Student Name: Ababacar SonkoDate: 05/28/10

Panama is located in Central America, bordering both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, between Colombia and Costa Rica.

Its location on the Isthmus of Panama is strategic.

By 2000, Panama controlled the Panama Canal which connects the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea to the North of the Pacific Ocean.

Panama, at 75,515 km2, is ranked 118th worldwide on the basis of land size.

Motto: "Pro Mundi Beneficio"  (Latin)"For the Benefit of the World” (English)

Anthem: Himno Nacional de Panamá  (Spanish)

Rugby league football, usually called simply rugby league, is a full-contact form of football, played with a prolate spheroid ball by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field.

One of the two codes of rugby football, following rugby league's split from the Rugby Football Union in 1895 its rules were changed in an attempt to create a more entertaining version of the sport.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Panama has an unemployment rate of 5.6%.

According to the ECLAC, the poverty rate is 28.6% as of 2006 and is expected to decline to 11% by 2009, in spite of the Global financial crisis of 2008 - 2009.

A food surplus was registered in August 2008, and infrastructure works are progressing rapidly. On the Human Development Index Panama is ranked at number 60 (2008).

The International Monetary Fund has predicted that Panama will be the fastest growing economy in Latin America in 2009. It was the second fastest growing economy in Latin America in 2008, after Peru.

Rubén Blades Bellido de Luna (born July 16, 1948) is a Panamanian salsa singer, songwriter, lawyer, actor, Latin jazz musician, and politician, performing musically most often in the Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz genres.

As songwriter, Blades brought the lyrical sophistication of Central American nueva canción and Cuban nueva trova as well as experimental tempos and political inspired Nuyorican salsa to his music, creating thinking persons' (salsa) dance music.

Blades has composed dozens of musical hits, the most famous of which is "Pedro Navaja," a song about a neighborhood thug who appears to die during a robbery (his song "Sorpresas" continues the story), inspired by "Mack the Knife."

He also composed and sings what many Panamanians consider their second national anthem. The song is titled "Patria" (Fatherland).

Nearly 500 rivers lace Panama's rugged landscape. Mostly unnavigable, many originate as swift highland streams, meander in valleys, and form coastal deltas.

However, the Río Chagres (Rio Chagres) is one of the few wide rivers and a source of enormous hydroelectric power. The river is located in central Panama.

The central part of the river is dammed by the Gatun Dam and forms Gatun Lake, an artificial lake that constitutes part of the Panama Canal.

The lake was created between 1907 and 1913 by the building of the Gatun Dam across the Chagres River.

At the time it was created, Gatun Lake was the largest man-made lake in the world, and the dam was the largest earth dam. It drains northwest into the Caribbean. The Kampia and Madden Lakes (also filled with water from the Río Chagres) provide hydroelectricity for the area of the former Canal Zone.