Lesotho

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project has throttled wild rivers and drowned verdant valleys. Its concrete megadams have flooded out thatched huts, subsistence farms and grazing lands here in the impoverished mountain region known as the Roof of Africa. And now the project is embroiled in one of the biggest corruption scandals in the checkered history of African development.

A Canadian construction company, Acres International, has been fined £1.6m by a court in the southern African state of Lesotho for paying bribes in connection with the country's multi-billion pound dam project.

Negotiations are on a good track between the Lesotho Clothing and Allied Workers Union and the Exporters Association of Lesotho, despite earlier threats of a call for an industrial action.

In a landmark decision that has sweeping implications for Third World development, engineering multinational Acres International of Oakville, Ontario has been convicted by the Lesotho High Court in southern Africa on two counts of bribing a local official to secure contracts on a multibillion dollar dam scheme. Earlier this year, the recipient of the bribes, Lesotho's Masupha Sole, was also convicted.

HIV-positive people who know they have the virus and commit sexual offenses would be subject to the death penalty under a bill presented on Wednesday to the Lesotho Parliament by Refiloe Masemene, minister of justice, law and constitutional affairs in the Southern African nation.

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