# United Nations

• In a historic UN biodiversity agreement, over 190 countries agreed in Montreal on Monday to protect 30% of the planet by 2030.
• The biodiversity agreement pledged to achieve 23 targets to reverse ecosystem degradation under four overarching goals for survival of the natural world.
• India and other developed countries had demanded the continuation of farm subsidies and could escape the axe as the final text of the global deal did not specify it.
• Under the ‘global biodiversity framework’ countries agreed to reduce harmful government subsidies worth $500 billion annually, while vowing to identify subsidies “harmful for biodiversity” by 2025.

# Supreme Court

• After an unimpressive rate of case disposal in October-November, the supreme Court picked up speed in deciding cases during nascent days of justice DY Chandrachud as CJI.
• Supreme Court achieved an enviable 209% disposal rate in the last two weeks of the Court this year.
• As against filing of 2697 new cases during December 5-16, Supreme Court disposed of 5642 cases to bring down the total pendency to 68835 at the end of the last working day of the Supreme Court prior to its winter break.

# China

• China reported its first covid related deaths in weeks on Monday amid rising doubts over whether the official count was capturing the full toll of disease that is ripping through cities.
• The low number of deaths since curbs were lifted on December 7 is inconsistent with the experience of other countries after similar moves.
• China has suffered just 5237 covid related deaths during the pandemic, which is a tiny fraction of its 1.4 billion population.

# Canada

• Canada has shown progress in clearing up its pandemic led immigration backlog.
• At the end of November, Immigration, refugees and citizenship had processed approximately 48 lakh applications, nearly twice the number it processed during the same period last year.