Jill Biden to Lead US Delegation to Ceremony Marking Panama Canal Expansion

Jill Biden, the wife of US Vice President Joe Biden, will head a delegation to the June 26 inauguration of a widened Panama Canal, intended to make the waterway available to a new generation of supertankers, President Barack Obama announced in a statement.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Other members of the presidential delegation will be US Ambassador to Panama John Feeley, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs William Brownfield and acting Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Carmen Aponte, the statement said on Monday.

The expansion project will allow the canal to service so-called Post-Panamax vessels, with a capacity of up to 14,000 TEUs, or 20-foot-equivalent units, up from the present capacity of 5,000 TEUs, according to the Panama Canal website.

A TEU refers to shipping container that is 20-foot-long, 8-feet-tall and 8-feet wide.