Ground broken on joint megaproject to build Nicaraguan canal

Chinese billionaire Wang Jing and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega broke ground Tuesday on a canal spanning the entirety of the Central American country, The Financial Times reported. Opponents of the waterway have criticized the US$50 billion megaproject as a monumentally costly folly, warning that it will wreck flora and fauna, contaminate the pristine Lake Nicaragua through which the canal will run and evict thousands of people from their land without fair compensation. Wang’s Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Group, which Ortega’s government awarded a 100-year contract to build the canal three times the length of Panama’s, has declined to spell out who its backers are.