The case has resulted in severe and irreparable damage to Canada's relationship with its allies, a Nova Scotia provincial court heard on Wednesday.

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Among the succession of scandals that have rocked the province, last month the entire provincial supreme court was accused of corruption.

ECONOMIST: Argentina

The financier, who has swapped his Czech citizenship for Irish, failed to appear in a court in Plzen, a provincial city, on March 17th to testify in the retrial of a former secret-service agent, Vaclav Wallis.

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In a separate development, a court in Pakistan sentenced a former provincial minister to two years in prison for falsely declaring that he was a graduate.

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In 2006, the central government seized oversight of death sentences from provincial courts, restoring it to the Supreme People's Court after a 23-year hiatus, amid what state media suggested was a rash of errors in judicial judgments and excessive use of the capital sentence.

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One of the alleged guilty so protected he is said to have received huge sums wrongfully removed from Jujuy's now-insolvent provincial bank was the son of one of the supreme-court judges.

ECONOMIST: Argentina

He imposed the fines via a closed-circuit television link to Ranong Provincial Prison, where the refugees will continue to be held until they can pay the court.

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They will control at least 18 of the 24 provincial governorships, as well as the main trade unions and (thanks to Mr Menem's court-packing appointments) the judiciary.

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In an about-turn remarkable even for a provincial government expert at tacking with changing winds, Quebec said that it would, in essence, ignore the court's ruling.

ECONOMIST: Canada