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

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.