Tagged: Panama

A "breakdown in communications" kept a cruise liner steaming off the coast of Panama from rescuing a group of fishermen in distress, even after passengers aboard the ship tried to report sighting the vessel, Princess Cruises says.

The cruise line says a preliminary investigation of the incident that led to the subsequent deaths of two of the three fishermen confirms that the captain of the luxury ship never got word that the boat had been spotted.

The Central American nation of Panama is booming. Fueled by a multibillion-dollar expansion of the Panama Canal, a thriving banking industry and capital flight from Venezuela, the tiny nation has the highest economic growth rate in the hemisphere.

But even as the government builds a subway system and markets the country as a tropical paradise for multinational corporations, not everyone is sharing in the prosperity.

Two giant ships move through the Panama Canal's two parallel channels at the Miraflores locks, heading toward the Pacific Ocean.

The orange and white Bow Summer is a tanker. The deck of the Ever Dynamic is stacked high with burgundy and blue shipping containers. More boats like these are backed up in both the Pacific and the Atlantic waiting to enter the narrow waterway.

Global trade has grown dramatically, but the Panama Canal — one of the most vital transit routes — hasn't changed its basic structure since it opened in 1914.

But that is about to change.