A planned 172.7-mile canal in Nicaragua is facing an uncertain future. The $50 billion project is meant to compete with the Panama Canal for large cargo ship traffic, but the Chinese billionaire funding pre-construction work lost an estimated 80% of his wealth in the Chinese stock market collapse. Engineering and environmental problems are causing delays too. It's also unclear if ships would actually use the route, which is significantly longer than the Panama Canal.
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Nicaraguan Sign Language -- or Idioma de Senas de Nicaragua -- was developed in the 1980s as hundreds of students who are deaf created their own grammar, vocabulary and hand gestures to communicate with each other. This article details the role of linguists in the language's history and how it has evolved, the community's role in language learning, and "reverse fluency," when younger speakers become more fluent than older speakers of a language.
The Nicaraguan Supreme Court recently approved the construction of a canal from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, based on a 2013 plan from a Hong Kong company. But the Chinese billionaire behind the project appears to have lost a sizable amount of his fortune in the Chinese stock market, and Nicaragua has been unable to find anyone else to fund the project.
Sunday, a Chinese ship with nearly 9,500 containers was the first vessel to traverse the newly expanded Panama Canal. Ports across the US are in the middle of a series of expansion projects to make room for new, larger vessels.
The Senate has voted in favor of an amendment that would maintain current funding levels for wind research during fiscal 2017. If approved, the measure proposed by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., would keep wind research funding at $95.4 million, instead of the $80 million proposed for fiscal 2017. "Research funding promotes the next wave of development. Wind energy deserves fair treatment among government support for different energy sources," said Grassley.
Economic forces and the growing might of China are pushing forward the construction of a 170-mile-long, 90-foot-deep canal from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea through Nicaragua. The project, if built, would excavate 6.5 billion cubic yards of material, be wider than the expanded Panama Canal and require 50,000 workers. "There's been no civil engineering project of this magnitude -- ever," said Bill Wild, the chief project adviser to HKND Group, which has a 50-year agreement to build and operate the canal. Initial survey work has started, but the social and environmental costs of the project are unknown.