July 7, 2015.
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m David Oliveira.
Making headlines:

Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Fatima Chohan says there’s “no use throwing stones over the new visa rules”.

Unidentified gunmen have killed 14 people in an attack on quarry workers in northeast Kenya.

And, PRASA CEO Lucky Montana says the new trains meet all the necessary safety and technical requirements.

Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Fatima Chohan said that she was willing to accompany representatives of the South African tourism industry to China in order to see how dropping visitor numbers from that country could be curbed.

She took part in a visa legislation workshop hosted by the destination marketing, investment and trade promotion agency for the Western Cape, Wesgro.

According to Wesgro CEO Tim Harris, it was a great idea of the deputy minister to go and try to establish first-hand what the causes for the drop in number of Chinese tourists could be and how to try and remedy the situation.

Chohan said the department was prepared to attend more workshops in future and was looking into establishing a one-stop visa centre in Gauteng.

Gunmen killed quarry workers as they slept in an overnight attack on a residential complex in northeast Kenya, a government administrator said on Tuesday.

No one claimed immediate responsibility for the assault in Mandera town, in which officials said at least 14 people died.

Somalia-based Islamic militant group al Shabaab has in the past carried out similar attacks, including one in December in the same county in which 36 quarry workers were killed.

Abbas Gullet, secretary general of Kenya Red Cross, said the workers were attacked as they slept.

Al Shabaab, which aims to topple Somalia's government and impose its own strict version of Islamic law, has carried out frequent attacks in Kenya in recent years to try to force Nairobi to pull its troops out of Somalia, where they are part of an African Union peacekeeping mission.

The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (or PRASA) has moved to assure South Africans that, despite contrary claims emerging in a Sunday newspaper, its new fleet of Afro locomotives were running on the nation’s expansive railway lines without fault.

Showcasing videos and unpacking the engineering and design specifications of the new Spain-sourced trains at a media briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Pretoria, PRASA CEO Lucky Montana aimed to put to bed any doubt over the safety or standards of the Afro 4000 diesel locomotive range that he deemed one of the best in the world.

The first of these Railway Safety Regulator of South Africa-approved trains, which had been undergoing extensive testing since the first of 70 ordered locomotives reached South Africa’s shores in January, would enter revenue-generating long-haul passenger services with Shosholoza Meyl by the end of August.

Also making headlines:

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone need a further $700-million in donor funding to rebuild their battered health services over the next two years in the wake of the deadly Ebola epidemic.

The South African Communist Party will this week reflect on how to better reposition itself, following criticism that it no longer represents the working class.

And, the Gautrain Management Agency and the Gauteng provincial government “were close to announcing” a R3-billion investment, funded by the Development Bank of Southern Africa, to buy additional rolling stock, build a new depot, and install additional signalling.

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That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.