I wrote this diary in July, 2013: A $40 billion bad idea in Nicaragua. It's about a project to build a canal across Nicaragua, backed by Chinese billionaire Wang Jing.
Tim Rogers of The Nicaragua Dispatch has written an update: HKND: ‘Nicaragua is not a very tranquil country’. He reports that land is being bought up for the right-of-way, and in cases where the owners don't want to sell, Nicaragua's National Assembly passed a law making it easy to expropriate land for the canal, at a fraction of market value. The groundbreaking for the project is scheduled for December.
An environmental impact study is supposed to be under way, but how can this study have any credibility, when the route has already been chosen, and construction is scheduled to start in two months?