The 15th plenary assembly of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) parliamentary forum that was held in Lesotho last week has approved the establishment of a regional parliament that would complement the work of the continental African Union parliament.

Another leader of Lesotho's Factory Workers Union (Fawu) was arrested on Wednesday following a strike earlier this week that left two dead and scores of people injured. Police reportedly arrested Willie Matheo, Fawu's deputy secretary-general, at the union's headquarters in the capital Maseru early on Wednesday morning.

One of the world's leading electrical companies, Schneider Electric, has been implicated in a R16 million bribery case in the Lesotho High Court. The alleged bribery relates to the construction of the now-completed Lesotho Highlands Water Project. French-based Schneider calls itself one of the world's leading manufacturers of equipment for electrical distribution, industrial control and automation. It boasts operations in 130 countries.

Although governments have increasingly become aware of the problem of orphans and vulnerable children in Southern Africa, countries still lacked the capacity to effectively deal with the problem, a regional workshop heard on Monday.

A group of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) has accused the Canadian government's export financing agency of sending the wrong signal on corruption for not sanctioning companies that are convicted of illegal acts abroad. This came after Export Development Canada said it would not bar Canadian engineering company Acres International from future contracts. Earlier this year Acres was convicted in Lesotho of paying bribes to obtain contracts from the Highlands Water Project.

Up to 800,000 people in the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho could face food shortages as the country's Disaster Management Authority (DMA) reports an almost complete failure of this year's winter crop.

Controversy over the call for debarment of a Canadian contractor is proving a litmus test of the World Bank's commitment to apply the same standards to corrupt Northern companies as it does to Southern companies and government officials. In a landmark judgment on 15 August, the Court of Appeal of Lesotho rejected the major appeal of Canadian engineering firm Acres International. The company was convicted of bribing a public official to win a contract on the World Bank-funded Lesotho Highlands Water Project last year.

Social and cultural norms and traditions in Lesotho are hampering efforts to combat the rising HIV/AIDS epidemic, government officials told IRIN. Ignorance about HIV/AIDS has been a major stumbling block for efforts at halting the spread of the disease, she said.

The bribery case against Acres International Ltd. has been among the more spectacular in recent memory. This landmark legal battle saw the engineering consulting firm convicted on two counts of bribery surrounded allegations that Acres used an agent to bribe the head of a giant water and hydroelectric development in the southern African nation of Lesotho. The court pulled no punches: Acres' "cynical exploitation" of the project, "motivated as it was by greed, is the more reprehensible," Judge Jan Steyn wrote in his judgment. The company's reputation, he predicted, "will be sullied by the conviction and it will live in the shadow of the taint of corruption." But what action will the World Bank, a major funder of the project, and the Canadian government take against the company?

A German engineering company was fined 10.65 million maloti ($1.4m) by a Lesotho court on Tuesday after being found guilty of paying bribes in a massive water project. The Lesotho High Court found the firm, Lahmeyer International, guilty of paying bribes totalling more than five million maloti ($670 000) to the former chief executive officer of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA) from 1992 to 1997.

The Lesotho Court of Appeal made strong statements about corruption in developing countries when it recently confirmed the conviction of Canadian engineering contracting firm Acres International on a charge of bribery. Acres was found guilty of having bribed the CEO of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority, Masupho Sole, to secure a lucrative contract for the construction of the Katse Dam. Sole, now in prison, received bribes totalling R12m from a number of international companies. On Tuesday German engineering company Lahmeyer International will be sentenced on seven counts of bribery. Next in line for prosecution is French company Spies Batignolles. Seven or eight other international companies have been charged.

At the expense of local media, South African media were given access to events during the British Princess Anne's official visit to Lesotho in the week of July 16, 2003.

Against the backdrop of rampant hunger and famine in Lesotho, especially in the rural villages, youth volunteers have taken it upon themselves to help communities with projects aimed at curbing abject poverty and HIV/Aids. Youth volunteers from the Lesotho Work Camps Association have embarked on work camps to help people in the villages with irrigation schemes during dry seasons, water supply, construction of houses and roads as well as soil and water conservation.

Poor urban communities will from 1 July be without clean and safe drinking water, unless they reach to the bottom of their already dry purses to pay for the right to drink, cook and bathe from clean and safe water. The Water and Sewage Authority will hand over or close public standpipes to communities and implement new water charges starting July, disclosed WASA Chief Executive Officer, Sechoba Makhoalibe.

A German engineering company, Lahmeyer, was on Tuesday found guilty of bribing a top official of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.

The long-running series of corruption trials against leading international construction companies in the southern African state of Lesotho has reached another milestone with a guilty plea from one of the main intermediaries for the bribes. Jacobus Michiel du Plooy, a South African consultant, has pleaded guilty to paying $375,000 (£225,000) to Masupha Sole, the former chief executive of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project who is serving 15 years in prison for accepting more than $2m in bribes from a dozen western companies. The cash was paid on behalf of Impregilo SpA, Italy's largest construction company, according to the indictment.

Women in Lesotho married under customary law continue to be discriminated against. This was a conclusion reached at a two-day workshop on customary law and women's rights organised jointly by the Community Legal Resource and Advice Centre (CLRAC) of Lesotho and the Legal Resource Centre (LRC) of South Africa. The workshop, which is the result of a comparative study of women's rights in Lesotho and South Africa under customary law, found that the struggle of women for equal access to the law is still far from being reached.

Under-qualified for the new textile jobs that drew them to Lesotho's capital city of Maseru, many young women from the famine-plagued countryside are surviving by selling sex, with and without a condom. "The first time I did it, I cried," said 22-year-old Lonia Ratesebe as she waits on her normal corner with her friend and housemate, Ana Dikeledi. "I felt guilty, but there was no food, no clothing and no jobs."

Thabo Thakalekoala, sub-editor of "Mopheme", a weekly English-language newspaper in Lesotho, has repeatedly been denied information relating to the treatment of Katleho Malataliana, a former member of the Lesotho Defence Force (LDF). Malataliana was arrested in November 1998, along with other LDF members, and later convicted of mutiny against senior officers and the government.

Like many developing countries, Lesotho gives high priority to improving its education system. The government's targets by 2011 include universal primary enrolment and improvements in higher secondary enrolment, coverage of early childhood provision and national levels of basic literacy. What implications do these targets have for teacher education? Can the country afford the teachers it needs?