Daily Headlines: December 23, 2014

* Nicaragua: Work officially began on Monday on a $50 billion interoceanic canal that is backed by China and expected to be completed in 2020.

* Uruguay: At least 1200 cannabis growers have been registered as part of a program allowing the legal cultivation and selling of marijuana.

* Argentina: A U.S. appeals court upheld a ruling forcing the Argentina government to pay millions of dollars to holdout creditors.

* Brazil: President Dilma Rousseff pledged to take “drastic” measures to jumpstart Brazil’s sagging economy and claimed that the corruption scandals hitting Petrobras are “overblown.”

Video Source – YouTube user euronews

Online Sources – Latin American Herald Tribune; Reuters; Voice of America; The Latin Americanist; NBC News