CURRENT AFFAIRS

Detailed explanation-1: -Following additional difficulties including seepage from the new locks, the expansion was opened on 26 June 2016. The expansion doubled the Canal’s capacity. On March 2, 2018, the Panama Canal Authority announced that 3, 000 New Panamax ships had crossed the canal expansion during its first 20 months of operation.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Panama Canal was first developed following the failure of a French construction team in the 1880s, when the United States commenced building a canal across a 50-mile stretch of the narrow Panama isthmus in 1904.

Detailed explanation-3: -The United States spent almost $500 million (roughly equivalent to $13.5 billion in 2021) to finish the project. This was by far the largest American engineering project to date. The canal was formally opened on August 15, 1914, with the passage of the cargo ship SS Ancon.

Detailed explanation-4: -A French company headed by Ferdinand, viscount de Lesseps, started to build a canal in 1881 but failed by 1889.

Detailed explanation-5: -Panama, country of Central America located on the Isthmus of Panama, the narrow bridge of land that connects North and South America. Embracing the isthmus and more than 1, 600 islands off its Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the tropical nation is renowned as the site of the Panama Canal, which cuts through its midsection.