Jay Solomon, Jakarta – The US is taking an increasingly hard line toward President Abdurrahman Wahid's government as Washington tries to promote democracy and accountability in Southeast Asia's largest country.

Jakarta – The Plantation and Forestry Department is set to bring a score of timber tycoons to the arbitration court for failure to repay Rp 96.9 billion in loans taken from the department's reforestation funds (DR).

Robert Go, Jakarta – Hunting for an apartment in Jakarta is a walk in the park, unless the objective is to land the priciest of the available bunch.

Jakarta – Around 300 demonstrators from various non-governmental organizations and other group of society staged protests near Hotel Indonesia, Central Jakarta, yesterday urging all parties to stop committing violence throughout the country.

Jakarta – Corrupt village heads in Indonesia's Riau province are reportedly making a fortune selling falsified marriage certificates to men who wish to take second wives. Although the country's 1975 marriage law permits Muslim men to take up to four wives, polygamy is generally not common.

Jakarta – The Indonesian government's plan to resettle pro-Jakarta militias and more than 100,000 refugees on an island just 60 km north of East Timor has been rejected by several leaders of the group, who argue that the move would not solve their problems.

Vaudine England – On the surface, Indonesia appears to be spiralling out of control, with the killing of United Nations workers in West Timor 10 days ago, a bomb in central Jakarta three days ago and a presidency assailed by critics both at home and abroad.

Devi Asmarani, Jakarta – The Indonesian police said yesterday they were having difficulties finding proof to link the series of bomb attacks in the capital in the past three months to groups that some government officials suggest are related to the army.

Robert Go, Jakarta – President Abdurrahman Wahid was greeted with cheers yesterday when he disclosed the order to arrest a member of the Suharto clan in connection with Wednesday's bomb blast at the Jakarta Stock Exchange building. The response underscores the distrust and hatred many Indonesians harbour towards the former First Family.

Vaudine England, Jakarta – The announcement of an arrest order for Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra by an embattled President Abdurrahman Wahid may have redrawn the political map, at least for a day.

Mark Dodd, Dili – United Nations police in East Timor have opened a formal investigation into the 1975 killing of five Australian-based journalists at Balibo and say they may lay charges within the next month.

Associated Press in Banda Aceh – The head of an Islamic university in the restive Aceh province was shot to death on Saturday, police said.

Banda Aceh – Violence in restive Aceh province in the last year cost over Rp 42,8 billion (US$5.1 million) in material losses, the province's governor Ramli Ridwan said on Friday.

Jakarta – Some 100 stock traders and executives staged a demonstration in front of the bomb-hit Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) building yesterday, demanding that the government step up security at crucial economic institutions, witnesses said.

Alan Ramsey – It was never a secret. If you were around at the time with your eyes and your brain open, you'll remember. If you weren't or didn't, then go back and look at the headlines. They weren't all about the political hysteria of sending the Whitlam Government to the stake. East Timor was big news, too.

Jakarta – Some 150 youths protested at the US consulate in the second city of Surabaya against Washington's criticism over the killings of UN aid workers in West Timor, news reports said Saturday. The protestors pulled down the consulate flag and burned it, and threw stones at the building during the Friday protest in the capital of East Java, the reports said.

Jakarta – State Minister of the Environment Sonny Keraf announced mining firm PT Freeport Indonesia misled the public in recent advertisements by not revealing the full results of its environmental audit.

Jakarta – The government pledged on Thursday to get to the bottom of a series of bomb attacks here and was cautiously suggesting that remnants of the New Order regime or wayward military personnel might be behind the senseless acts.

Jakarta – Despite its waning political influence, the military – especially the Army – retains several "political resources" which could enable it to come back in the future, an international policy research group warned in a recent report.

Khairul Ikhwan D/Fitri & GB, Medan – Efendy Panjaitan, North Sumatra Executive Director of the Indonesian Forum on Environment, known as Walhi, said they, environmental activists and the local community continued to oppose the reopening of the infamous PT Inti Indorayon Utama (PT IIU) pulp and paper factory.

Susan Sim, Jakarta – As strategies go, there is a certain sick brilliance in the targeting choices of whoever is behind the bombing campaign being waged here.

Vaudine England – Whoever is behind the killings and bomb attacks in the country, brought dramatically to the centre of economic life in Jakarta, has succeeded brilliantly – if such was their plan – in weakening President Abdurrahman Wahid.

Bertil Lintner, Maliana – An Australian soldier holds his finger tightly on the trigger of his automatic rifle, watching with his unit for movement in the brush across the stream that separates East and West Timor. The threat is real.

Jakarta – Indonesia's defense minister has accused foreign powers of inciting rioters to murder three UN aid workers in West Timor last week, media reports said Friday, ostensibly to stop East Timor from returning to Indonesian rule.

MMI Ahyani/Swastika & GB, Bandung – Around 2,000 factory workers in West Java staged a rally at the Governor's office demanding a pay rise and the establishment of a National Workers Council.

Chris McCall – Aceh's rebels urged UN intervention in the troubled Indonesian province yesterday following the killing of 107 people there in the past 10 days.

Rizal Maslan/Hendra, Jakarta – The People's Democratic Party (PRD) staged a rally following the second hearing of former president Suharto today, not far from the trial venue. Calling themselves the "Anti-New Order" people, they accused of Suharto of being responsible for economic, political and humanitarian crimes, and demanded that he be put on trial.

Jakarta – Led members of the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC), a non-governmental organization, a group of some 400 people claiming to be becak (pedicab) drivers in the East Jakarta area attacked the local mayoralty office on Wednesday morning.

Jakarta – Indonesian police fired tear gas cannisters here Thursday to try to block hundreds of anti-Suharto student protestors from marching on the residence of the former strongman, witnesses said. No one was injured in the barrage of cannisters, an AFP reporter on the scene said.

Tim Dodd, Jakarta – Indonesia's former armed forces commander, General Wiranto, ordered the printing of counterfeit money to fund East Timorese militia groups before last year's referendum, according to evidence given to an Indonesian court.

Banda Aceh – Seven people, including two soldiers were killed in the latest violence in the restive Indonesian province of Aceh, residents and police said Wednesday.

The victims died in three districts just days ahead of a meeting between government representatives and Aceh rebel forces in Geneva on Saturday to decide on whether to extend a three-month truce.

Tom Hayland – The depressing saga of Australian efforts to establish the fate of the five Australia-based TV reporters killed in Balibo illustrates the bind that Australian diplomats had created for themselves.

Just-released Foreign Affairs documents show how Australia encouraged Indonesia to grab East Timor by its own early complicity in plans for the takeover, writes Hamish McDonald.

No check was made to see if any Australians were in the area before Indonesia's attack, Foreign Affairs documents show. Hamish McDonald reports.

Hamish Mcdonald – Australian diplomatic cables released yesterday covering Indonesia's takeover of East Timor in 1974-76 show officials caught in a web of deceit and moral compromise that led to a foreign policy disaster. Revelations in hundreds of pages of until now secret documents include:

Jon Land – The brutal murder on September 6 of three United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) staff by pro-Jakarta militia thugs at Atambua marks a dangerous turning point for 120,000 East Timorese refugees languishing in camps around West Timor.

Jakarta – Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Rizal Ramli said Indonesia's five-year National Development Programs plan will adopt a more strategic and selective approach to reflect the current changing environment.

Jakarta – Governor Sutiyoso, a retired three-star Army general, admitted on Monday that military personnel were assigned to take over the PDI headquarters on Jl. Diponegoro, Central Jakarta, on July, 27, 1996 after then president Soeharto had implicitly ordered some senior military and police officers to stop the free speech forum which was being staged at the building.

Jonathan Thatcher, Jakarta – It could be the pre-crisis boom days. Jakarta's marbled shopping malls are packed and the road to weekend villas in the mountains south of the capital is thick with the fumes of new cars.

Yogi Arief Nugraha/BI & GB, Jakarta – Sixteen years after the massacre of Muslim protesters in the Tanjung Priok port area of Jakarta, families of the victims and their supporters continue to be highly critical of efforts to bring the military perpetrators to justice.

Kerry O'Brien: First, the Timor papers, released today, which finally confirm after a quarter of a century of suspicion that Australia was warned in advance of Indonesia's brutal invasion of East Timor in 1975 and condoned it.

Compere: Well, supporters of East Timor have long interpreted Australia's actions as a betrayal on the broad international stage of an entire people, but there's also that narrower focus of betrayal of our own people, especially the five young men from Channel 9 and Channel 7 who died at Balibo.

Dan Murphy – The notion that Indonesia's civilian leaders do not really control their armed forces has swiftly evolved from frightening suspicion into undisputed fact.

Compere: We begin by going back almost exactly a quarter of a century to the momentous spring of 1975, the time leading up to the two most contentious and divisive issues of recent Australian political history. In domestic affairs the dismissal, and in foreign policy the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.

Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta – It had been a disastrous few days for Kiki Syahnakri, the Indonesian military officer in-charge of West Timor. He may even lose his job over last week's murder of United Nations staff in the border town of Atambua.

Padang – Tension gripped Pasaman regency, located some 150 kilometers southwest of here, on Monday following an overnight riot involving thousands of locals in the Airgadang Simpang plantation area. Thousands of locals stormed the plantation at 10am on Sunday, demanding a share of the land.

Jakarta – Labor unions are allowed to be involved in practical politics in their efforts to fight for workers' political and economic interests, Minister of Manpower and Transmigration Al-Hilal Hamdi said on Tuesday.

Jakarta – Dozens of people calling themselves the Anti-Luxury Cars Movement (GAMM), staged a rally at the Jakarta Convention Center on Jl. Gatot Subroto, South Jakarta, on Monday demanding the government ban the import of luxury cars.

Yogi Arief Nugraha/Swastika & AP, Jakarta – After ransacking the Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda) office in South Jakarta, thousands of taxi drivers from the Citra taxi company moved to the House of Representatives building on Jl. Gatot Subroto, today.

David Liebhold, Jakarta – Stephen Dowling is afraid to start his car these days. The director of AriaWest International has received death threats over a dispute between his company-35% owned by AT&T-and state-controlled Telkom Indonesia. As the quarrel heats up, Dowling, 44, is constantly watching his back.