Ukraine president names defense chief

KIEV, Ukraine – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko shook up his faltering military Thursday, appointing a new defense minister and top general while speaking angrily about the years of decay and corruption that left the forces unable to deal effectively with the well-armed eastern insurgency.

Poroshenko denounced the “complete collapse” of the government’s ability to supply the armed forces in a sometimes angry, finger-wagging speech in parliament.

He won quick approval for his choice of former top police official Valery Heletey as defense minister, replacing Mikhailo Koval. He also tapped Lt. Gen. Viktor Muzhenko as chief of the military’s general staff and Yury Kosyuk, an agriculture magnate and one of Ukraine’s richest men, to oversee defense issues in the presidential administration and to help “purge the army of thieves and grafters.”

200 arrested marking ouster of Egypt’s Morsi

CAIRO – A series of demonstrations and small bombings marked the anniversary Thursday of the ouster of Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi, and authorities responded by arresting nearly 200 people as part of their crackdown against Islamists.

One of the bombs went off accidentally inside an apartment outside Cairo, killing two suspected militants who were handling the explosives, the Interior Ministry said. It said the men were in the apartment with two friends who fled after the blast in the Islamist stronghold of Kirdasah.

A security official said one Morsi supporter was killed during clashes between protesters and security forces in Giza.

Associated Press