Poroshenko sworn in as Ukraine president

Ukraine's Western-backed billionaire Petro Poroshenko was sworn in as president on Saturday as glimmers of hope emerged for a solution to the bloody crisis that has pitted his splintered ex-Soviet country against Russia.
Poroshenko took the oath of office in Kiev's parliament one day after holding his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin since a dominant May 25 election victory handed him the mandate to try and save Ukraine from disintegration and economic collapse.
The 48-year-old magnate -- affectionately dubbed the "chocolate king" for his popular brand of sweets -- first asked a packed session of parliament to pay a minute's silence for the 100 people killed in three days of carnage in Kiev that led to the ouster of Ukraine's Kremlin-backed regime.
He then vowed to give an amnesty to any insurgents who had "no blood on their hands" as the first step in a peace initiative designed to save the nation of 46 million, which has already lost its Crimea peninsula to Russian annexation, from splintering along ethnic lines, according to AFP.