Rudy Kurniawan, once seen as one of the world's most influential dealers in rare wine, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges he was cheating clients by passing cheap bottles off as vintage. The Indonesian-born Kurniawan entered his plea in New York federal court after prosecutors filed a new indictment that updated existing charges against him, to which he had previously also pleaded not guilty.

The United States on Wednesday led a boycott of a UN General Assembly meeting that critics slammed as an attempt by Serbia to attack verdicts on its role in the 1990s Balkan wars. Washington said the meeting on international justice, convened by the UN Assembly's Serbian president, Vuk Jeremic, was "unbalanced" and "inflammatory." Other countries including Canada also stayed away from the event where Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic said there was a near systematic "lynch-mobbing" of Serbian defendants at international courts.

Wartime Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic was removed from a UN war crimes court Wednesday after challenging the testimony of a witness on the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Mladic, who is on trial at the court in The Hague on various charges, including genocide, over the 1992-95 Bosnian war, began muttering as a witness started to testimony about Srebrenica, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

The rate of women murdered in South Africa has edged down but is still five times higher than the global average, with killings by intimate partners a major problem, a researcher said yesterday. A study by the Medical Research Council in South Africa found a drop in overall female homicides over 10 years. But this was not matched by a decline in killings by the victims' partners -- a subject thrust into the spotlight by Oscar Pistorius shooting dead his girlfriend, who he says he believed to be a burglar. The study's lead researcher Naeemah Abrahams told AFP yesterday th