LONDON (AP) — A teen charged with killing three girls and wounding 10 other people in a stabbing rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England this summer remained silent in court Wednesday as not guilty pleas were entered on his behalf.

Axel Rudakubana, 18, who has refused to speak in each court appearance, was read the charges of three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and additional charges related to possessing the poison ricin and for having an al-Qaida manual.

Justice Julian Goose ordered a clerk to enter the pleas in Liverpool Crown Court as Rudakubana stayed mum during a video appearance from a London prison where he is held.

His trial is scheduled for Jan. 20.

It was the first time in a court appearance that the teen did not pull his sweatshirt collar over his nose to obscure his face.

He appeared to smile as an officer confirmed that the court proceeding could be heard at the prison. The judge noted that Rudakubana was not responding. He swayed from side to side as the charges were read and bent forward at one point.

Rudakubana was charged in August with murdering three girls — Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6 — and stabbing 10 other people on July 29 in the seaside town of Southport in northern England.

The attack at a small dance and yoga studio on the first day of summer vacation sparked rioting across England and Northern Ireland fueled by far-right activists that lasted a week.

The violence, which injured more than 300 police officers and led to fiery attacks on hotels housing migrants, began after Rudakubana — then unnamed –- was falsely identified as an asylum seeker who had recently arrived in Britain by boat.

Rudakubana was born in Wales to Rwandan immigrants.

More than 1,200 people were arrested for the disorder that lasted a week and hundreds have been jailed for up to nine years in prison.

A report released Wednesday was critical of police for failing to recognize the threat of violent disorder after a number of smaller incidents across the U.K. in the previous two years.

The report from the Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services said there were also lapses in gathering intelligence from social media and the dark web.

Rudakubana was charged in October with additional counts for production of a biological toxin, ricin, and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism for having the manual in a document on his computer.

Police have said the stabbings have not been classified as acts of terrorism because the motive is not yet known.

This past Oct. 18-19 in Miami, III Points celebrated its 11th anniversary with a lineup that included Jamie xx, Justice, Rezz, Kaytranada, Sara Landry, DJ Koze and many other greats of the electronic genre.

“Each of the departments really locked in, and I feel like we did a really good job as a team,” III Points co-founder David Sinopoli tells Billboard of producing this year’s fest. “It was reflected right back at us with all the bands and the DJ’s in the community coming out and supporting… Everyone was locked in this year, mimicking that focus and energy to their craft.”

One of the many artists showing off their craft at III Points was Canadian producer Jacques Greene, who played a Saturday night set that got right to business, staring with Fonzo’s swaggery 2024 track “Ring Ring” then traversing 90 minutes of techno and experimental electronic music. Hear Greene’s complete set below.

Sinopoli calls this year of III Points a “special one, because we had all the right people in their respective paths, working with absolute focus and doing an incredible job in their spots – they put on a masterclass with their work. From our sound, tech, lighting, to site operations, site flow, to the music side with [festival staff] Shailee Ben-David, Santi Vidal and Davide Danese’s office helping me put together the lineup. Everyone was really synced up, we have learned over the last few years in this footprint, how to make things flow so that the experience felt a little bit more controlled and comfortable.” 

Founded in 2013, the festival puts a strong focus on Miami artists, typically booking more than 50% local acts and bringing in local food vendors and visual artists. This year, as in years past, the two-day fest happened at Miami’s Mana Wynwood event space.

Sinopoli adds that over the festival’s run at the venue, he and the team have “really mastered the site and understood how to lay it out better. Our marketing team helped us fill the space by driving ticket sales and making sure we sold the experience during our sales cycle to the new fan. Laura Kirkpatrick, Leo Piscioneri, Caterina Haddad and the whole team that worked on the marketing killed it. Alexis Sosa-Toro who basically kept it all together for me on every front throughout the year, helped keep all the chaos together with calm and clarity in her leadership.”

III Points partnered with electronic events company Insomniac Events in 2019, with Sinopoli also calling out Insomniac, along with the “OG production team at III Points” for “how well they helped us make this year’s experience so special.”

The legal war between Jay-Z and attorney Tony Buzbee intensified on Wednesday (Dec. 18), with both a new lawsuit accusing the star of orchestrating a conspiracy of “shadowy operatives” and a motion warning a judge that Buzbee might destroy evidence of his own alleged misconduct.

The filings came less than two weeks after Buzbee launched a lawsuit accusing the star (real name Shawn Carter) of raping an unnamed 13-year-old girl in 2000 alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs — a shocking allegation against one of the music industry’s most powerful figures.

In Wednesday’s new case, Buzbee accused Jay-Z’s company (Roc Nation) and its lawyers (attorney Marcy Croft, as well as the law firm Quinn Emanuel) of offering money to one of his former clients (Gerardo Garcia) to coax him into filing bogus lawsuits against his firm. Buzbee claims the incident, allegedly caught on tape, is part of a broader illegal effort to derail his case against Jay-Z.

“Defendants have conspired to obstruct justice by engaging shadowy operatives to illegally seek out more than two dozen current and former clients of The Buzbee Law Firm to convince those clients to bring frivolous cases against [the firm],” Buzbee wrote in the new complaint, filed in Houston court.

“This conduct was specifically targeted at our firm so we would not pursue cases related to the Diddy litigation,” Buzbee said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “But, we will not be bullied or intimidated. The defendants overstepped, got sloppy, and stupidly got caught in their illegal scheme on tape.”

In a statement to Billboard, a Roc Nation spokesperson responded by saying: “Tony Buzbee’s baloney lawsuit against Roc Nation is nothing but another sham. It’s a pathetic attempt to distract and deflect attention. This sideshow won’t change the ultimate outcome and true justice will be served soon.”

In her own statement, Croft offered a similar reaction: “Tony Buzbee has now conjured up fantastical allegations against me and my firm — well-known corruption fighters — in a desperate attempt to distract from his mounting legal woes.  We look forward to addressing these false allegations and having them dismissed.”

The rape allegations against Jay-Z have sparked a broader legal war between his team and Buzbee, whom the superstar has called a  “fraud.” Jay-Z secretly sued Buzbee for extortion last month, accusing him of concocting a “cynical” scheme to extract settlements from innocent celebrities by threatening to link them to Diddy. And Buzbee previously filed a lawsuit in Texas against Quinn Emanuel over similar allegations of retaliatory behavior.

Separately on Wednesday, attorneys for Jay-Z formally asked the federal judge overseeing the rape lawsuit to dismiss him from the case, citing a bombshell NBC News interview on Friday (Dec. 13) in which his accuser admitted inconsistencies and “mistakes” in her story and her own father contradicted her story.

“The timeline, location, and occurrence of events alleged in plaintiff’s complaint are rendered impossible by these admissions,” Jay-Z’s lawyers write. “Plaintiff’s unsupported allegations crumble under scrutiny, as the evidence—and lack thereof—reveals glaring inconsistencies and outright impossibilities in her story.”

The new motion once again pinned the blame for the problems squarely on Buzbee, accusing him of failing to properly vet the allegations against Jay-Z before filing them in court. It cited his own quotes in the NBC story, in which he said the claims had been vetted by another law firm.

In addition to seeking to dismiss the case, Wednesday’s filing warned that Buzbee might destroy evidence of such missteps and demanded a court order prohibiting him from doing so.

“The fundamental inconsistencies in Plaintiff’s case revealed in the NBC interview, coupled with Buzbee’s chronic inability to follow the rules in this case and others, creates a substantial risk that Buzbee will destroy evidence damaging to Plaintiff’s case, including evidence of his own misconduct,” the star’s lawyers write.