed also says technical issues, including election security and monitoring were not agreed upon. A spokesperson for South Sudan President Salva Kiir says the country made history last Friday when President Kiir nominated the first female speaker of the country’s Transitional National Legislative Assembly. Ateny Wek Ateny says the nomination of Jemma Nunu Kumba as speaker of parliament means that a woman is leading one of the three pillars of the government. Kumba was secretary-general of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and governor of Western Equatorial State. South Sudan women’s activist groups have long demanded women be appointed to important government positions because of the role women played in the South Sudan independence struggle. The body of slain Haitian President Jovenel Moise was laid to rest in the northern port city of Cap-Haitien today. Moise was gunned down in his home in Port-au-Prince on July 7th. The assassination underscored the continuing influence of foreign actors in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has our story.