East Timor has officially dropped its case against Australia before the U.N.'s International Court of Justice, after Canberra returned sensitive documents relating to a controversial oil and gas treaty.

"The case brought against Australia in respect of a dispute concerning the seizure of data and documents which belongs to Timor-Leste... was removed from the court's list on June 11," the ICJ said Friday in a statement.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Friday Australia would do "whatever we need to do" to combat people-smuggling as he repeatedly refused to deny claims an official paid thousands of dollars to turn back a boat from Indonesia.

Indonesian authorities said they were investigating allegations told to local police that the captain and five crew of a boat carrying asylum-seekers were each paid US$5,000 by an Australian immigration official to return to the Southeast Asian nation.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott Thursday urged Asia-Pacific nations to help fight jihadist groups as he opened a regional summit on the issue with a warning that Islamic State has global ambitions.

Abbott told the conference -- attended by ministers and representatives of 30 nations as well as well as tech giants Facebook, Twitter and Google -- that it was crucial to find methods to tackle the ideology of extremist groups that have drawn thousands of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria.

Police say nineteen people were hurt after a pickup truck smashed into a cafe in northern Australia, causing a gas bottle inside to explode and setting the building on fire.

Officials are trying to figure out what caused the driver of the truck to veer off the road on Tuesday and into the Serves You Right Cafe in Ravenshoe, south of Cairns in Queensland state. The driver was among those injured.

Queen Elizabeth II has honored Lebanese-Australian activist Tony Yacoub for his service to the Lebanese community.

He recently received a Medal of the Order of Australia from the queen.

The Islamic State group has shown it is prepared to use chemical weapons and is likely to have among its recruits the technical expertise to develop them, Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said.

In a speech late Friday, Bishop said Australia had no doubt that the Syrian regime had used toxic chemicals including sarin and chlorine over the past four years.

Australia expressed disappointment Friday that East Timor will resume a legal battle in the U.N.'s highest court over a controversial oil and gas treaty between the two countries, and vowed to "strongly defend" its case.

East Timor announced this week it would press ahead with its case against Australia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, after a six-month hiatus for talks failed to settle a dispute over the boundaries for vast maritime energy fields shared in the Timor Sea.

The Australian government Friday demanded the country's human rights chief retract claims linking the execution of two Australians by Indonesia with Canberra's hardline asylum-seeker policy, calling it "an outrageous slur".

Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs said it was no wonder Jakarta refused to back down on the death penalty for Bali drug-smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran when Australia was turning back boats full of migrants.

Cambodia received its first batch of asylum-seekers from Australian custody on Thursday, with rights groups labeling them "human guinea pigs" for an uncaring policy by Canberra to offload refugees onto other countries.

The migrants -- three Iranians and one ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar -- were flown into Phnom Penh, the capital of one of Southeast Asia's poorest nations with a weak record of upholding human rights.

The hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 will not be expanded beyond its current area without specific new leads, Australian officials said Wednesday, dousing relatives' hopes the search could last beyond early next year.

In April, more than a year after the plane vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, Malaysia, Australia and China announced that the search zone would double in size.