Río San Juan

The Nicaraguan ex-guerrilla Edén Pastora, known as Comandante Cero, died of a heart attack at 83 while he was hospitalized, his relatives reported Tuesday.

Nicaraguan police said the four police officers were killed near the border with Costa Rica on Thursday at 4 p.m.

Daniel Ortega said that while his government is willing to compensate Costa Rica, it considers the $6.7 million requested by Costa Rica to be “exaggerated.”

With the new border facility, the Costa Rican government expects about 40 percent of the traffic that currently flows through Peñas Blancas to shift over the next 10 years to Las Tablillas, which is located 120 kilometers closer to the Caribbean coast.

The case dates back to September 2013, when Costa Rican authorities discovered that Nicaragua had been dredging canals through Isla Portillos to connect the San Juan River with the Caribbean Sea despite that fact that the International Court of Justice had declared the territory “disputed."

The mitigation work that started this week in Isla Portillos, or Isla Calero, comes just three weeks before oral arguments are set to begin in the territorial dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.