Well, summary says it. Any idea about this?
Looked through org/gudy/azureus2/ui/swt/welcome/WelcomeWindow.java and it seems it tries to first access online http://www.vuze.com/releasenotes (with some parameters) and only if it fails it tries to read the whatsnew.german.stf file. The file is not there (not even in upstream binary jar) so I guess it's supposed to work just online now. And the online changelog is probably broken.
So, closing, unless you prove me wrong.
Probably is our issue in the end.
Fixed in 4.3.1.4-r1, thanks.