COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A former Tamil Tiger fighter has told a Sri Lankan court that military intelligence officers detained him at an army camp after the civil war and instructed him to make telephone calls to the journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda, who was abducted and disappeared months later. Sumathipala Suresh Kumar, also known as Murali, gave testimony before the Homagama High Court, where seven Army intelligence officers are on trial over an earlier abduction of Mr. Eknaligoda in August 2009.

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — The Sangupiddy Bridge, which carries the A32 highway across the Jaffna Lagoon and links the Jaffna Peninsula with Mannar, will be closed to all traffic for five days from Wednesday morning for emergency repairs, the Road Development Authority said. The bridge will close at 8 a.m. on Oct. 7 and reopen at 8 a.m. on Oct. 12, according to a notice issued by the authority's Northern Province office in Vavuniya. All vehicles will be barred from the bridge during the repairs, the

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A Sri Lankan migrant worker sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia over a Facebook comment deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad has been attacked by other inmates and suffered head injuries, according to an activist assisting his family. Sivarasa Anojan, a Tamil from Natpiddimunai, near Kalmunai in Sri Lanka's Eastern Province, was sentenced to death last month after a Saudi appeals court replaced an earlier five-year prison term. The Sri Lankan government has since begun d

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Police in Jaffna have summoned four people for questioning over a bust of Thileepan, the Tamil Tiger political leader, widening an investigation that has already reached the courts. The party that led the commemoration has defended the bust at every turn since police took it away. It has not said who put it there. The bust stood at Thileepan's memorial near the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple during the 12 days of commemorations marking his death in a hunger strike in 1987. More th

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka: The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) member whose lawsuit prevented the party’s elected president from taking office said Sunday that he would withdraw the case if ITAK held a new leadership election in accordance with its constitution. Para Chandrasekaram, an ITAK member from Trincomalee District considered close to M.A. Sumanthiran and often identified within the party with the Sumanthiran camp, made the offer at a news conference. “Conduct the election according to the l

STOCKHOLM — Can Xue, the Chinese avant-garde novelist whose experimental fiction has made her a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, has emerged as the bookmakers’ favorite to win this year’s award, according to odds offered by the British betting company Ladbrokes. Can Xue is listed at 10/1, ahead of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami at 14/1. Australian writer Gerald Murnane and the American novelist Thomas Pynchon are among the other writers near the top of the market.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A coalition of Sri Lankan lawyers and activists will begin a public campaign next week against the government’s proposed counterterrorism law, saying the bill retains many of the powers that made the country’s Prevention of Terrorism Act notorious, according to M.A. Sumanthiran, a constitutional lawyer and the acting general secretary of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK). The Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill was published in the government gazette on Sept. 22