Hurricane Otto nears the coasts of Nicaragua and Costa Rica
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Hurricane Otto churned toward the sparsely-populated Caribbean coast border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica early Thursday as an unusually strong late-season storm.
Heavy rains from the storm were blamed for three deaths in Panama. Otto was forecast to make landfall Thursday in Nicaragua, just north of the Costa Rican border.
Officials in Costa Rica ordered the evacuation of 4,000 people from its Caribbean coast and called off school nationwide for the rest of the week.