Mr. Wang's Canal

Pacific entrance to Panama Canal and expansion                                 KW

There we were, on the deck of a boat rising slowly as water poured into the Miraflores Lock of the Panama Canal, when someone brought up the canal in Nicaragua. What was happening with that one?, we wondered as we looked over at the work being done on the expansion not far from where we floated. And, oddly enough, the answer has come one month later, in the form of stories in both the New York Times and the California Sunday Magazine. The ambitious (of necessity, it would be three times as long as the Panama Canal) project funded by Chinese billionaire Wang Jing broke ground 16 months ago with President Daniel Ortega's blessing, but it could now be (pardon the pun) dead in the water. And that would make environmentalists, among others, very happy (story, link to slideshow): http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/world/americas/nicaragua-canal-chinese-tycoon.html?_r=0 and (story, lots of great photos): https://story.californiasunday.com/nicaraguan-canal