Cherie Hart – Long-running violence in a district just outside East Timor's capital ended last week with a dance, a prayer, a speech and the sacrifice of a goat and a pig.

Specialty media have recently reported that China "has sought to take better advantage of the strategic value" of East Timor, "especially bearing in mind the prevalent regional and international context", the analyst states in a recent report on East Timor.

Zely Ariane – It was not just for the sake of democracy that the Indonesian people overthrew Suharto's New Order dictatorship in May 1998, but also for justice and prosperity.

Tiny East Timor has its first airline. Timor Air was launched yesterday and will operate daily flights between Dili, and Darwin in northern Australia.

The new airline is the initiative of businessman Jerry Desousa. He fled Timor-Leste after 1975 and eventually became a successful businessman with a property and maintenance firm, then returned to Timor.

East Timor's President Jose Ramos Horta says the Australian company Woodside Petroleum is taking a stubborn approach to debate on the Greater Sunrise gas field.

East Timor says the gas should be funnelled to the island nation, but the company wants to process it on a floating platform.

Larine Statham – East Timor President Jose Ramos Horta says he supports Australia's refugee swap deal with Malaysia.

Dr Ramos Horta on Monday said he was glad Australia had found a solution to its asylum seeker "dilemma" several months after it sought to build a detention centre in East Timor.

What do Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, and Richard Marles, the parliamentary secretary for Pacific island affairs in the Gillard government, have in common?

Answer: both are visiting Havana, Cuba, at the moment for reasons of a medical nature.

Police in East Timor have started a major security operation in Dili, following several shootings in the capital.

According to local media reports, the National Police will set up checkpoints and conduct an illegal weapons search in every suburb of the city. It comes after a Fatuhada woman and a Bidau youth were shot in separate attacks last week.

Matt Crook, Dili – It was a humid night and I wandered home in the dark, cursing the government of Timor-Leste for yet another power cut in Dili, the country's tiny capital.

Reliable Tempo Semanal sources said that the Chief of the East Timorese Defence Force, FALINTIL-FDTL has strongly indicated in public and in private that it is his intention to soon resign from the defence force because he intends to run in the 2012 Presidential election.

Ross Kelly, Sydney – East Timor is calling for Royal Dutch Shell PLC. to be excluded from discussions about the development of the Greater Sunrise gas field, claiming its promotion of floating liquefied natural gas technology represents a conflict of interest.

Kupang – The Indonesian border zone with Timor Leste, which was previously closed to the media, will be opened to journalists, a military commander says.

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – Tension is reportedly gripping the Indonesia-Timor Leste border, where hundreds of residents have attempted for the past two days to stop the neighboring country from installing a solar-powered electricity network on a disputed 80-hectare area.

East Timor's Council of Ministers has approved revisions to the Petroleum Fund Law that will see one of the smallest countries in the world move its money out of the world's biggest economy, the United States.

Lindsay Murdoch – The Timorese-born Australian woman acquitted last year of conspiring to murder East Timor's President, Jose Ramos-Horta, plans to stand for his job next year.

Today Angelita Pires will announce the formation of a new political party, and her candidacy for the presidency, in the Timorese capital, Dili.

Dili – At the swearing in ceremony for the national director and department head of the State Inspector General, yesterday (8 June), the Minister for Finance Emilia Pires acknowledged that during the period of their governance it has been full of irregularities, and because of this the inspector general will undertake audits as expected by the state and the people.

Dili – Prime Minister Kay Rala Xanana Gusmao has asked the inspector general of the state to investigate some members of government for having committed acts of maladministration and irregularities.

An article from a former employee of the energy company Woodside has labelled their negotiating style "arrogant" and "adversarial", saying it's largely the company's own fault that long-running negotiations with East Timor are stalled.

Karlis Salna – With just over a year to elections in East Timor, it appears almost certain the same political players that have dominated its first 10 years as a nation will again be vying for power.

Karlis Salna – The United Nations remains on track to withdraw from East Timor at the end of 2012 but says international partners will need to maintain a significant presence in the country beyond next year's elections.

Brian Padden – The United Nations says that plans to end the East Timor peacekeeping mission in 2012 are on track. The UN took over the functions of the national police in 2006 after riots and factional fighting brought the country to the brink of civil war.

Last week, Connect Asia ran a story about coffee farmers in East Timor, who were shocked to hear the green coffee cheries they sold to middlemen for 30 cents US went on to be sold for 26 dollars or more in places like Australia, often as a fair trade product.

Jakarta – The United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNMIT) was on the back foot Friday after Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao angrily accused the world body of trampling on his country's sovereignty.

Sara Everingham and staff – The East Timorese prime minister has lashed out at the United Nations mission in East Timor, saying it should leave the country.

There's concern that a peace agreement between martial arts groups in East Timor may not hold if political trouble starts during future election campaigns.

Thousands of coffee farmers in East Timor are bracing for a lean harvest, with heavy rains taking their toll.

It was never meant to be seen outside of a UN retreat... but now a very critical assessment of East Timor's national institutions has surfaced, causing anger in the government.

Perhaps most controversially, the UN report said that by the end of 2012, a consolidation of power in the hands of the Prime Minister may undermine the role of the Parliament and rule of law.

Edilberto C. de Jesus – The effects of the violence visited on the East Timor capital of Dili by the fighting among its fragmented communities were still plainly visible during my first trip in February 2007.

Refugee camps greeted travelers emerging from the Dili Airport, checking into the city's landmark Hotel Timor, and attending services at the Catholic cathedral.

The Federal Government has abandoned plans to establish a regional immigration processing centre in East Timor.

The proposal was announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard last year, but ran into difficulties when East Timor's parliament rejected it.

Philip Dorling – China recently tried to establish a spy base in East Timor, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.

Fairfax newspapers are reporting news of East Timor rejecting an offer from China to build a surveillance radar facility on its territory fearing it would be used for spying.

An East Timor court has acquitted the country's deputy prime minister of corruption and abuse of power charges after he was accused of securing an overpaid job for his wife.

Prosecutors had charged Jose Luis Guterres with improperly giving his wife, Ana Maria Valerio, a job as counsel to the East Timor ambassador to the United Nations in New York in 2006.

Phillip Coorey & Kirsty Needham – The Gillard government is believed to have given up on establishing a regional processing centre in East Timor and is now focusing on Papua New Guinea.

John Martinkus – A leaked US diplomatic cable from the US Embassy in Lisbon in 2006 details a senior Portuguese intelligence official accusing Australia of fomenting the violence in East Timor that year.

Barry Wain – Government officials, analysts and academics continue to debate the merits of admitting Timor Leste this year to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, seemingly unaware that the subject is closed.

Megawati Wijaya, Singapore – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will weigh this week in Jakarta whether to bring East Timor, also known as Timor Leste, into the 10-member regional grouping.

East Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao says he is against an Australian proposal to establish a regional refugee centre in his country. "I have never accepted it," he said on the sidelines of a ruling party conference in Dili.

George Quinn – Since 2004 about 300 Cuban doctors, nurses and medical technicians have been working quietly but effectively in East Timor.

Lindsay Murdoch – Julia Gillard's proposal to build a refugee centre in East Timor has been rejected by the country's President Jose Ramos-Horta, the only senior political figure in the tiny nation who had left the door open to the plan.

East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta has moved to clarify reports he has rejected an Australian bid for an immigration detention centre in his country.

Fairfax Media reported Dr Ramos-Horta had told journalists in his country that East Timor wouldn't agree to the centre.

Lindsay Murdoch, Darwin – East Timor has rejected a claim that its leaders are failing their mainly impoverished people by blocking development of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field, saying the multibillion-dollar project will go ahead.

The nation has also reaffirmed that it will honour the outcome of stalled and bitter negotiations over the field in the Timor Sea.

Joe Cochrane – To many Indonesians, Timor-Leste is a country redolent with bad dreams, the result of the problematic past when it was the country's 27th province and the traumatic birthing process of the new nation. Joe Cochrane returns to the capital, Dili, to find much has changed and that the neighbors to the west are still a part of the story.

Brian Knowlton, Washington – A frank evaluation by the World Bank's internal auditors of a decade of efforts to help East Timor underscores the challenges facing international organizations attempting to assist struggling nations.

Woodside Petroleum Ltd says East Timor's government has ignored requests for talks on the stalled Sunrise development and that competitors had shown interest in buying the $7 billion project.

Loro Horta – After 400 years of inept Portuguese colonial rule and 24 years of brutal Indonesian occupation, Timor-Leste (formerly East Timor) gained its independence in 2002 following a UN-sponsored referendum.

Lynn Lee – Indonesia is backing Timor Leste's bid to join Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) because excluding it would be "economically unnatural" and "politically destabilising" for the region in the long term, said Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa.

Overview

Zubaidah Nazeer, Dili – Former investment banker Derek Chua traded in his sharp suits for comfortable clothes so that he could cycle to work each morning here in Timor Leste's capital city.

The 33-year-old Singaporean, the finance director of Timor Leste's only general insurance company, first visited the country two years ago.

Karlis Salna – Defence Minister Stephen Smith says a full assessment of a planned withdrawal of Australian troops from East Timor will be made in conjunction with the government in Dili following elections to be held next year.