Veteran entertainer Rolf Harris intends to plead not guilty to indecent assault and child pornography charges, his lawyer told a London court hearing Monday.

The 83-year-old performer faces nine counts of indecent assault on victims aged 14 and 15 and four counts of making indecent images of children. The alleged incidents stretch back to the 1980s.

Harris, who was accompanied by his wife Alwen, spoke only to confirm his name, address and date of birth during the brief pre-trial hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court.

Defense lawyer Sonia Woodley said Harris would deny the charges when asked to enter a formal plea at a later hearing.

Australia-born Harris has been a British broadcasting stalwart for decades. He has had musical hits with "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" - which he once performed with The Beatles - and "Two Little Boys."

He also has hosted television shows and painted an official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.

A multibillion dollar case between two giant pharmaceutical companies grappling over arcane antitrust issues has unexpectedly turned into a gay rights legal imbroglio that raises questions over whether lawyers can bounce potential jurors solely based on their sexual orientation.

The case before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Wednesday centers on whether Abbott Laboratories broke antitrust laws when it increased the price of its popular and vital AIDS drug Norvir by 400 percent in 2007. But broader public attention likely will be given to the three-judge panel's look at whether Abbott wrongfully removed a juror in the case brought by competitor SmithKlineBeecham. The court is expected to take up the issue sometime after 10 a.m. local time Wednesday.

The cost increase angered many in the gay community. SmithKlineBeecham, meanwhile, claims it was meant to harm the launch of its new AIDS treatment, which requires the use of Norvir. And the company contends "Juror B" was removed simply because he was gay.

"It's a big deal," said Vik Amar, University of California, Davis professor. "The headlines from this case are not

Before trials, lawyers for both sides are allowed to use several "preemptory challenges" each to remove someone from the jury pool without legal justification.

For its part, Abbott argued, it bounced "Juror B" for three reasons, none having anything to do with his sexual orientation. Lawyers said they felt the juror's impartiality was compromised because he was the only potential juror who had heard of the SmithKline treatment in question, that he was also the only prospective juror who had lost a friend to AIDS and that he worked for courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1986 prohibited lawyers from using their challenges to bounce a potential juror from a case because of race.

Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi is turning to Europe's human rights court in a bid to avoid a ban on public office and other punishments for his tax fraud conviction, the media mogul's aides said Sunday.

The politician and media magnate was found guilty of artificially inflating the amounts paid for film rights by his Mediaset empire to reduce the company's tax liabilities. Berlusconi claims he is an innocent victim of magistrates who sympathize with the left, but the verdict was upheld by Italy's top criminal court last month.

His top aide, Angelino Alfano, said the petition to the Strasbourg, France-based tribunal "shows that the Berlusconi case isn't closed."

Alfano didn't say when or on what grounds the petition to the European rights court was filed. But, "we are really confident, that at the European level, we can reach a finding of innocence that so far in Italy hasn't been possible," he said.

Italy's Court of Cassation confirmed a four-year prison term — though Berlusconi is unlikely to actually serve it — and also ordered a Milan appeals court to determine the length of a ban on serving in public office from one to three years.

A Senate panel Monday starts formally discussing if Berlusconi must surrender his Senate seat. That deliberation isn't based on the ban ordered by the Cassation Court, but a 2012 law says those sentenced to more than two years in prison are ineligible to hold public office for six years.

Italy's supreme court is defending its decision earlier this month to uphold the tax fraud conviction of Silvio Berlusconi, saying the evidence was clear that the former premier devised a tax fraud scheme for the acquisition of film rights for his media empire.

The Court of Cassation released on Thursday a written document explaining its Aug. 1 decision, which upheld a Milan appellate court ruling that Berlusconi was guilty. The Cassation judges also upheld a four-year prison term and a ban on public office, although it ordered another court to establish the length of the ban.

The center-right leader says he's the victim of magistrates he contends sympathize with the left. His lawyers will be scrutinizing the 208-page document to try to bolster their claims that Berlusconi's rights were violated.

The Indiana Supreme Court has agreed to hear an eminent domain case involving land in southern Indiana that a local board claimed for a planned airport runway expansion.

The state's high court recently vacated the Indiana Court of Appeals' ruling in the case involving the action by the now-defunct Clark County Board of Aviation Commissioners. That board used eminent domain in 2009 to acquire property owned by resident Margaret Dreyer for a runway expansion at the Clark County Regional Airport.

Dreyer sued the board, alleging its appraisals of the property acquired through eminent domain were wrong. She won and was awarded a judgment of $865,000.

The News and Tribune reported Clark County became party to the case last year when Dreyer's motion was granted to have the "civil government of Clark County" pay the judgment. The Court of Appeals later upheld the verdict.

South Central Regional Airport Authority Attorney Greg Fifer said last week in an email that the Indiana Supreme Court could either reach the same verdict as the appellate court, or affirm the county's position that the judgment was void.

Authority President Tom Galligan said the panel, which replaced the now-defunct Board of Aviation Commissioners, is pleased with the court's decision to hear the case. He said the airport authority thought the original ruling "was not a very good ruling."

The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a prosecutor's effort to reinstate the conviction of an HIV-positive man accused of passing the virus to another man, ruling Wednesday that the statute under which he was convicted was ambiguous.

Groups supporting gay rights said the ruling affirms the need for government to respect the personal and private decisions of consenting adults regarding sexual intimacy. The prosecutor contended the case was never a civil rights issue, but rather about protecting the public from people who know they're infected but practice unprotected sex anyway.

The high court affirmed a Court of Appeals decision that reversed the attempted first-degree assault conviction of Daniel James Rick, 32, of Minneapolis, who learned he was HIV positive in 2006. He had consensual sex several times starting in early 2009 with a man identified in court papers as D.B., who tested positive that October.

A jury acquitted Rick in 2011 under the first part of a Minnesota statute that applies to cases involving sex without first informing the other person that the defendant has a communicable disease. But it convicted him under another section that the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday applies only "to the donation or exchange for value of blood, sperm, organs, or tissue and therefore does not apply to acts of sexual conduct."