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Members of the National Orchestra System play a 12-minute Tchaikovsky piece to try and break a Guinness World Record in Caracas, Venezuela on Nov 13, 2021. (Photo: AP/Ariana Cubillos) - 

Thousands of Venezuelan musicians, most of them children and adolescents, have earned the title of the world’s largest orchestra.

The record was set by 8,573 musicians. Guinness World Records in a video released on Saturday (Nov 20) announced that the musicians, all connected to the country’s network of youth orchestras, earned the designation with a performance a week earlier of Tchaikovsky’s Slavonic March.

The musicians, ranging in age from 12 to 77, attempted the record during a patriotic concert at a military academy in the capital of Caracas. To set the record, more than 8,097 had to be tallied playing at the same time during a five-minute period of Tchaikovsky’s piece.

The network of orchestras known as El Sistema, or The System, assembled some 12,000 musicians for the concert. The repertoire included Venezuela by Pablo Herrero and Jose Luis Armenteros, the South American country’s national anthem and Pedro Gutierrez’s Alma Llanera, which Venezuelans consider their unofficial anthem.

More than 250 supervisors were each assigned a group of musicians to observe during the record attempt.

The previous record belonged to a Russian group that played that country’s national anthem//CNA

This aerial photo taken with a drone, shows beachgoers as workers in protective suits continue to clean the contaminated beach in Huntington Beach, California on Oct 11, 2021. (Photo: AP/Ringo H W Chiu) - 

Officials were investigating an oil sheen spotted on Saturday (Nov 20) near last month’s crude pipeline leak off Southern California's coast.

The US Coast Guard said in a statement the oil sheen is about 21m by 9m and that it has dispatched “pollution responders, aircraft and boats” to investigate.

The oil sheen is located in the same area where a massive oil spill was confirmed last month off the coast of Orange County, officials said.

The spill confirmed on Oct 2 from a ruptured underwater pipeline owned by Houston-based Amplify Energy leaked up to about 25,000 gallons (94,635 litres) of crude. Oil washed ashore, tarring the feathers of dozens of birds and leading to rescues of marine mammals, though it wasn’t as bad as environmentalists feared.

The impact of the spill was less than initially feared, but it affected local wetlands and wildlife and shut the shoreline in surf-loving Huntington Beach for a week//CNA

Rabbi Michael Ben Yosef raises his fist in front of City Hall in the Loop to protest the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on Nov (Photo: Chicago Sun-Times/Pat Nabong via AP) - 

Law enforcement in Portland on Friday night (Nov 19) declared a riot as about 200 demonstrators protested the acquittal of a teen who killed two people and injured another in Wisconsin.

The Multnomah County Sheriff's Office said the protesters were breaking windows, throwing objects at police and talking about burning down a local government building in downtown Portland, KOIN TV reported, but the crowd had dispersed by about 11pm. Several people were given citations, the Portland Police Bureau said, but only one person who had an outstanding warrant from another matter was arrested.

The protesters gathered following the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, 18, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse killed two people and injured another during a protest against police brutality in Wisconsin last year.

Protests have been held in several other US cities nationwide over the verdict, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

About 1,000 people marched through downtown Chicago Saturday afternoon, organised by Black Lives Matter Chicago and other local activist groups. According to the Chicago Tribune, protesters held signs that stated, “STOP WHITE SUPREMACY” and “WE’RE HITTING THE STREETS TO PROTEST THIS RACIST INJUSTICE SYSTEM” with a picture of Rittenhouse carrying a weapon.

Tanya Watkins, executive director of Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation, spoke at a rally in Federal Plaza before the march, according to the Tribune.

“While I am not surprised by yesterday’s verdict, I am tired. I am disappointed. I am enraged. … I have lost every ounce of faith in this justice system,” said Watkins, who is black.

In North Carolina, dozens of people gathered on Saturday near the state Capitol building to protest the verdict, the Raleigh News & Observer reported. Speakers led the crowd of roughly 75 people in chants of “No justice, no peace!” and “Abolish the police!” Police officers on motorcycle accompanied the protesters and blocked traffic for them as they marched down a street past bars and restaurants.

After the murder of George Floyd last year by police in Minneapolis, there were ongoing, often violent protest in Portland. Some activists complained that the police were heavy-handed in their response. Shortly after the Rittenhouse verdict, Portland Police Bureau Chief Chuck Lovell said that officers were working on plans for Friday night and the weekend.

By about 8.50pm, about 200 protesters had gathered in downtown Portland and blocked streets. By 9pm, windows were broken and doors of city facilities were damaged.

The police tweeted: “A crowd has gathered near SE 2nd Avenue and SE Madison Street and participants have begun breaking windows and damaging doors of city facilities in the area. People are throwing objects at police officers in the area.”

The Multnomah County Sheriff's Office designated the event a riot, and said in a news release early Saturday morning that some demonstrators had thrown urine, water bottles and batteries at deputies//CNA

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday (Nov 20) his country was investing in Africa without imposing unsustainable levels of debt, as he witnessed the signing of contracts worth more than US$1 billion in Senegal's capital Dakar.

The deals between four US companies and Senegal are being billed as part of his country's pitch to help Africa build infrastructure with transparent and sustainable deals. 

Careful not to directly criticise Chinese infrastructure projects, which have proliferated across the continent in the past decade, Blinken said during a visit to Nigeria on Friday that international deals were too often opaque and coercive.

The US is investing "without saddling the country with a debt that it cannot handle," he said during the signing ceremony with Senegal's Economy Minister Amadou Hott.

He said he had a deep concern for the stability of neighbouring Mali, which has experienced two coups in the last 18 months, and that the upcoming election there must follow a timetable drawn up by the regional bloc ECOWAS.

Earlier this month ECOWAS, West Africa's main political and economic bloc, imposed sanctions on Mali's transitional leaders, after they informed the organisation they would not be able to hold presidential and legislative elections in February.

"We look forward to resuming the full array of assistance as soon as this democratically elected government takes office," Blinken told reporters.

Reuters reported in September that Mali's military junta was in discussions about deploying a Russian military contractor, Wagner Group, in Mali to help fight a growing Islamist insurgency.

"It would be especially unfortunate if outside actors engaged in making things even more difficult and more complicated and I'm thinking particularly of groups like the Wagner Group," Blinken said.

Blinken said the US has real concerns, widely shared with partners in Europe, over Russia's "unusual activity" at the Ukrainian border, after Ukraine said it feared Russia might be preparing an attack.

"We do know the playbook of trying to cite some illusory provocation from Ukraine or any other country and using that as an excuse to do what Russia was planning to do all along," Blinken said.

During a visit to Dakar's Institute Pasteur bio-medical research center, Blinken said the United States was working with partners to generate more financing for vaccine manufacturing in Senegal.

In October BioNTech signed an agreement with the Institut Pasteur de Dakar and the Rwandan government to construct the first mRNA vaccine facilities in Africa, starting in mid-2022//CNA