A Chinese company breaks ground Monday on a $50 billion canal across Nicaragua, an ambitious rival to the Panama Canal that critics condemn as a pipe dream and protesters say will wreck the environment. President Daniel Ortega and the Chinese telecoms magnate behind the canal, Wang Jing, will inaugurate the project at an evening ceremony in the capital Managua. But the actual construction will begin some 130 kilometers (80 miles) away, with the first access roads at the mouth of the Brito River on the Central American country's Pacific coast. Wang's Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Investment (HKND) firm says 300 workers will build the roads and a port, the first of 50,000 people who will be hired to construct the massive 280-kilometer waterway connecting the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. The firm estimates the project will take five years.
