July 2, 2014.
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Shannon de Ryhove.
Making headlines:

President Jacob Zuma grants IEC’s Pansy Tlakula a leave of absence.

African refugees face cuts in their daily rations as funding runs low.

And, Stats SA says policies and spend on infrastructure must reflect that more people are living on the fringes of metros.

President Jacob Zuma has granted Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) chairperson Pansy Tlakula's request for a special leave of absence until a final decision on her fitness to hold office as chairperson of the commission is made, the presidency said in a statement.

Tlakula asked Zuma to put her on special leave following the Electoral Court's recommendation that she be removed from office.

On June 19, Tlakula's lawyer Leslie Mkhabela said the IEC chairperson would appeal against the recommendation in the Constitutional Court.

The United Nations says African refugees who have fled wars or persecution face cuts in their daily rations because of a $225-million shortfall for vital food programmes.

Many of the 800 000 refugees are already getting less food than they need because of low funding, insecurity and logistical problems. They are showing "unacceptable levels of malnutrition", leading to stunting and anaemia in children, the World Food Programme and the UN refugee agency said.

They include nearly 450 000 refugees in the Central African Republic, Chad and South Sudan whose rations have been halved, the sister agencies said in a joint appeal to donor countries.

The WFP needs $186-million to restore full rations and avoid further cuts through the end of this year for the 2.4-million refugees in 22 countries of sub-Saharan Africa under its care.

Statistician General Pali Lehohla says policies and spend on infrastructure must reflect that more people are living on the fringes of metros.

He said moving forward with infrastructure programmes, there was a greater need for congruency between the densification policies and the sprawling city.

Lehohla was releasing a report into the building statistics of the private sector as reported by local government. The statistics, among other things, provide an outlook on the fundamental aspects of human settlements.

He noted that the report was important because building statistics were an economic indicator and a predictor of which direction gross domestic product was headed.

Also making headlines:

South Africa's Labour Court issued an order on Tuesday barring the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) from striking at power utility Eskom's plants, a spokesperson for the electricity firm said.

The Economic Freedom Fighters is castigated for its 'disgusting' behaviour in the Gauteng legislature.

And, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the number of deaths attributed to an epidemic of Ebola virus in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone stood at 467 by Monday, out of 759 known cases in total.

Also on Polity today:

In the latest episode of Suttner's View, researcher and analyst Professor Raymond Suttner discusses freedom as something undergoing continuous development.

Read the latest Human Rights Watch report, which documents the experiences of 25 children and former child soldiers in Syria’s armed conflict.

Don’t forget to vote in our poll, which questions Julius Malema’s conduct in Parliament.

Follow us on Twitter (@PolityZA) for updates on breaking news.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.