July 30, 2015.
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Sane Dhlamini.
Making headlines:

Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa ‘engineer’ Daniel Mtimkulu has been charged with fraud and uttering.

An Egyptian court is expected to deliver a verdict in a retrial of Al Jazeera journalists.

And, South Africa’s unemployment rate drops to 25%.

PRASA's head of engineering services Daniel Mtimkulu appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate's court on Wednesday on a charge of fraud and uttering relating to his qualification, the National Prosecuting Authority (or NPA) in Gauteng said.

Uttering is the crime of using a forged document and is usually associated with the circulation of fake bank notes.

NPA Gauteng spokesperson Phindi Louw said Mtimkulu was released on R20 000 bail and has to return to court on August 25.

Mtimkulu's qualification became an issue following a report that new trains ordered by the country from Spain were too high for South African rail infrastructure.

He has since resigned from PRASA, shortly after PRASA CEO Lucky Montana's dismissal from the State-owned entity.

An Egyptian court is expected to deliver a verdict in a retrial of Al Jazeera journalists on terrorism-related charges. Their case has raised international concerns about media freedom in the country.

Last year, another court sentenced Australian Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian Mohammed Fahmy and their Egyptian colleague Baher Mohammed to seven years in prison each on charges of collaborating with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood movement and spreading false news about Egypt.

Human rights organisation Amnesty International dismissed the charges and the trial as "a complete sham" and said the sentences were "a ferocious attack on media freedom".

In January, the verdict was overturned on appeal and after a retrial Greste was freed from prison and deported after a decision by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi.

Unemployment in South Africa has decreased a notch as the public and informal sector supported more job creation in the second quarter of the year. This is according to the latest Statistics South Africa survey.

However, nearly half of the country’s 36-million working-age population remained ‘not economically active’, despite the 1.4 percentage point decrease in the unemployment rate from 26.4% in the first three months of the year, to 25% in the second quarter to June.

Investec economist Kamilla Kaplan said that, since the 2008/9 recession, government had been South Africa’s largest employer, while the manufacturing sector had shed jobs and employment in the mining sector remained “virtually stagnant”.

Also making headlines:

Leading water scientists say it is no longer debatable that South Africa is experiencing a water crisis given that there are already serious problems in supplying enough water of sufficient quality to meet the country’s social and economic needs.

The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry has appointed former Land and Agricultural Bank head Alan Mukoki as its new CEO, effective August 1.

Agri SA wants market value compensation for expropriated land.

And, President Jacob Zuma’s office said The Property Valuation Act comes into effect on Saturday, August 1.

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That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.