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FILE PHOTO: A sign reads, "Bitcoin accepted here", outside a store where the cryptocurrency is accepted as a payment method in San Salvador, El Salvador, Sep 24, 2021. (Reuters/Jose Cabezas) - 

El Salvador plans to build the world's first "Bitcoin City" which will be funded initially by bitcoin bonds, President Nayib Bukele said on Saturday (Nov 20), doubling down on the Central American country's bet on the cryptocurrency.

Speaking at an event to mark the close of a week to promote bitcoin in El Salvador, Bukele said the city planned in the east of the country would get its energy supply from a volcano and would not levy any taxes except for value added tax (VAT).

"We'll start funding in 2022, the bonds will be available in 2022," Bukele told a cheering crowd at the event.

Speaking alongside Bukele, Samson Mow, chief strategy officer of blockchain technology provider Blockstream, said El Salvador would initially issue a US$1 billion bond backed by bitcoin to begin raising funds for the planned city.

El Salvador in September became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender//CNA

FILE PHOTO: Oil and gas tanks are seen at an oil warehouse at a port in Zhuhai, China October 22, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo - 

Saudi Arabia held its position as the biggest supplier of crude oil to China for an 11th month in a row in October, with volumes up 19.5per cent from a year ago, customs data showed on Sunday.

Saudi oil arrivals totalled 7.1 million tonnes, or 1.67 million barrels per day (bpd), data from the General Administration of Customs showed, which is 19.5per cent higher than 1.4 million bpd a year and compares with 1.94 million bpd in September.

Inflows from Russia, including pipeline oil, inched up by 1.3per cent from a year ago to 6.6 million tonnes last month, or 1.56 million barrels per day (bpd). That compared with 1.49 million bpd in September.

The growth in Russian supplies, primarily of its flagship oil ESPO blend, followed China's release of fresh import quotas in August and October that allowed independent plants to lift purchases of one of their favourite grades.

Still, China's overall October crude oil imports fell to the lowest in three years amid Beijing's broad cap on independent refiners' imports.

Supplies from Brazil were down 53.2per cent from a year earlier, while those from the United States slumped by 91.8per cent.

Reuters reported China's imports of Iranian oil have held above half a million barrels per day on average between August and October, as buyers judge that getting crude at cheap prices outweighs any risks from busting U.S. sanctions.

Most of these barrels were passed on as exports from Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, weighing on competing supplies from Brazil and West Africa.

Official data has consistently shown China has imported zero oil from Iran or Venezuela since start of 2021, as national oil companies stayed on the sidelines on worries over U.S. sanctions//CNA

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